Warnings were in place again Wednesday in the Los Angeles area for the prospect of strong winds combining with dry conditions to spread wildfires as firefighters battled a series of blazes in the region that have already killed at least 25 people. After winds were weaker than expected during the day Tuesday, the National Weather…
For decades, the United States has relied on airpower and the qualitative superiority of its aircraft to gain an advantage over its adversaries. But that advantage is rapidly eroding. The Chinese military is fielding sophisticated air defense networks that include robust passive defenses, challenging sensors, and highly capable missiles and aircraft. In fact, by our calculations, the amount of concrete used by China to improve the resilience of its air base network could pave a four-lane highway from Washington, D.C. to Chicago.
China’s strike forces of aircraft, ground-based missile launchers, and special forces can attack U.S. airfields globally. The U.S. Department of Defense has consistently expressed concern regarding threats to airfields, and military analyses of potential conflicts involving China and the United States demonstrate that most U.S. aircraft losses would likely occur on the ground at airfields. Despite these concerns, the U.S. military has devoted relatively little attention to countering these threats compared to its focus on developing modern aircraft.
U.S. airpower concepts have largely assumed that U.S. forces would deploy to forward airfields uncontested and that small-scale forward threats to airfields could be nullified. However, China is capable of mounting large-scale, sustained attacks against U.S. and allied airfields in the Indo-Pacific elsewhere. To generate airpower amid this onslaught, U.S. and allied forces need to devote a radical level of effort to learn how to “fight in the shade.”
This is the subject of our new report for the Hudson Institute. In the report, we make two observations. First, China seems to expect its airfields to come under heavy attack in a potential conflict and has made major investments to defend, expand, and fortify them. Second, American investments have been much smaller in scale and scope. Given the Chinese military’s threat to air bases, the United States needs to both be ready to disperse and undertake an urgent campaign to rapidly harden the bases that it and its allies and partners need to operate from in the event of a conflict with China. America has done so before in the face of other threats. To not do so today invites aggression — and could result in losing a major war.
Dealing with Past Threats
The U.S. Air Force has contended with varying levels and types of threats to its air bases. First, during the 1950s, concerns about the vulnerability of NATO air bases to nuclear attack led to the development of a dispersed operating concept to mitigate damage from nuclear and conventional attacks. Later, during the Vietnam War, aircraft losses due to mortar and rocket attacks prompted the Air Force to initiate the Concrete Sky program — a crash effort to build hardened aircraft shelters at the Air Force’s main operating bases in Vietnam. From 1968 to 1970, the Air Force built 373 such shelters, which it found to be effective in defeating attacks. It also conducted a study of air base vulnerability that prompted the construction of hardened aircraft shelters at air bases in Europe and the Pacific. The United States and its allies built roughly 1,000 by the end of the Cold War, including more than 100 in Japan.
In the first decades after the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force operated in support of U.S. combat operations from locations of relative sanctuary. About a decade into this period, analysts began to recognize that new weapons combining satellite-guided precision, long ranges, and submunitions could provide an otherwise inferior adversary with the means to disrupt or defeat U.S. Air Force combat and airlift operations in a conflict. For example, a 1999 RAND study estimated that — if sufficiently accurate and equipped with submunitions — a single Chinese ballistic missile could damage scores of American fighters parked at standard spacing intervals on an open ramp.
Hardening in the Indo-Pacific
To support of an invasion of Taiwan, open source Chinese publications call for seizing air dominance by using surprise attacks to destroy and paralyze an opponent’s air force on the ground. In recent decades, the Chinese military has been building what appear to be the capabilities to carry this out. China’s air force has developed a large force of cruise-missile-equipped strike aircraft. China’s Rocket Force has acquired over 1,000 medium-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting air bases across Japan and the Philippines, and 500 intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Guam and the other Mariana Islands. That strike force — combining long range, precision guidance, and in some cases submunitions — appears to have made real the threat to U.S. air bases that analysts began to talk about years ago.
Analysts have explicitly called out robust passive defenses, such as hardened shelters for aircraft, as “the most cost-effective ways to improve air base resilience.” Unfortunately, Air Force leaders have a mixed record when it comes to base hardening. In 2022, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall voiced support for hardening Air Force bases in the Pacific, but the next year the then-Pacific Air Forces commander said he did not see base hardening as a cost-effective way to respond.
Since the early 2010s, the U.S. military has added only two hardened shelters and 41 non-hardened ones at airfields within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait and outside of South Korea. It also does not appear likely to add any new hardened shelters anytime soon. Including allied airfields outside Taiwan, combined military airfield capacity within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait is roughly one-third of China’s. As can be seen in Figure 1, without airfields in South Korea this ratio drops to one-quarter, and without airfields in the Philippines it falls to 15 percent.
To figure out what China has done to make its air bases resilient, we used commercial satellite imagery to generate estimates of the aggregate improvements to its air bases. In summary, China’s efforts dwarf those of the United States. Entering the 2010s with about 370 hardened shelters, the Chinese military has more than doubled that number, to over 800. The number of non-hardened shelters also more than doubled, giving China a total of more than 3,100 aircraft shelters — enough to shelter the vast majority of its combat aircraft. Over roughly the last decade, China has also added numerous runways and runway-length taxiways, and increased its ramp area nationwide by almost 75 percent. It now has 134 air bases within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait. These bases boast more than 650 hardened shelters and almost 2,000 non-hardened shelters.
Figure 1: Comparison of features at Chinese, U.S., and allied airfields within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait, by location
This has created an imbalance (see Figure 2) in which Chinese forces would need to fire far fewer “shots” to suppress or destroy U.S., allied, and partner airfields than the converse. This imbalance ranges from approximately 25 percent to as great as 88 percent if the United States employed only military airfields in Japan. Strategically, this asymmetry risks incentivizing Beijing to exercise a first-mover advantage — China could strike first if it sees an opportunity to nullify adversary airpower on the ramp.
Figure 2: Estimated munitions required to neutralize airfields, by location
Recommendations
The United States can continue to largely ignore this menace and watch as risk levels increase, or it can face the reality and shape its forces and infrastructure to prevail.
One element of a competitive strategy to gain an advantage is to paradoxically motivate China to double-down on its defensive investment. To do so, the United States should continue improving its ability to strike Chinese forces and key critical infrastructure. By influencing Beijing to spend funds on additional defense measures, Washington can reduce the relative proportion of funds for alternative investments, including strike capabilities.
A strong offense alone, however, will not solve the Defense Department’s problems. Without a baseline level of resilience, it is reasonable to expect U.S. air offensive capabilities will be suppressed in a conflict. Thankfully, the suite of specific improvements is straightforward.
Defend Airfields
First, active defenses are essential to sustained air operations. In the 1980s, amid the threat of Soviet conventional air and ground attacks, the U.S. Army committed itself to “fund, equip, and man ground-based air defenses” as well as air base perimeter defense, for Air Force bases. Those Cold War agreements lapsed in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Army investments in air defense artillery forces have been relatively modest since.
Air base defense is arguably the most important mission the Army could perform in the Indo-Pacific, and Congress should robustly fund the air defense branch. Given competing priorities in the Army budget, this will require accelerating and deepening the Army’s shift of personnel and resources away from ground maneuver forces and toward air defense artillery.
Harden Airfields
Passive defenses are “the most-cost-effective ways to improve air base resilience.” But the military services have spent relatively little on them, which can include not only hardening but also redundancy measures, prepositioning of supplies, reconstitution capabilities, and camouflage, concealment, and deception measures.
To comprehensively harden airfields, the Defense Department will need to shift from treating each construction project individually to conducting a campaign of construction. A major, multi-year campaign of bundled construction at airfields inside and outside the United States — especially in the Indo-Pacific — would create a sustained push for military construction activities at bases, allow the creation of consortia of commercial contractors, and reduce construction costs.
Over the past couple of decades, there has been growing recognition that the U.S. military needs to invest much more in passive airfield defenses. Fiscal limits and a preference for funding other military systems, such as aircraft, have driven a lack of action. Congress could direct the department to rapidly compose a report that assesses the worldwide U.S. demand for airfield resilience measures, including hardened shelters, hardened fuel stores, reconstitution systems, and the like, and to prioritize funding a percentage of the demand each year in its budget submission.
Similarly, Congress could adopt an approach to directly identify and fund these systems. For example, for every new combat aircraft, it will acquire a new personnel bunker, hardened shelter, munitions bunker, or hardened fuel store for an airfield in the United States and another one in the Indo-Pacific. It should also explicitly authorize and appropriate the construction of shelters for high-value aircraft in the United States, such as the B-21, and ensure military construction proposals in the Indo-Pacific account for threats and are hardened. Of note, Congress recently authorized $289 million for hardened aircraft shelters at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, though the Air Force requested no such funds and it is unclear whether Congress will appropriate those funds.
Absent a major topline budget increase, the Defense Department will need to fund these investments by decreasing spending in other areas, such as reducing funding for the Department of the Army or aircraft procurement. Although reducing aircraft procurement is problematic, modest trades could have outsized positive effects. For example, procuring one fewer B-21 per year over five years could provide enough funding to build 100 hardened shelters in the continental United States, ensuring that in a conflict, Chinese forces will not be able to easily destroy the B-21 fleet in the United States. By buying one fewer F-15EX or F-35A per year, the Defense Department could resource 20 new hardened shelters in the Western Pacific each year.
Evolve the Force
The Defense Department should also accelerate the development and fielding of forces that enable operations that are less susceptible to China’s airfield attacks. This includes long-range aircraft and aircraft and weapons that can operate from short or damaged runways or operate independently of them. However, the U.S. military will not field these types of forces in large numbers until the 2030s, and it will still require active and passive defenses at airfields regardless of these changes in force design.
Counterarguments and Conclusion
Passive defenses may seem at odds with a predominantly expeditionary U.S. approach to warfare. Why spend limited resources on defenses at home and abroad when the U.S. plans on projecting power overseas? However, unless U.S. forces can defend airfields at home and abroad, they will be unable to support U.S. and allied interests in a conflict. As we consider investments in this area, we should be cautious of three seemingly sensible counterarguments.
“Hardening is not cost-effective — instead, rely on dispersal.”
In general, investments in other passive defenses are less costly and have a higher tactical benefit return than hardening. This has led some observers to think hardening is not cost-effective and is unwise. Even though hardening is relatively expensive and, in some cases, may be lower on the priority list of passive defenses, it is highly valuable, and a range of passive defense measures is necessary.
“U.S. forces need only do X.”
Some analyses overestimate the positive impact of single or limited facets of passive defenses, such as runway reconstitution or expeditionary fuel storage. Sustained air combat operations require an interdependent system of systems of personnel, fuel, munitions, maintenance, and other support assets. As it considers investments, the U.S. military will need to holistically enhance the passive defenses of airfields. This may require it to prioritize funding a comprehensive set of improvements to a limited number of locations, rather than attempting to field disjointed improvements to many sites.
“Forget hardening — rather, operate from range.”
Facing major threats to airfields in the Western Pacific, the Department of Defense could forgo fortifying airfields that could come under attack and instead adopt a force design that attempts to operate solely from range. Although the force design of U.S. air forces has become heavily reliant on short-range forces, the strategy of completely retiring from forward airfields has three flaws. First, operative forward airfields can provide three to five times as much capacity on station as distant airfields. Consequently, unless the size of U.S. air forces dramatically increases, they will be necessary to provide appropriate levels of capacity. Second, there is no sanctuary. China will likely be capable in the future of attacking U.S. forces at great distances — even within the continental United States. Third, it takes time to adjust force design. Given current airfield manufacturing timelines, it would likely take more than a decade for the Department of Defense to adopt enough long-range combat aircraft, tankers, and weapons to enable a solely stand-off approach or to adopt sufficient runway-independent capabilities. Such future forces will not solve current airfield challenges, and the ability to operate a major proportion of U.S. aircraft from forward airfields would still be highly valuable.
Executing an effective campaign to enhance the resilience of U.S. airfield operations will require informed decisions to prioritize projects and sustained funding. What is clear, however, is that U.S. airfields do face the threat of attack, and the current approach of largely ignoring this menace invites Chinese aggression and risks losing a war. Passive defenses, including hardening, are essential, and other countries have invested heavily in them to sustain airfield operations amidst attack. It is past time for the United States to do so again.
Thomas Shugart is a retired U.S. Navy submarine warfare officer. He is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and the founder of Archer Strategic Consulting.
Timothy A. Walton is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Image: Tech. Sgt. Eric Summers (U.S. Air Force)
Commentary
Dental Braces Market Deep Research Report with Forecast to 2031 | 3M Company, Align Technology, Inc. – Technology Today – EIN Presswire
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Beijing on Wednesday said it “firmly opposes” a US move to effectively bar Chinese technology from smart cars in the American market, saying alleged risks to national security were “without any factual basis”.”Such actions disrupt economic and commercial cooperation between enterprises… and represent typical protectionism and economic coercion,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said, adding: “China firmly opposes this.”Tuesday’s announcement in the United States, which also pertains to Russian technology, came as outgoing President Joe Biden wrapped up efforts to step up curbs on China, and after a months-long regulatory process.The rule follows an announcement this month that Washington is mulling new restrictions to address risks posed by drones with tech from adversaries such as China and Russia.US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that modern vehicles contain cameras, microphones, GPS tracking and other technologies connected to the internet.”Cars today aren’t just steel on wheels — they’re computers,” she said.”This is a targeted approach to ensure we keep PRC and Russian-manufactured technologies off American roads,” she added, referring to the People’s Republic of China.But Guo slammed the move, telling journalists in Beijing that China would “take necessary measures” to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”What I want to say is that the US, citing so-called national security, has restricted the use of Chinese connected vehicle software, hardware, and entire vehicles in the United States without any factual basis,” he told a regular press conference.”China urges the US to stop the erroneous practice of overgeneralising national security and to stop its unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies.”- ‘Trying to dominate’ -The final US rule currently applies just to passenger vehicles under 10,001 pounds (about 4.5 tonnes), the Commerce Department said.It plans, however, to issue separate rulemaking aimed at tech in commercial vehicles like trucks and buses “in the near future”.For now, Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD, for example, has a facility in California producing buses and other vehicles.National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard added that “China is trying to dominate the future of the auto industry”.But she said connected vehicles containing software and hardware systems linked to foreign rivals could result in misuse of sensitive data or interference.Under the latest rule, even if a passenger car were US-made, manufacturers with “a sufficient nexus” to China or Russia would not be allowed to sell such new vehicles incorporating hardware and software for external connectivity and autonomous driving.This prohibition on sales takes effect for model year 2027, and also bans the import of the hardware and software if they are linked to Beijing or Moscow.isk-je/mtp
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WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith said his team “stood up for the rule of law” as it investigated President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, writing in a much-anticipated 137-page-long report released Tuesday that he stands fully behind his decision to bring criminal charges that he believes would have…
BEIJING, Jan 15 — Beijing today said it “firmly opposes” a United States move to effectively bar Chinese technology from smart cars in the American market, saying alleged risks to national security were “without any factual basis”.“Such actions disrupt economic and commercial cooperation between enterprises… and represent typical protectionism and economic coercion,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said, adding: “China firmly opposes this.”Yesterday’s announcement in the United States, which also pertains to Russian technology, came as outgoing President Joe Biden wrapped up efforts to step up curbs on China, and after a months-long regulatory process.The rule follows an announcement this month that Washington is mulling new restrictions to address risks posed by drones with tech from adversaries such as China and Russia.US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that modern vehicles contain cameras, microphones, GPS tracking and other technologies connected to the internet.“Cars today aren’t just steel on wheels — they’re computers,” she said.“This is a targeted approach to ensure we keep PRC and Russian-manufactured technologies off American roads,” she added, referring to the People’s Republic of China.But Guo slammed the move, telling journalists in Beijing that China would “take necessary measures” to safeguard it legitimate rights and interests.“What I want to say is that the US, citing so-called national security, has restricted the use of Chinese connected vehicle software, hardware, and entire vehicles in the United States without any factual basis,” he told a regular press conference.“China urges the US to stop the erroneous practice of overgeneralising national security and to stop its unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies.” — AFP
By MEGAN HOWE Published: 03:59 EST, 15 January 2025 | Updated: 04:33 EST, 15 January 2025
Woodward Public Library has received a $1,200 grant from Oklahoma Humanities to host a new book discussion group focused on Native American identity.The series, titled Native American Identity From Past to Present: A More Perfect Union Theme, will explore Native identity through the works of Native writers and their experiences.The series aims to challenge stereotypical depictions in popular culture and address the complexities of Native identity.
“The discussions will take place on Tuesday evenings at 6 p.m., starting Feb. 4, and will alternate between the Woodward Public Library and the Plains Indians & Pioneer Museum, who happens to be our program partner this year,” said Andrea Davis, adult services librarian at Woodward Public Library.The program is free and open to the public, and books are available for pick-up at the library, she added.Mikel M. Robinson, executive director of the Plains Indians & Pioneer Museum, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership.“We are excited to embark on this new collaboration with the library to bring the Let’s Talk About It program to the community,” Robinson said. “The theme for the spring season aligns perfectly with the museum’s mission and the cultural heritage of the area.”The book discussions will feature five books: “Firekeeper’s Daughter” by Angeline Boulley, “There There” by Tommy Orange, “The Removed” by Brandon Hobson, “Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir” by Deborah Miranda, and “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich. “We invite everyone to join us for one session or the entire series as experts lead discussions on selected books,” Davis said. “Each session will include an analysis of the text, an exploration of recurring themes, insights into the authors’ lives, and relevant historical context.”
Bird flu poses a threat that is “unique and new in our lifetime” because it has become a “‘panzootic” that can kill huge numbers across multiple species, experts warn. For months, highly pathogenic bird flu, or H5N1, has been circulating in dairy farms, with dozens of human infections reported among farm workers. It has now jumped into more than 48 species of mammals, from bears to dairy cows, causing mass die-offs in sea lions and elephant seal pups. Last week, the first person in the US died of the infection.This ability to infect, spread between, and kill such a wide range of creatures has prompted some scientists to call H5N1 a “panzootic”: an epidemic that leaps species barriers and can devastate diverse animal populations, posing a threat to humans too. As shrinking habitats, biodiversity loss and intensified farming create perfect incubators for infectious diseases to jump from one species to another, some scientists say panzootics could become one of the era’s defining threats to human health and security.Panzootic means “all” and “animals”. “Panzootic is almost a new thing, and we don’t know what sort of threat it is,” says Prof Janet Daly from the University of Nottingham. “We have some viruses that can infect multiple species, and we have some viruses that can cause massive outbreaks, but we haven’t tended to have the combination – that’s something of a new phenomenon … That’s where H5N1 is going, and it just makes it so unpredictable. [It’s] unique and new in our lifetime and memory.”Ed Hutchinson from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research says: “It is really hard for infectious diseases to effectively stop being specialists and move over into a new species. So when that happens, it is striking and concerning.”The impacts on biodiversity can be huge. Bird flu has led to “catastrophic” declines in seabird populations, with millions of wild birds killed. More than 20,000 South American sea lions have died in Chile and Peru and an estimated 17,000 southern elephant seal pups have died in Argentina – equivalent to 96% of all pups born in the country in 2023.View image in fullscreenThe risk of bird flu spreading among humans is an “enormous concern”, UN health authorities have warned. Most recently, a man in Louisiana died after being exposed to a combination of a non-commercial back-yard flock and wild birds. Since March last year, 66 confirmed bird flu infections in humans have been reported in the US, but previous cases have been mild. So far, there is no evidence it is spreading between humans, and that is what experts are keeping a close eye on.Three-quarters of emerging diseases can be passed between animals and humans. This matters in terms of mapping them and protecting people, researchers say.Some researchers argue that Covid-19 could be an example of a panzootic because it has infected more than 58 non-human species, including deer, mink and even snow leopards (although unlike bird flu, it does not effectively spread between them and kill them, so does not fit the traditional definition).“We are being overwhelmed by the number of animal species which are susceptible to [Covid-19] infection,” researchers have said.Identifying the virus that causes Covid-19 as a potential panzootic could have resulted in active surveillance in animals, researchers say, and the earlier development of vaccines.Scientists also warn that cross-species pandemics are on the rise. “There is a fair body of work now demonstrating that most human viruses are zoonotic (ie of animal origin),” says Michelle Wille, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Pathogen Genomics at the University of Melbourne.View image in fullscreenMark Honigsbaum, a medical historian and author of Pandemic Century, says: “Why are they becoming more frequent? Well, the simple answer is, it’s because of the way we humans settle and colonise larger and larger areas of the planet.”Biodiversity loss is the leading driver of infectious disease outbreaks, as habitat decline and industrialised farming place people in close proximity with other species. Humans have already transformed or occupied more than 70% of the world’s land. Since the 20th century, the most significant driver of this transformation of the way we use land has been the “livestock revolution”. The number of food animals and the amount they produce has increased rapidly to feed growing populations.Deforestation and climate breakdown also force humans and animals into close contact, as wildlife is pushed into smaller spaces. In addition, as the climate warms, mosquitoes, midges and ticks are expanding their geographical ranges.The more pathogens there are in animal populations, the greater risk there is of humans being exposed to them. Honigsbaum says: “We are going to see more of these outbreaks, and it’s only just a matter of time before one of them causes another pandemic.”“I don’t see those risks going away,” says Hutchinson, but adds that the risks could be reduced. “We increasingly have an understanding – if not a fantastic, practical setup – of what we could do to start reducing some of those risks. That’s my attempt at a moment of hope.”Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
SHAH ALAM, Jan 15 (Bernama) — Tengku Permaisuri of Selangor Tengku Permaisuri Norashikin today graced the launch of the book ‘Telepuk, Forgotten Flowers of Gold’ at the Raja Tun Uda Library here.
Her Royal Highness arrived at 10 am and was greeted by the Selangor Public Library Corporation (PPAS) director, Datin Paduka Mastura Muhamad, and the founder of the Langkasuka Movement and publisher of the book, Abdul Razak Aziz.
Tengku Permaisuri Norashikin also graciously delivered the officiating speech to mark the launch of the English-language book.