US Forces Shift Strategy in Stealth Fight With China

The Pentagon's Pacific assets, fleets and air bases, have reportedly shifted from a few large potential targets for enemies from the World War II era to multiple smaller launching points to keep "big juicy" targets from the top threat in the region: China.

The U.S. Air Force has called the shift in strategy Agile Combat Employment (ACE), an effort to keep a country like China from targeting large U.S. military assets, if not allowing for stealth deployment of defense aircraft or bombers in a potential outbreak of World War III, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The U.S. territory of the tiny island of Tinian is being built to permit stealth runways, and the move away from large air bases from the World War II era would keep China from using its large missile arsenal to quickly take out large swaths of assets in the region if World War III were to erupt, according to the Journal.

Tinian thick, green jungles are useful in hiding from enemies.

"The density was tough, very tough," Master Sgt. Jody Branson of the Air Force's 513th Expeditionary Red Horse Squadron told the Journal. "If me and you walked back there, we could be 10 feet apart and not even see each other."

Dispersing U.S. assets to smaller areas will keep enemies guessing, according to the deputy director of air and cyberspace operations for the Pacific Air Forces.

The point is to "not consolidate all of our aircraft into one big, juicy target," Michael Winkler told the Journal. "There's a dispersal aspect to it, and then there's flexibility as well where aircraft aren't specifically tied to one base."

There are some drawbacks from the ACE strategy. Coordinating between the locals is an added challenge and the mere distances from them makes it harder for the assets to be deployed quickly during conflict, according to the report.

Still, the U.S. is looking to add potential launch points.

"We're interested in any runways, basically," Winkler told the Journal. "If you've got 7,000-plus feet of runway, we'll look at that as a potential operating base.

"We've got a big map, it's got a lot of airfields plotted in it, and we'd dearly love to get to as many of those as possible."

Tinian, Japan, and the Philippines — including the large island of Luzon — have more than a handful of potential airfields that can be used by the U.S. military, according to Winkler.

The Pentagon and Department of State will be working with allies in the region to rapidly expand the potential locales in the event of a conflict in the region.

"It's an intentional move we're making in the competition phase," Winkler said, noting the U.S. is not in a "conflict" phase with China, but a "competition phase" where it is collecting alternatives "up until the moment of that crisis."

"Trying to not make our allies and partners choose and make a very, very difficult choice between probably an economic partner of choice and a military partner of choice."