U.S. Airfields Are Sitting Duck Targets

By Lubo Ivanko @Adobe Stock

Thomas Shugart and Timothy Walton of War on The Rocks argue that the U.S. airpower advantage is eroding due to China’s extensive investments in airfield defenses, making U.S. airbases vulnerable to attack. They recommend the U.S. urgently invest in both active and passive defenses, including hardened shelters and improved air defense systems, to protect airfields in the Indo-Pacific. The authors warn that neglecting airfield resilience could lead to significant losses in a potential conflict with China, urging the U.S. to prioritize hardening airbases to maintain air superiority. They write:

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. […]

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. […]

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. […]

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.

Read more here.