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China Aims Missiles At Guam. How Should the Pentagon Defend America’s Pacific Bomber Base?

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The U.S. Navy admiral in charge of Indo-Pacific Command is worried about Guam.

In the event of war, the Chinese military could target the U.S. island territory with cruise and ballistic missiles, Adm. Phil Davidson warned. And that could remove from the map the U.S. Air Force’s main Pacific base for bombers and other heavy warplanes.

The solution, Davidson said, is to install the Aegis missile-defense system on Guam. Aegis Ashore could function as “the backbone of [a] homeland defense system” for the territory, Davidson told reporters on Wednesday.

Guam lies 1,800 miles from China in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s close enough from the Asian mainland to function as a base for bombers, tankers and intelligence aircraft, but far enough to be a tough target for all but the most sophisticated attackers.

Andersen Air Force Base on Guam is huge. Its long runways and extensive aprons could accommodate hundreds of aircraft. Chinese military planners surely are keenly aware of the base’s value to the United States. They’ve spent decades devising means to attack it.

Today the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force possesses 2,500-mile-range DF-26 ballistic missiles that can hit Guam. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s H-6 bombers also could strike the island with their 900-mile CJ-10 cruise missiles. The People’s Liberation Army Navy’s ships could fire YJ-18 cruise missiles at Andersen from around 300 miles away.

None of these weapons would work perfectly in combat conditions. Their launchers all are vulnerable to attack. It’s unclear how many of each munition China possesses.

But U.S. military leaders assume that, in a major war, at least a few missiles would head Guam’s way. Thousands of American lives, billions of dollars worth of warplanes and a key U.S. military advantage—its long-range air power—could be at risk.

Which is why the U.S. Army stations a battery of Terminal High-Altitude Air-Defense missile-launchers on Guam. And why the Army could, in a time of crisis, speed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles to the island.

Both THAAD and Patriot are terminal defenses. They aim at missiles in the final moments of their flight. The SM-3 is a mid-course defense. It strikes ballistic missiles farther away in the middle of their flight, when they’re at the edge of the atmosphere.

There are two ways to launch an SM-3. Pack it into a vertical launch cell on one of the U.S. Navy’s scores of ballistic-missile-defense-capable Aegis destroyers or cruisers or fire it from an installation on land.

The U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Agency is installing $2-billion-apiece Aegis Ashore facilities in Romania and Poland. Japan was supposed to host an Aegis Ashore base but canceled it this year amid strong local opposition. For another $2 billion, the MDA could add an Aegis Ashore site on Guam.

The advantage of Aegis Ashore is that it’s cheaper than a destroyer is for a given amount of missile-defense coverage. Keeping two multi-billion-dollar Aegis warships on station around the clock would require at least four ships—and possibly as many as six—in order to allow for crews to rest and ships to spend time in port for repairs and refit.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet usually deploys around nine destroyers in the western Pacific. The fleet opposes devoting these ships to missile-defense patrols. The fleet already keeps four destroyers in Europe so that one or two can be on station in the event Iran lobs a ballistic missile in a westerly direction.

Those ships can’t really do anything else except steam in a circle ... and wait. “You have to be in a tiny little box to have a chance at intercepting that incoming missile,” Adm. John Richardson, then the chief of naval operations, said in 2018.

“We’ve got exquisite capability, but we’ve had ships protecting some pretty static assets on land for a decade,” Richardson said the following year. “If that [stationary] asset is going to be a long-term protected asset, then let’s build something on land and protect that and liberate these ships from this mission.”

Davidson clearly agrees with Richardson. 

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