The Pacific's Hubs, Spokes, and ACEs

...work is being done...

Like I said in Monday’s post,

Having a wide variety of inefficient and underutilized bases and facilities scattered around is a feature, not a bug. The future is unknown and an impatient lover. Do not test, taunt, or take her for granted. Reactivate more bases.

Smart people in hard jobs with limited resources are doing their best to improve the odds in the place we have neglected almost as much as the Caribbean, the Pacific.

Via Carter Johnson in a superb article in Newsweek:

Across sleepy and remote islands in the Pacific, U.S. military engineers are working around the clock to revive strategically important airstrips that American troops first built under fire over 70 years ago during World War II.

The reconstruction effort is being led by a designated office within the U.S. Air Force, whose Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, doctrine has identified dozens of airfields that will be used to house and launch fighter jets, aerial refuelling tankers and weapons during a war with China. A trilateral force of the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force is now converging with a single goal in mind: re-establish a presence on the airfields once used to deliver decisive combat power for the United States during the last great power war.

Yes, this is a good and necessary thing…a topic we have long covered here and over at the Midrats Podcast.

As always, let’s head to the chartroom:

There is a lot more to add, especially in the Southwest Pacific where the People’s Republic of China has been so busy as of late.

What would be helpful here is an overlay of those places where we can do maintenance and resupply—where we are working on it—and where we used to be able to do so. By the way, anyone have an update on Manus? Adak?

The whole-of-military effort to prepare the Pacific theater across 12 time zones, dozens of countries, and millions of square miles all serves to prepare U.S. forces for what could be, Capt. Thomas H. Healy, commanding officer of Navy Reserve Center Great Lakes, said at a Pearl Harbor anniversary luncheon in December, reflecting on the impact of the attack on U.S. naval power during World War II.

Leaders of the Navy Reserve anticipate 50,000 call-ups within 30 days of a war with China over Taiwan. Command Master Chief Petty Officer Robert W. Lyons of the Navy Reserve Forces Command emphasized the need to avoid another Pearl Harbor-style attack, and said the revitalization of critical airfields across the Pacific would serve the role of avoiding one.

I’d love to see the UICs we plan on sending those 50K to. I would also like to offer that I hope someone has a plan to at least double that number by reaching into the retired ranks to fill positions.

I’ve already volunteered to be OIC of Naval Support Activity Yap, so put me on the list. I’m in the same shape as I was when I left active duty in 2009.

The pic at the top is Tinian, in case you’re wondering.

North Field, an abandoned airfield on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas, will serve as one of the new hubs complementing Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, where Northwest Field has also been rebuilt for the Marine Corps. Both locations will serve alongside dozens of additional spoke airfields in the second island chain and wider Pacific region as major sources of combat power generation that once delivered war materials during last century’s fight against Japan.

At its height in World War II, North Field was home to over 230 B-29 Superfortress bombers across four active runways, operating as the largest airfield in the world at the time. Eighty years later, engineering units from the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are working to restore North Field’s runways, taxiways, and parking areas to its 1945-era specifications while modernizing the airfield’s facilities for state-of-the-art aircraft including large cargo planes, advanced fifth-generation jets and unmanned wingman fighters.

All I can think of is logistics. We don’t have enough tankers—air or sea—to sustain the fight. We need so much, yesterday.

Give the full article a read. Good stuff.

h/t Jon.