The US Air Force’s announcement to start winding down its two squadrons of forward-deployed F-15 Eagle interceptors from an airbase in Japan without specifying a permanent replacement has attracted controversy, with questions about the erosion of deterrence and presence in the region.
The USAF announced in late October that starting in early November, it will undertake a phased withdrawal of F-15C/D aircraft forward-deployed to Kadena Air Base over the next two years.
It did not state what aircraft, if any, will be permanently stationed at the airbase, which is located on the island of Okinawa south of the Japanese mainland, to replace the interceptors.
Instead, the USAF will be “temporarily deploying newer and more advanced aircraft to backfill the F-15s as they retire” according to the airbase’s website.
This suggests that rotational deployments of F-22A or F-35A aircraft to the airbase, which have already taken place over several years, will continue or even be stepped up.
The move, which was originally reported by the newspaper The Economist ahead of the announcement, has caused consternation in some quarters.
These included a group of Republican members of Congress, who sent a letter to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warning that the plans, “will lead to a tangible reduction in American forward combat power in the Indo-Pacific, lowering the bar for aggression and demonstrating a continuing mismatch between the Biden administration's talking points on the Indo-Pacific and America's actual commitments in the region".
ACE opportunity
However, the move could also be seen as part of a series of initiatives to realign USAF presence in the region in the face of changing geopolitical and technological circumstances, in line with the service’s own evolving doctrine.
The latter is in the form of the Agile Combat Employment (ACE), which the USAF calls, “a proactive and reactive operational scheme of manoeuvre executed within threat timelines to increase survivability while generating combat power.”
The doctrine seeks to shift operations from centralised large bases to a network of smaller, dispersed locations, which would in theory present an opponent with, “dilemmas at an operational tempo that complicates or negates adversary responses and enables the joint force to operate inside the adversary’s decision-making cycle.”
The moves to increase US bomber presence in Australia’s Top End also fits into the ACE doctrine, with the rotational presence planned for B-52s (and most likely other bomber types) at an expanded apron at Tindal aimed at keeping them away from all but the longest-ranged Chinese ballistic missiles (which are nuclear).
Vulnerable airbases
This is unlike Andersen Airbase on Guam, where the bombers are typically based when in the Indo-Pacific region. The base and is within range of China’s DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile. Bases such as Kadena are within range of even more numerous shorter-ranged weapons.
ACE is driven in part by improved adversary (read: Chinese) capabilities in pervasive, real-time surveillance and long-range targeting, which have put large US military bases in the region at increasing risk of attack.
As such, there are increasing fears that the massive ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile assault on Taiwan that would precede a Chinese invasion of the island will also target these US military bases and therefore hamper potential American intervention.
The possibility of such an attack has increased in recent times, with China known to have set up ranges and mock-ups of these bases deep in its interior to practice ballistic missile attacks on. This has also served to diminish American ambiguity over whether it would come to Taiwan’s defence.
As such, a smaller and more dispersed US military footprint in the region would improve its survivability to a Chinese first strike, and potentially leave it better placed to respond.