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Preemption meets the map of
Asia
By David Isenberg
Did
anyone bother looking at a map before they released this
thing?
Such a question might very well be
asked about the Bush Administration’s new National
Security Strategy in light of a newly released report by
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
(CSBA) in Washington DC. The report, "The Anti-Access
Threat and Theater Air Bases", released on September 24,
examined US ability to deploy aircraft to a combat
theater, with particular focus on potential future
operations in Asia.
The administration's new
strategy report emphasized being able to strike
preemptively. In its words, "To forestall or prevent
such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States
will, if necessary, act preemptively." But, as the CSBA
report concludes, that is easier said than done. The
report, which focused on theater bases for land-based
aircraft, suggested that in the long run "increasing
difficulties raised by political factors, base
infrastructure, and emerging military threats could
significantly constrain US power-projection operations
overseas".
Somewhat paradoxically, even the
strategy recognizes its logistical limitations. While
the strategy lays out a rationale for jihad against
hostile weapons of mass destruction, buried in its last
chapter is the statement, "The United States will
require bases and stations within and beyond Western
Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access
arrangements for the long-distance deployment of US
troops."
Hence, the importance of the 74-page
CSBA report. For example, it notes that the absence of a
developed infrastructure limited the involvement of
land-based fighter aircraft in last year’s attack on
Afghanistan. Air Force fighters delivered only 10
percent of the munitions used. Yet future Pentagon
procurement plans emphasize procuring short-range
tactical aircraft.
Outside of northeast Asia and
the Persian Gulf, the report finds that airfield
infrastructure is not well developed in most of Asia,
which is home to only about 14 percent of the world’s
airfields. Half of these are located in the developed
nations of Australia, Japan and South Korea. As the
Pentagon noted in last year's Quadrennial Defense
Review, "The distances are vast ... the density of US
basing and en route infrastructure is lower than in
other critical regions. The United States also has less
assurance of access to facilities in the region. This
places a premium on securing additional access and
infrastructure agreements and on developing systems
capable of sustained operations at great distances with
minimal theater-based support."
Nor are
airfields themselves the only answer. In an age where
air bases can be attacked from afar by missiles, the
availability of hardened aircraft shelters is an
important consideration. According to the report, 52
bases in Asia - about 18 percent of the total, contained
a total of 1,412 such shelters. While this might seem to
be sufficient for deploying a US Aerospace Expeditionary
Force (comprising about 175 aircraft, it is more
formidable than the entire air forces of most nations),
actual availability is likely to be lower. First, almost
half of the total shelters are in South Korea. Employing
these bases to conduct operations other than in South
Korea’s defense raises uncertainties.
Other
shelters are concentrated in Japan, Taiwan, India and
Pakistan; an average of about 140 per nation. But that
number could be reduced for several reasons. First, they
might not be in the right position for the conflict.
According to the report, land-based fighters typically
require bases within 1,000 to 1,500 nautical miles of
enemy borders to conduct effective operations. Air Force
procurement plans indicate that it will need such bases
for conflicts of any significant size for the next 30
years.
In Central Asia, from Afghanistan to
Uzbekistan, there are only 69 airfields with 75 runways.
Only 19 of the airfields are hardened and there are only
405 shelters, and they are all in India and Pakistan.
Also, the host nation might not support combat
operations from its soil by US aircraft. That argument
is longstanding, usually offered by US Navy officers
arguing on behalf of the value of aircraft carriers. But
it is not without merit. As the CSBA report points out,
Wheelus Air Force Base in Libya was activated in June
1948, supported USAF bomber deployments and the Lebanon
operation in the 1950s, but was evacuated following the
1969 coup that brought Muammar Gaddafi to power. In
1986, the USAF ended up bombing their former base during
Operation Eldorado Canyon.
In 1986, when Iraqi
forces attacked Kurds in northern Iraq, both Saudi
Arabia and Turkey refused permission to conduct
offensive operations from their soil. In the December
1998 Desert Fox strikes against Iraq, half of the
forward-based USAF fighters in the Persian Gulf could
not be employed because of objections from Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates.
Finally, every
nation fields substantially more combat aircraft than
shelters. Thus, the host nation would have to expose
more of its own aircraft to attack in order to shelter
US aircraft.
Even where sufficient hardened
shelters for aircraft exist, there are still other
significant vulnerabilities planners must cope with.
Aircraft parked on ramps, fuel stocks and munitions
would all be vulnerable to the precision-guided
munitions, especially ballistic and cruise missiles, now
in the inventories of many nations.
Airfields
would also be vulnerable to attacks by special
operations forces. The report noted that since 1942
special forces conducted 645 separate attacks on
airfields to destroy over 2,000 aircraft on the ground.
The report concluded that the US
Air Force would probably be forced to deploy to
unprotected airfields in future Asian conflicts. To
operate from such bases, the USAF will confront
potentially far more lethal strikes than it has faced in
the past. To neutralize these threats, "the United
States must spend substantial additional resources -
tens of billions of dollars - on the best mix of the
following options: widespread base development (notably
hardening of facilities), logistics, production of small
munitions, dispersal training and exercises, additional
base security personnel, additional specialized
equipment to deal with base attacks, additional aircraft
to bring in all this equipment and manpower, and
possibly a different short-range combat force that
exploits VSTOL [vertical short take-off and landing]
technology.
"Few of these areas are
funded adequately in current plans, if at all. And even
if these counters are aggressively pursued, the
land-based fighter force still runs the risk of being
denied political access to bases and/or sustaining very
lethal attacks."
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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