The United States has been ramping up its Indo-Pacific region air bases to ensure they are protected against attack amid concerns over vulnerabilities they face in countries such as Japan, the Philippines and South Korea against potential Chinese strikes, a spokesperson for the U.S. Pacific Air Forces told Voice of America in January 2025.
“While we are continually improving our theater posture, warfighting advantage and integration with Allies and Partners, Pacific Air Forces stands ready every day to respond to anything that poses a threat to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” the spokesperson said.
“We continue to invest in infrastructure and technology to enhance the resilience and survivability of our bases and facilities across the theater, including hardening airfields and buildings while investing in advanced security systems to protect our personnel and assets,” the spokesperson said.
The Air Force was authorized with $916.6 million to improve logistics, maintenance capabilities and prepositioning of equipment, munitions, fuel and material in the Indo-Pacific through the fiscal 2024 Pacific Deterrence Initiative, the spokesperson added. The Pacific Deterrence Initiative is a set of defense priorities established in 2021 by the U.S. Congress to support U.S. goals in the Indo-Pacific, primarily to counter the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The comments were made in response to a recent report by the Hudson Institute claiming that U.S. aircraft at allied Indo-Pacific country bases could suffer major losses from Chinese attacks unless those bases are fortified. If left unfortified, the U.S. air power in the region would be significantly reduced compared to Beijing’s, according to the report, “Concrete Sky: Air Based Hardening in the Western Pacific.”
One of the reasons, according to the report, is that the U.S. is lagging behind the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the number of shelters that could hide and protect the aircraft from attacks.
Beijing more than doubled its number of aircraft shelters since the early 2010s, having more than 3,000, according to the report. Across 134 Chinese air bases located within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait, the CCP has more than 650 hardened aircraft shelters and nearly 2,000 nonhardened individual aircraft shelters.
A hardened shelter is a reinforced structure made of steel, concrete, and other materials to protect military aircraft from enemy strikes.
In comparison, the U.S. has added two hardened shelters and 41 nonhardened ones within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait and outside South Korea since the 2010s, the report said.
This means if a war breaks out over Taiwan, U.S. aircraft could suffer more damage than the CCP’s if they attacked each other’s bases in the region, which would prevent U.S. air operation temporarily, analysts said.
According to Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program, attacks on U.S. bases in the Indo-Pacific region, including Japan, could “prevent the U.S. Air Force from conducting fighter operations for about the first 12 days of a conflict from U.S. bases in Japan.”
Grieco continued, based on her own report published by the Stimson Center, that Chinese missiles could also take out runways and aerial refueling tankers, rendering them unusable for over a month at U.S. bases in Japan and for over half a week at U.S. military bases in Guam and other Pacific locations.
“It’s not possible to harden a runway or taxiway” that is exposed as an easy target to destroy, disabling aircraft from taking off, she said. This begs the question of whether it is worth investing in hardening facilities, she added.
The Hudson Institute report says within the 1,000 nautical miles of Taiwan, the CCP has added 20 runways and 49 taxiways since the 2010s while the U.S. added one runway and one taxiway.
Aside from hardened shelters, analysts pointed to dispersing airfields as important.
Steven Rudder, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former commanding general of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, said, “When you look at the number of aircraft in the Asia Pacific, I am not sure that the ability to harden every single aircraft parking space would be as effective as a distributed force.”
Bruce Bennett, a senior defense researcher at Rand Corp., said dispersing airfields are important against nuclear strikes.
Against conventional warhead missiles, shelters are “key to the protection,” Bennett said. “But if there’s a nuclear threat, you’ve got to have different airfields” as alternative locations to park and land aircraft and to provide logistic support such as fueling, maintenance and repair, he said.
Bennett added the disparity in the number of aircraft shelters between the CCP and U.S. seems to stem from U.S. air superiority.
“What the U.S. Air Force tends to perceive is that we’ve got the ability to deal with the Chinese air force in an air-to-air combat,” where Beijing traditionally felt it would lose air-to-air combat against the U.S. and therefore wants to take U.S. aircraft on the ground before engaging in air while sheltering theirs heavily on the ground, Bennett said.
“The question becomes, as the Chinese aircraft get better and as they start fielding a fifth-generation fighter, will the U.S. need the ability to attack Chinese airfields with conventional weapons?” Bennett said.