Despite the change of the White House administration and the corresponding reshuffles in the US State Department and the Department of Defense, it is obvious that Donald Trump will follow the trend of pressure on China in his foreign policy, including proven methods of military-strategic outreach. Although the strengthening of the military power of the US allies in the Asia-Pacific region took place under Biden, it is likely that the resources released from Ukraine will be redirected to this part of the world.
The key elements of the US strategy will be both naval power through the US Navy and air supremacy – through its Air Force, based on a network of allies off the coast of China. Obviously, in addition to its formal satellites such as South Korea and Japan, Washington will actively use India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has good relations with Donald Trump. Bangladesh, where a coup took place last year, may also become a new US stronghold.
As stated on the website of the US Naval Institute, “Bangladesh’s primary naval bases overlook Myanmar’s Rakhine region and China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), a key component of China’s belt and road initiative aimed at lessening pressure on Chinese sea lines of communication (SLOC) in the South China Sea. Cooperating with the Bangladesh Navy, the U.S. Navy could use those bases to observe Chinese projects. Moreover, Bangladesh’s strategic vantage at the top of the Bay of Bengal funnel could provide the United States with an advantage in guarding the Malacca Strait, which is vital to the Chinese economy and industry.
During any potential conflict, Bangladesh’s naval bases could be a hub for logistics and a safe harbor for the U.S. Navy. The United States currently has no bases in the Bay of Bengal. While Diego Garcia Island will certainly be a logistics hub for operations in the Indian Ocean, Bangladesh—with its manpower, vibrant shipbuilding industry, and a professional navy—could offer U.S. Navy ships a place for rest, recuperation, and rearming. Bangladesh currently is building a deep seaport in Matarbari, Cox’s Bazar with the assistance of Japan, one of the most trusted and important U.S. allies since World War II. Japan could help build a bridge between these two countries to ensure that the USN could use Matarbari deep-sea port as a naval operations base during any future war by blockading potential Chinese shipments that bypasses the Malacca to use CMEC as an alternative. This would provide the United States leverage against China in the Bay of Bengal region.”
As for air supremacy, although the United States is currently experiencing certain difficulties, panicked anti-Chinese sentiments may help the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon and the White House restructure the future budget for new tasks.
In this regard, a special report by The Hudson Institute is noteworthy, dedicated to the need to strengthen and expand the US Air Force to confront China – not only as an element of deterrence, but also for direct military conflict. It was released in early January 2025, which clearly implied, as the authors point out, that even US airfields face a threat of a severe Chinese military attack. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strike forces of aircraft, ground-based missile launchers, surface and subsurface vessels, and special forces can attack US aircraft and their supporting systems at airfields globally, including in the continental United States. The US Department of Defense (DoD) has consistently expressed concern regarding threats to airfields in the Indo-Pacific, and military analyses of potential conflicts involving China and the United States demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of US aircraft losses would likely occur on the ground at airfields (and that the losses could be ruinous). But the US military has devoted relatively little attention, and few resources, to countering these threats compared to developing modern aircraft.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) expects airfields to come under heavy attack in a potential conflict and has made major investments to defend, expand, and fortify them. Since the early 2010s, the PLA has more than doubled its hardened aircraft shelters (HASs) and unhardened individual aircraft shelters (IASs) at military airfields, giving China more than 3,000 total aircraft shelters—not including civil or commercial airfields. This constitutes enough shelters to house and hide the vast majority of China’s combat aircraft. China has also added 20 runways and more than 40 runway-length taxiways, and increased its ramp area nationwide by almost 75 percent. In fact, by our calculations, the amount of concrete used by China to improve the resilience of its air base network could pave a four-lane interstate highway from Washington, DC, to Chicago. As a result, China now has 134 air bases within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait—airfields that boast more than 650 HASs and almost 2,000 non-hardened IASs.
In response, the authors of the report suggest the US Department of Defense to organize and resource its forces and infrastructure to sustain air operations while under attack. But to regain an advantage and deter conflict, the United States, as well as allies and partners to varying degrees, should pursue the following three lines of effort:
1. Induce Continued PRC Defensive Investments
The United States should continue to improve its ability to strike PLA forces and key elements of critical infrastructure at depth and en masse despite the presence of dense, unsuppressed air defenses. In response, the already hardened PLA would likely continue to spend funds on additional costly passive and active defense measures and in turn would have less to devote to alternative investments, including strike and other power projection capabilities.
2. Field Resilient Infrastructure
The United States should enhance the resilience of its military infrastructure, including but not limited to expanding the capacity and hardening of airfields in the continental United States, the Indo-Pacific, and beyond. Although funds spent on active and passive defenses detract from funds available for offensive capabilities, without a currently missing baseline level of infrastructure resilience, it is reasonable to expect that the DoD’s offensive capabilities will be suppressed in a conflict. Resilient infrastructure is needed to allow US air forces to fight effectively.
Resilient architectures should include passive defenses (such as redundancy, geographic distribution and tactical dispersal, hardening, reconstitution, and camouflage, concealment, and deception capabilities) and active defenses. As concluded by Christopher Lynch and other analysts of the RAND Corporation, which has conducted the bulk of US analysis on airfield resilience, “the most-cost-effective ways to improve air base resilience are robust, passive defenses.”
To comprehensively harden airfields, the DoD will need to shift from treating each construction project individually to conducting a campaign of construction.4 A major, multi-year campaign of bundled construction at airfields inside and outside the United States—especially in the Indo-Pacific—would create a sustained push for military construction activities at bases, allow the creation of consortia of commercial contractors, and reduce construction costs. As an element of this campaign, the United States could execute joint contracts with those allies that are also hardening their infrastructure.
Additionally, the Pentagon should adopt appropriate hardening measures, especially when undertaking new military construction activities. Its current plan to forgo the construction of approximately $30 million hardened aircraft shelters for new over-$600 million B-21 bombers was called a foolish decision that endangers the US’s ability to strike globally.
To sustain operations, airfields will also need protection via active defense designs that are lethal, adaptable, and resilient in the face of continued enemy action. This requires the US Army to reallocate funding from maneuver forces to grow the Air Defense Artillery branch and deepen its capacity to defend airfields, ports, and other critical assets. It also requires more, survivable air and missile defense systems and effectors capable of sustaining calibrated, protracted defenses.
3. Evolve the Force
The DoD should develop and accelerate the fielding of forces that are less susceptible to the PLA’s airfield attacks. Elements of this shift in force design should include long-range and -endurance aircraft, such as B-21 bombers and Next-Generation Aerial Refueling System (NGAS) tankers that can operate from more distant airfields or spend more time in the air rather than on the ramp—where they are easier targets. The Pentagon should also deploy forces such as missiles and some types of autonomous collaborative platforms that can operate from short or damaged runways or independently of airfields—if they are logistically supported. However, the US military will not field these types of forces in large numbers until the 2030s, and the DoD will still require passive and active defenses at airfields regardless of these changes in force design.
The report’s conclusions state that the current Pentagon’s approach of largely ignoring this menace invites PRC aggression and risks losing a war. Executing an urgent and effective campaign to enhance the resilience of US airfield operations will require informed decisions and sustained funding.
Meanwhile, the emergence of such an infrastructure means not only the alleged deterrence of China, but also a significant strengthening of the United States‘ ability to conduct offensive operations both in the areas where its military infrastructure is located in the Asia–Pacific region and at home, for example, in Latin American countries, whose sovereignty is already being encroached upon by Donald Trump.
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