As China sharpens Pacific kill chain US revives island airfields

As the US races to “island-hop” its airpower back across the Pacific, the real contest is whether US dispersal can stay ahead of China’s surveillance-and-missile kill chain long enough to matter in a Taiwan war.

This month, Newsweek reported that the US is reviving dozens of World War II-era airfields across the Pacific as part of a sweeping military effort to prepare for a potential conflict with China.

Led by the US Air Force under its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) doctrine, the initiative aims to disperse US air power across a wider network of bases to reduce vulnerability to Chinese missile strikes. Military engineers from the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are rehabilitating abandoned runways on remote islands – including Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and Palau as well as places in Micronesia, the Philippines and Alaska. The engineers are restoring them to operational status while upgrading facilities for modern aircraft.

The effort reflects growing concern within the US Department of Defense (DoD) that China’s expanding ballistic missile arsenal could overwhelm key US hubs such as Guam and Okinawa in the opening stages of a war, particularly over Taiwan.

By multiplying airfields and pre-positioning fuel, munitions and repair equipment, US planners aim to complicate Chinese targeting, sustain combat operations after attacks and strengthen deterrence. The largest project, North Field on Tinian, is expected to be operational by 2027, a timeframe US officials see as a period of heightened risk.

China has criticized the moves as Cold War thinking, while US officials say the preparations are intended to prevent conflict or ensure readiness if deterrence fails.

As Kelly Grieco and other writers point out in a December 2024 Stimson article, fixed targets such as static airfields and aircraft open-parked on the ground are far easier to destroy than moving targets. Grieco and others cite People’s Liberation Army (PLA) writings emphasizing that airbases are the weak point of US airpower in the Pacific, stressing their destruction early on to prevent US combat aircraft, such as bombers and fighters, from taking off.

However, the ACE strategy is premised on the idea that the US can shuttle its aircraft around multiple airbases faster than China can chase them with its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Rachel Cohen points out in a December 2021 Air Force Times article that operations in the Middle East have shown that it takes about three hours to prepare a fighter jet to go again after it returns from an ACE mission. 

But that speed may not be enough to outrun China’s targeting capabilities. In a March 2024 testimony for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, J. Michael Dahm states that China’s ISR system has reached a scale sufficient to enable targeting of US airbases across the Western Pacific in a Taiwan conflict.

Dahm says that, as of January 2024, the PLA was operating over 359 ISR satellites, more than tripling since 2018, including 14 ISR satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) (up from six in 2020) and a tripled low-Earth-orbit ISR constellation. He adds that geosynchronous signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites (GEOSAT), such as TJS-1/4/9, can persistently geolocate US signal emitters across the Indo-Pacific, while GEO electro-optical (EO) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites can detect fixed targets, including airfields.

In addition, he says that, combined with over-the-horizon (OTH) radar detecting aircraft out to 3,000 kilometers, this ISR network supports PLA strike operations assessed at 2,700-3,700 kilometers.

A preemptive Chinese strike on US Pacific airfields could prove devastating. In a January 2023 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report, Mark Cancian and other writers warn that US aircraft losses in a Taiwan conflict would be extremely heavy and concentrated in the opening phase.

Cancian and others point out that across 24 wargame iterations, the US typically loses roughly 300–500 aircraft within the first weeks of combat. They add that 90% of these losses occur on the ground, not in air-to-air engagements, as Chinese ballistic and cruise missile strikes devastate US and allied airbases in Japan and Guam before aircraft can disperse or sortie.

As for how such strikes could affect the timeline of possible US intervention, Grieco and others note that such strikes could render US-controlled runways and taxiways in Japan inaccessible for the first 12 days of a conflict, impairing fighter operations essential for supporting Taiwan. They also highlight that aerial refueling tankers would be unable to operate from Japan for over a month, eliminating US aircraft’s range to reach the Taiwan Strait or South China Sea.

According to Grieco and others, these shutdowns could significantly limit sortie rates, delay bomber deployment, and potentially grant China a 30-day window of air superiority to pursue a swift fait accompli.

Furthermore, China’s expanding presence in Oceania could significantly erode US freedom of movement. As Chihwei Yu points out in a July 2024 Jamestown report, China’s port and airfield investments and cooperation in the South Pacific, especially in the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Samoa, enhance its military reach and give it the ability to monitor key maritime and aerial routes.

Moreover, Brent Sadler points out in a December 2025 Heritage Foundation article that Chinese airfields in the middle of the First and Second Island Chains could complicate US efforts to disperse aircraft under attack. Sadler notes that it is surprising how China’s investment in dual-use facilities such as ports and airfields has gone unimpeded for so long.

Despite these risks, the US is working hard to keep its ACE strategy viable. Derek Grossman points out in a June 2023 Foreign Policy article that, in that year, the US renewed and strengthened its compacts of free association (COFA) with Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands – granting the US military exclusive basing and access rights across vast expanses of the Pacific – effectively a “power projection superhighway” spanning ocean areas as large as the continental US.

Grossman notes that Palau and Micronesia have even signaled willingness to host new US military facilities on their territory, with a US OTH radar planned to be installed on Palau this year. He mentions that in May 2023, the US signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) with Papua New Guinea – an arrangement similar to what it has with the Philippines.

In addition, Grossman notes that Australia, Japan, and New Zealand have also ramped up engagement and aid to the Pacific Islands to compete with China’s outreach. He says these moves indicate the US is trying to lock in key terrain and deny China further inroads.

Whether ACE ultimately succeeds may depend less on technical agility alone than on the United States’ ability to secure political access, disrupt Chinese ISR and sustain dispersed operations across an increasingly contested Pacific battlespace.