Ukraine’s deep strike on Russia’s bomber bases sends a warning that the US risks a similar blow in Guam, where exposed airfields and fragmented defenses leave it open to a Chinese first strike.
In what has been dubbed Russia’s “Pearl Harbor,” Ukraine attacked five Russian strategic airbases, damaging multiple aircraft and destroying possibly irreplaceable Soviet-era strategic bombers. The Ukrainian operation, which reportedly took 18 months to plan, saw truck-launched suicide drones wreaking havoc on unprotected bomber aircraft on the ground deep in Russian territory.
The War Zone (TWZ) quotes an initial statement from Ukraine’s Armed Forces General Staff, which states that the drones hit 41 aircraft and destroyed 13 in the attack. TWZ notes that losing the Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers, which are long out of production, and the costly-to-produce Tu-160 would severely degrade Russia’s cruise missile strike capability and nuclear deterrent.
The report notes that despite Russia’s use of blast walls, decoys, air defenses and improvised tactics, such as placing tires on bomber wings, the lack of hardened aircraft shelters —which are likely unfeasible for large bombers—appears to have yielded mixed results at best.
However, the results of the Ukrainian drone attack beg the question of why Russia hasn’t built better defenses for its strategic airbases.
The Russian defense site Top War explains that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 3) required strategic bombers to be parked in the open, allowing satellite and inspection-based verification to prevent miscalculations between the US and Russia.
Although Russia suspended its participation in START 3, Top War notes that Russia still complies with its terms in practice by keeping its strategic bombers on standby – a vulnerability that Ukraine exploited.
In the Pacific, the US faces similar vulnerability. Kelly Grieco and other writers note in a December 2024 Stimson Center report that US forward airbases in the Asia-Pacific, once considered near-untouchable sanctuaries, are now within range of China’s long-range bombers and missile arsenal.
If China were to consider a Pearl Harbor-like pre-emptive strike to neutralize US airpower on the ground to forestall intervention in a Taiwan conflict, it would most likely be through a multi-vector attack involving ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones launched from the Chinese mainland, dual-use infrastructure, warships and submarines, civilian vessels and embedded special forces teams.
In November 2022, the Chinese state mouthpiece Global Times reported that China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) unveiled a container-based missile launch system at the Airshow China in Zhuhai, showcasing a highly mobile and concealable weapon.
According to the report, the system integrates missile launchers, a power station and an operating station within a single container, requiring only four personnel for operation. It states that the system supports YJ-12E and YJ-18E supersonic anti-ship missiles, thereby enhancing coastal defense through rapid deployment and networked targeting.
In a 2021 article in International Law Studies, Raul Pedrozo notes that these systems could be hidden in shipping containers aboard civilian vessels, making them nearly impossible to detect.
Pedrozo points out that the missiles might be loaded with civilian logistics to evade detection and could be launched autonomously by utilizing targeting information from an external source.
In line with that, the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s Handbook of Statistics 2023 says China owns nearly 6,000 Chinese-flagged vessels of 1,000 gross tonnage and above and another 2,800 registered under foreign flags – all of which are possible missile carriers.
Underscoring Guam’s vulnerability, Domingo I-Kwei Yang mentions in an April 2025 Sinopsis report that China is quietly embedding its military potential across the Pacific through dual-use infrastructure projects, which pose a growing threat to Guam in particular.
Yang states that Chinese state-backed firms have established ports, airstrips, ICT nodes and fishery hubs in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and other locations, often funded by opaque loans under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
He mentions that these sites, many of which have surveillance, command and launch-enabling capabilities, extend the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) reach into Guam and Australia.
Further, Thomas Shugart III and Timothy Walton note in a January 2025 Hudson Institute report that Guam is acutely vulnerable to Chinese missile strikes due to a lack of hardened infrastructure at key US airfields in the region.
According to Shugart and Walton, China’s PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) possesses hundreds of intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, where US bases remain largely unhardened.
They point out that, unlike China’s extensive airfield fortifications, which include over 3,000 aircraft shelters and a robust airfield reconstitution capacity, US Pacific bases, such as those on Guam, lack hardened aircraft shelters, making aircraft and fuel stores susceptible to neutralization by as few as ten submunition-armed missiles.
Aside from those vulnerabilities, a May 2025 US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report mentions that the development of the cornerstone AN/TPY-6 radar for Guam’s missile defense system was halted by a January 2025 directive from the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The report notes that although the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was ordered to halt full development, it was told to retain the fielded AN/TPY-6 panel as an experimental asset.
The GAO report also highlights that the absence of a clear US Department of Defense (DOD) strategy for transferring system responsibility for operations and sustainment significantly undermines the effectiveness of Guam’s future missile defense.
While the report states that lead services have been designated for key elements—such as the Aegis Guam System, radars, interceptors and command centers—the DOD has no timeline or plan for when and how operational control and sustainment responsibilities will be transferred from MDA to the services.
The report notes this ambiguity stalls the development of training pipelines, personnel structures and maintenance regimes essential for long-term operational readiness, raising the possibility that Guam could receive cutting-edge missile defense hardware without the institutional backbone to keep it functional.
In short, Guam faces the worst of both worlds: a patchwork missile defense system and no clear plan for long-term sustainment. Like Russia’s exposed bombers, the island risks becoming a sitting duck.
Unless the US urgently hardens its Pacific bastions and streamlines command, it could suffer a strategic surprise far more devastating than Ukraine’s drone blitz—one engineered by China, cloaked in civilian vessels and launched from deep in the Pacific.
So we take a Ukraine/NATO attack on Russia — which also included a terrorist attack on a civilian train — and convert it into anti-China propaganda.
And of course the piece calls Global Times a “state mouthpiece”, as is our Western media rule. Yes, the website is strongly nationalistic, and connected with the communist party, but it also publishes a range of opinion, including policy discussions within China, and pieces by foreign journalists and academics.
Not that I disagree with the point that this leaves all of us vulnerable. Ukraine’s use of drones in this way is a further ratcheting up of asymmetric warfare, and perhaps puts ideas in the heads of criminal cartels.
😬😬😬 Propaganda and more to come. 😬😬😬
Even more reason to deny China access to the Ocean, they are very vulnerable because of their geography and chokepoints.
Watch out for Jiutian, MD-19, Type-76 drone motherships,….plus hypersonic missiles.
Chinese have much smaller weapons
LOL. What nonsense. The difference between the Ukrainian operation against Poo-tin’s air force and Guam lies in the geographical dimension: Sneaking over land is easier than sneaking across a vast ocean.