China’s missile reach forcing US Pacific air power reset

China’s expanding missile and surveillance networks are turning US airbases into high-value targets, forcing the Air Force to abandon its Cold War-era force design and relearn how to fight, survive and sustain combat power in a contested Pacific.

That case is laid out most starkly in a Hudson Institute report released this month, which warns the US Air Force risks sliding from decisive to incapable within a decade unless it adopts a new, three-tiered force design to counter China.

The study argues that aging aircraft, low readiness and the vulnerability of forward airfields leave the service poorly positioned for a high-end fight over Taiwan, even if budgets rise, because China can target US aircraft on the ground and in the air with missiles, aircraft and surveillance networks, rendering the US Air Force’s expeditionary, serial power-projection model “increasingly insolvent.”

To reverse that trajectory, the report proposes dividing the force into an “Edge Force” of forward, mobile, runway-independent systems; a “Pulsed Force” of bombers and long-range strike assets operating from defended bases; and a “Core Force” for global presence and sustained operations, enabled by resilient airfields and counter-Command, Control, Computing, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting (C5ISRT) capabilities.

Using simulations of a 2035 Taiwan scenario, the report concludes that only this “balanced” architecture denied a Chinese lodgment, while alternatives failed. It argues that redesigning,  not “more of the same,” is needed to deter aggression and sustain a protracted war.

The strategic case for force redesign is already being stress-tested by basing vulnerability, dispersion tradeoffs, political access constraints and strike-capacity shortfalls that now define how the US Air Force has to fight in the Western Pacific, a pressure that shows up first at the tactical level in the vulnerability of forward airbases.

Kelly Grieco and other writers argue in a December 2024 Stimson Center report that Chinese missile strikes could shut US-run runways in Japan for about 12 days and keep tanker-capable runways closed for more than a month, crippling early sortie generation. They add that Guam and other Pacific bases could see fighter operations halted for nearly two days at the outset of war, with longer disruption driven by tanker denial.

Against that backdrop, Clifton Sherrill writes in a 2024 US Naval War College Review article that US strategy in the Indo-Pacific is already shifting away from reliance on large, vulnerable airbases toward smaller, more dispersed and mobile forces to cope with China’s precision-strike threat.

He notes that war games show a more dispersed posture—less reliant on fixed hubs like Okinawa—would hinder Chinese targeting and boost deterrence. He points to US Marine Corps and US Army concepts built around mobile units, expeditionary bases, and truck-mounted missile systems such as the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that can “shoot and scoot” from remote sites.

At the same time, Sherrill argues dispersal aims to reduce reliance on a small number of large, vulnerable bases during crises, complicating Chinese targeting. Still, decentralization is meant to complement, not replace, the main bases needed for sustainment and daily presence, even as dispersion introduces its own strategic and political risks.

Jeffrey Hornung argues in an April 2022 RAND report that the main vulnerability of US ground-based intermediate-range missiles in the Indo-Pacific is political access and basing risk rather than combat performance.

He notes that allies such as Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, and possibly Australia have varying degrees of reluctance to host these systems due to domestic politics, fears of provoking China, and concerns about entrapment in conflict, leaving Japan as an optimal but limited option.

With permanent basing unlikely, Hornung writes that crisis deployment, rotational presence or Guam-based alternatives all face drawbacks, making strategies that rely on allied-hosted missiles fragile and vulnerable to denial of access rather than enemy action.

Mark Gunzinger and Heather Penney argue in a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies paper this month that US long-range bombers and fighters should function as a high-impact strike force to deny the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sanctuary instead of relying on fragile standoff attrition.

They contend that stealthy penetrating aircraft, backed by some standoff attacks, are needed to deliver concentrated combat mass against Chinese command, air, missile and logistics nodes deep inside defended territory. They argue the current bomber force is too small, calling for at least 200 B-21s plus remaining B-52s to generate repeated strike “pulses” that collapse China’s ability to launch long-range salvos and sustain operations.

The same pressure is now reshaping how the Air Force plans to operate on the ground.

Stephen Blackstone argues in a 2025 Air & Space Operation Review article that the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept must shift from a fighter-centric, logistics-heavy model to a “light and lean” approach integrated with joint forces to survive China’s missile threat.

He warns that the current hub-and-spoke construct could be suppressed within a single Chinese targeting cycle because the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) has thousands of missiles and dense intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to strike runways, parking areas, fuel and munitions.

He proposes merging US Air Force operations with US Marine Corps Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and US Army multi-domain fires, using mobile missile systems, runway-independent insertion and rapid relocation to get inside China’s targeting cycle and sustain combat power in the Western Pacific.

Even so, critics caution that dispersion is not a free lunch. Amanda Molina writes in a September 2025 Wild Blue Yonder article that ACE lacks the organic air and missile defense needed to protect widely dispersed forces.

Michael Blaser argues in a July 2024 Proceedings article that ACE is premised on US sortie generation outpacing China’s kill chain, even as artificial intelligence could compress that cycle to less than 24 hours, leaving China’s synchronized long-range fires as an unresolved problem.

Zachary Hughes adds in an October 2024 Joint Force Quarterly article that dispersion can also erode efficiency because modern high-tech weapons require specialized maintenance tools, forcing units either to accept higher risks of critical equipment failure or to duplicate support equipment across sites at higher logistical cost.

The evidence suggests the US Air Force can only deter and fight China by redesigning around a layered Edge–Pulsed–Core force that trades fragile forward mass for survivable dispersion and deep-strike pulses.

But that strategy will succeed only if the US solves the political basing problem, scales bomber capacity and closes the air defense, kill-chain and logistics gaps that currently make dispersion almost as risky as concentration.