The U.S. military has begun a staged build-up of military airpower within striking distance of China. Reported today in Danger Room, the five-year process that will see each of America’s three main stealth warplane types deployed to bases near China.
“When the deployments are complete in 2017, Air Force F-22s and B-2s and Marine Corps F-35s could all be within striking range of America’s biggest economic rival at the same time. With Beijing now testing its own radar-evading jet fighters — two different models, to be exact — the clock is counting down to a stealth warplane showdown over the Western Pacific.
“The gradual creation of the U.S. stealth strike force is an extension of the Pentagon’s much-touted “strategic pivot” to the Pacific region, and echoes the much faster formation, earlier this year, of a similar (but only partially stealthy) aerial armada in the Persian Gulf. That team of F-22s, non-stealthy F-15s and specialized “Bacon” radio-translator planes was clearly meant to deter a belligerent Iran, although the Pentagon denied it.
‘The announcements of new Pacific deployments of F-22s, F-35s and B-2s have come like a drumbeat in recent weeks. Early last month, 8th Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Stephen Wilson, who controls the Air Force’s 20-strong B-2 fleet normally based in Missouri, said ‘small numbers’ of his multi-billion-dollar batwing bombers would begin rotating into the Pacific and other regions starting next year. The rotations would last “for a few weeks, a couple of times a year,” Wilson told Air Force magazine.
“For the B-2s, which are being heavily upgraded with new radars and communications, the planned deployments represent a return to form. Beginning in the early 2000s, B-2s frequently deployed to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, occasionally accompanied by stealthy F-22s. But the Pacific rotations were tough on the tiny B-2 force. In 2008 one of the bombers crashed and burned at Andersen; two years later another B-2 suffered a serious engine fire at the remote island base that nearly destroyed the plane.The Air Force suppressed news of the second incident and quietly pulled the B-2s from the Pacific front line, replacing them with older B-52s. After a period of rest, the stealth bomber fleet is now ready to get back into the habit of operating overseas. ‘We’re going to put them into the ‘new normal,’” Wilson said.”