Scatter and survive: Inside US military shift to deny China ‘big, juicy’ targets
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The remote Pacific airfield used to launch the atomic bombings of Japan during World War II is being revived with a different foe in mind: China. Runways emerging from the encroaching jungles on the tiny island of Tinian, a U.S.
territory, are part of a sweeping shift in how America’s military would respond to a possible conflict in Asia. Instead of relying on a few large air bases, the U.S. would disperse its warplanes to make them less vulnerable to China’s enormous arsenal of missiles.
That means identifying, upgrading and reviving airstrips across the Indo-Pacific that could be pressed into service. The U.S. Air Force calls this effort Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, and the rebuilding on Tinian is a key piece of that.
Reclaiming a World War II-era airfield largely obscured by thick, emerald-green jungle on a tiny Pacific island is no simple task. In recent months, red-capped crews from the U.S. Air Force have trudged through the dense foliage with machetes and GPS devices.
Their task: to mark the boundaries of the 8,500-foot-long erstwhile runways, based on black-and-white images and maps from the 1940s. They encountered yellow-streaked spiders, swarms of bees and stifling humidity. Hulking excavators knocked down swaths of trees, averaging 117 truckloads a day.
On their best day, the crews cleared an area the size of nearly eight football fields. “The density was tough, very tough," said Master Sgt. Jody Branson, the operations superintendent, who belongs to the Air Force’s 513th Expeditionary Red Horse Squadron.
“If me and you walked back there, we could be 10 feet apart and not even see each other." For decades, the U.S. didn’t need the airfield. It consolidated its presence
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