Guam - Sea Fort Alamo?
The US Alliance Needs its Own A2AD in Asia
Washington DC 31 May 2022
The first Chinese shot in a future war will be a critically disabling strike on Guam. The island is the hub of America's military operations throughout the region and beyond. The Chinese know this and have covered the island in overlapping fields of fire within its anti-access area denial (A2AD) weapons zone. Hundreds of PLA missiles are already zeroed in on coordinates of all the critical facilities at US bases on the island - from piers, weapons depots, unprotected aircraft hard stands, and so on.
"The island hosts the U.S. Navy’s only submarine base in the western Pacific, one of the few facilities where submarines can reload weapons in theater". Anderson AFB is a staging ground for global bomber operations. The same is true for DDG VLS reloading. It’s either Guam, Japan, Pearl or San Diego. It can only be done in these ports. With ~90-96 VLS (some carrying quad missile configuration) thats about 24-48 hrs of major combat operations against an opposed force - not something the USN or USAF has had to deal with a whole lot since the mid 20th C. So once they have spent their munitions they have to travel long exterior lines to resupply.
Transportation command has a variety of pre-positioned ships and stores filled with everything from MREs to tanks ready to be sent into battle.
However there is a problem. Despite the well-known threat, there are no reinforced concrete submarine pens, hardened hangers, or deeply buried munitions bunkers. Instead, the US relies on technological defenses and these are too thin. Guam's defenses are limited to locally based aircraft, "THAAD, and costly patrols by Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers". Both the Pentagon and Congress agree that Guam’s defenses are insufficient to deter or defend against known threats and that its missile defenses need an urgent update. In the context of Congress and the Pentagon, urgent means 3-5 years. We do not have that kind of time. Moreover the US needs to create an allied A2AD zone and Guam would be its hub. In short, we are going about our Pacific military strategy is exactly the wrong way.
Guam’s lack of preparation highlights a failure of US strategic planning in the region. The Marines are currently fighting a civil war over #forcedesign2030 - one side of which completely ignores the fact that America must be able to operate in denied environments where “dominance” and “superiority” no longer exist and must be established.
Together with our allies, we must create our own A2AD zone in and around the South China Sea (SCS). It should be designed to put China’s sea forts at risk, to hem PLA forces into their coastline, and fundamentally diminish the options open to Beijing. Guam is the American alliance’s key sea fort/EAOB (Expeditionary Advanced Operating Base) in the 2nd island chain. Its defense posture is the canary in the Pacific strategy coal mine.
Regrettably the failure to adequately defend Guam is just the start of our troubles. China is moving much faster and more effectively in the region in expanding its potential A2AD coverage with new agreements in the second island chain that will give it reach out to the third island chain. In other words, its TEL launched IRBMs based in the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu will comfortably reach the HQ building of Indo-Pacom on Oahu as well as completely seal Australia’s eastern approaches. Australia matters because it is America’s only sanctuary in the region from the extant Chinese A2AD.
US diplomacy in the South Pacific has been so maladroit - issuing empty threats at the last minute in the stead of decades of serious engagement - that finding countries willing to partner with us on the allied A2AD concept is going to be a tough mountain to climb.
The region sees the US and China as abusive parents in a cantankerous divorce swinging erratically between offering candy and scolding threats of violence. Most want to stay out of it. This is a shame because Chinese bellicosity had previously created a fear in the region about Bijings’s true intent and driven many into America arms. In the wake of our abusiveness towards the Solomons, it is not lost on the tiny countries in the region that America is impatient and willing to throw its weight around if it does not immediately get what it wants. We are seen as no different to China. Except in one respect - they come with bags of cash and no questions asked. This is not the pivot we were looking for.
If we are to establish an allied A2AD in the region we had to start years ago. In fact it may already be too late given timelines in politics and military weapons supply chains. If Ukraine teaches us anything, the time to get military capabilities into theater is well ahead of tensions. A related lesson is stockpiles. No matter how many you have, they will not be enough. The volume of fires of advanced missile systems is no surprise to experts but the impact on stockpiles has been a surprise for some.
The US industrial base's shift to "just in time" manufacturing and supply chains is woefully inadequate to sustain major combat operations.
"The Ukraine war is already taxing the U.S. industrial base. The United States has given more than a quarter of its stock of Stinger air defense weapons to Ukraine, and the industrial base does not have the capacity to quickly replace the weapon system. The Defense Department has said it intends to replace the weapon stocks “one-for-one,” but has acknowledged that could take years.”
This backlog is currently being exacerbated as more and more countries get in line to buy newly proven technologies to defend themselves from Russia and China.
It is well past time to lay down an allied A2AD weapons zone and more importantly put in place tried and tested alternatives to extant vulnerabilities in our electromagnetic spectrum - think inertial nav (and advanced modern related options) and drones at all echelons for coms relays and other vital services. For a summary of what a US alliance A2AD might look like keep scrolling.
Let’s face facts. If we cant get Guam right, we are just cosplaying soldiers in Asia.
What would an Allied A2AD look like in brief…
Like Taiwan, Guam (and frankly a number of other places) need to be turned into porcupines - bristling with missiles systems that counter-envelopes the SCS in order to reduce the options open to the PLA.
Here are some priority lessons for future conventional combat in Asia littoral
1. Transformation of the kill chain to a kill web. Long range sensors, distributed, delinked sensor-shooter combinations. The sinking of the Moskva is the case in point.
2. A2AD defense in depth based on TEL IRBMs MRBMs SRBMs, HIMARS, air and ground launch SD bombs, air deployed long range sea mines, and manpads (as final stage in kill web). 5th gen fighters with sufficient AWAC & tankers + hardened hangers + sufficient number of hulls of AEGIS and VLS missile banks.
3. Alternative to, and augmented, GPS and coms for denied environments.
4. Drones of various kinds support all of the above.
5. Immediate launch micro-sats for operational priorities and in support of all of the above.
6. For all of the above - systems need to be pre-deployed to the region, that means huge supply chain issues need resolution and that also needs stable acquisition programs.
Nuclear Proliferation Among Allies in Asia is Inevitable
If the US continues its historical turn inwards and fails to deploy an allied A2AD security blanket in the region, and if China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy and political warfare against anyone who resists them continues to terrify the region; nuclear proliferation among US allies is inevitable.
The most important and obvious lesson of the Ukraine war proves that an independent nuclear deterrent is the best way to keep a great power aggressor out. Nukes kept US out of Ukraine and Russia out of NATO. Thus, if you live in the region and want to keep the PLA out, only a nuke deterrent will do. It does not have to be a completely MAD system - a triad with guaranteed second strike retaliatory capabiltiies. An unconventional nuclear capability will be enough. Not only is it small and cost effective compared to building a conventional military that is capable of fighting and winning against China (absent US support), if done right, it will force just enough of a question mark about an invasion to make China blink. If Putin uses a small or tactical nuke on Ukraine the west will not respond in kind, thus proving the nuclear umbrella has no fabric. That will trigger a nuclear proliferation rush in Asia.
Reference article - Mark Montgomery, Riki Ellison and Bradley Bowman, Guam Needs Better Missile Defenses—Urgently, Defense One.
Update 25 Sept 2022
New Report surveys recent operational testing to enhance the missile defense of Guam. The focus was on creating a distributed, layered, defense of the island. Iron dome promised to be an important addition to the defense concept, however testing on the island discovered local conditions like humidity posed difficulties. Other tests explored moving a new THAAD “remote launch capability” to an outlying island and integrating it into extant systems. This was a success.
Guam’s new, expanded missile defense “will include Navy SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, the Patriot air-and-missile defense system and the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System”.
“The Missile Defense Agency is proposing a multi-layer defense system, seeking $539 million in fiscal 2023 to begin building a multi-layer defense system for Guam that could be fielded by 2026.
Critics argue this is about lucrative contracts. But as the discussion above shows, there is a real strategic imperative to significantly enhance Guams defenses. What has not discussed in the article was the need to go on the offensive with a missile shield projected over the SCS to counter China’s and impose operational challenges to the PLA in international waters that it wants to claim as its own by force in the future.
Update 8 NOV 22
Missile Defense of Guam Is ‘Big Issue,’ DOD Official Says
Update 14 March 2023
Missile Defense Agency prioritizes Guam in budget proposal
Update 30 June 2023
Update 7 July 2023 - 🎁 GIFT 🎁
NYT Long form article on Guam and the South Pacific in future war plans
The America That Americans Forget
As tensions with China mount, the U.S. military continues to build up Guam and other Pacific territories — placing the burdens of imperial power on the nation’s most ignored and underrepresented citizens.
Update 31 JAN 2024 - Cyberattacks on Guam could sap US forces in Indo-Pacific, Nakasone says
The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance — made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. — in May warned a Chinese espionage group slipped past digital defenses in Guam and other locations. Microsoft detected the intrusion and attributed it to a group known as Volt Typhoon.
Successful Chinese cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in Guam or other Indo-Pacific footholds could cripple U.S. military capabilities in the region, the leader of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command said.
The island serves as a logistics and munitions hub, as well as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance node.
An assault on the networks and information technology that support Guam’s distribution of electricity, water, food and emergency response could “have a very significant impact” on the options available to military commanders at the time, said Gen. Paul Nakasone.