Weapons of Mass Destruction
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) employed against an air base have the potential to disrupt the flow of US forces into a region, degrade combat sortie generation rates, and kill large numbers of US personnel. A nuclear strike could obviously knock a base out of action. US forces are trained to operate in a chemical or biological environment, but the presence of such substances could slow the pace of operations.
US policy is to deter WMD use with the threat of retaliation. This policy apparently succeeded in the 1991 war with Iraq. The United States would also, as was seen in the Gulf War, attempt to destroy an adversary’s weapons, research facilities, and means of delivery to reduce the threat to US and allied forces. The Gulf War highlighted the multi-faceted difficulties confronting such operations.
The presence of WMD raises two key access-related issues:
- Allies may be deterred from granting access to US forces in order to prevent WMD employment on their soil.
- An adversary possessing WMD is bound to make a US decision-maker reflect carefully about placing aircraft and thousands of US personnel in harm’s way on forward air bases.
Are There Potential Counters to Anti-Access Threats?
Political initiatives
The United States should engage as wide an array of nations as possible to increase the chances of obtaining access when needed. Nonetheless, history illustrates that the unpredictability of the location and nature of future conflicts will make it difficult to forecast the attitude of host country when access is needed.
Infrastructure Development (Base Development, Pre-Positioning)
To augment the current basing infrastructure in Asia, developing additional hardened facilities would be an option; however, one that will take time. Developing a similar network of facilities in Western Europe and the Persian Gulf took decades of sustained effort. Unfortunately, Asia’s vast size combined with the range limitations of fighter aircraft demands enormous prescience in predicting accurately the general location of future conflicts. Given such vast distances, the United States could expend enormous resources on base infrastructure development and “get it wrong.”
The high cost is also a significant complicating factor. Trying to hedge bets by conducting base development in multiple locations would cost tens of billions of dollars. The cost of base development just in Saudi Arabia—a single country with a much smaller land mass compared to Asia— was estimated at over $30 billion in current year dollars. Even with this significant investment, most US aircraft were forced to park in the open during the 1991 Gulf War. Developing hardened bases in Europe was even more costly and, by the end of the Cold War, still insufficient to protect many deployed USAF aircraft.