Airmen at Andersen Air Force Base unload a C-130 to establish a base of operations during an Agile Combat Employment exercise, March 6, 2019. US Air Force/Master Sgt. JT May III
Business Insider: The US Air Force has 'studied every single piece of concrete in the Pacific' to find new places to fight from
* The vast distances of the Pacific region and the growing reach of the Chinese military has led the US to look for ways to disperse its forces and their bases.
* For the US Air Force, that means scouring the region for runways and facilities that can support its aircraft as they try to spread out and sustain potential combat operations.
The prospect of a war with China, which has a rapidly modernizing military that can reach farther and farther across the Pacific, has the US military looking to spread out.
For the US Air Force, that means scouring the region for new places to operate, but rather building new bases, it's working with what's there, according to Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces.
"What we're doing is taking advantage of airfields that already exist," Wilsbach told reporters last week.
"If you're going to put [in] an F-22 or an F-15 or a C-130, the airfield has to have certain criteria, and so we've actually studied every single piece of concrete in the Pacific and Indo-Pacific ... for whether they would meet our criteria."
Air Force brass developed plans for expeditionary basing in the 1990s, and the strategy is getting renewed attention.
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WNU Editor: Logistics and bases will be key in any major conflict in the Western Pacific. It makes sense to look for such bases right now.
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