The US needs more pop-up air bases worldwide to keep enemies guessing

Excerpt

The U.S. Air Force completed the eight-day Bamboo Eagle 24-3 exercise on Aug. 10, bringing over 3,000 service members and more than 150 aircraft together to operate in the Western United States and Eastern Pacific. The large-scale exercise paired important Agile Combat Employment (ACE) training with a Red Flag exercise designed to hone cutting-edge tactics for air warfare. This exercise, and future efforts like it, are critical to strengthening the U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) ability to operate in contested environments at all echelons, which is essential to deterring and defeating aggression in the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.

By doctrinal definition, ACE is the “proactive and reactive operational scheme of maneuver executed within threat timelines to increase survivability while generating combat power.” In translation, this means air forces must be able to flex from major regional bases to smaller or non-traditional operating sites to survive and continue operations.

Such operations require a challenging reconceptualization of everything in the generative process for airpower, including command and control, maintenance, logistics, and air and missile defense for ground operations, to name a few considerations. Developments in the strategic environment underscore that reconceptualization is also essential.

The Commission on the National Defense Strategy report released on July 30 echoes longstanding concerns of USAF leadership that adversaries will aggressively target overseas air bases to prevent them from being used to launch and recover aircraft. Consider the growing threats in the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East and initial efforts to respond to challenges the services have not confronted in recent decades.

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Dr. Lydia LaFavor is a research fellow.