Why the US withdrew its bombers from Guam (Annotated)

The unexplained step was the mid-April withdrawal of strategic bombers from Guam. While Guam is far from the troubled Taiwan Straits, Okinawa and Japan, and even farther from the South China Sea, it is light years closer than flying combat aircraft from the middle of the US. Adding a dozen or more hours to the Pentagon’s ability to respond to an active threat seems hard to justify.

US Air Force bombers, including the B-1B Lancer, B-52 Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit, have been operating in Guam since 2004 under the so-called Continuous Bomber Presence program. The official statement on the pullback of the bomber fleet from Guam has led to a lot of head-scratching. 

"Deterrence" was always a cloak for colonial style warfare. There has never been a real deterrence strategy in the US war department's planning. Carrier task forces are really only useful when there is no competition for airspace or sea space. The US regime is acknowledging in acts that China is no longer a third world nation to kick around from offshore.  The nonsense about forward deterrence was always propaganda- and a way to promote arms sales. The present US problem is that unlike  in Europe it has no serious military allies in Asia except its base in Korea...There is another unstated problem: the economic collapse in the US may soon force the regime to concentrate much of its military and police effort at home. —Dr. T. P. Wilkinson

“In line with the National Defense Strategy, the United States has transitioned to an approach that enables strategic bombers to operate forward in the Indo-Pacific region from a broader array of overseas locations, when required, and with greater operational resilience, while these bombers are permanently based in the United States,” the US Air Force Global Strike Command said in a statement.

There are different ways to understand the official statement, although on its face value it is illogical. Why would the US pull back from bases that have served it effectively for years, only to redeploy them so they can “operate forward” from an “array of overseas locations”?And why pull them all the way back to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and not to nearer by Alaska or Hawaii?

Two US Air Force B-1B Lancers join South Korean and Japanese fighters in a 10-hour mission from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, over the Korean Peninsula on July 30, 2017. Photo: Pacific Air Forces/Handout

One theory is that the US base on Guam, which includes Andersen Air Force Base, is vulnerable to missile or bomber attacks from China.  If true, will the US also pull back from Naval Base Guam, the other major base on the island? And what about US bases on Okinawa, Japan and Korea? Are these bases also vulnerable?

The US partnership in Europe is crumbling...A rapidly growing number of Europeans are beginning to realize that the US presence in Europe is in fact an occupying power.  The Atlantic Council is stepping up its propaganda activities. More and more European politicians are being bought to defend the American cause in the mainstream media. —Frans Vandenbosch

The short answer is that the build-up of China’s military, expansion of its navy, deployment of new strategic bombers, submarines, surface combatants and two aircraft carriers is shifting the region’s balance of power. But wouldn’t the logical response be to strengthen the US military posture in East Asia, instead of yanking bombers back to the US?

Part of the US Air Force’s concern is China’s DF-26 missile, sometimes referred to as the “Guam Killer.” The DF-26 is said to be capable of hitting targets up to 5,471 kilometers away with nuclear or conventional warheads. 

If the DF-26 is the real threat, then the next step should be closing Naval base Guam, where the Covid-19 afflicted US aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is now berthed. No such plan has been put forward, at least not yet.

During the last few years, there had been numerous complaints from the US about Chinese research ships (info and intel gathering ships) in the vicinity of Guam (actually all around Guam). China said STFU, it's the fcking open ocean, their ships were doing marine research, and that was that. The suspicion is that China is setting up ubiquitous sensors (I know of people working on these ideas twenty years ago) so that the base can't make a fart without the PLA knowing (now that they have the Beidou and other spy satellites). The sensors will also catch US subs in the area. These sensors are stealthy and hard to detect. They can obviously turn the base into a big fat stationary target. Tactical retreat is wisely acknowledging the threat.  As for aircraft carrier groups, they are indeed used to bully small countries that cannot defend themselves. China probably already has many ways to incapacitate the carrier at select battlefields, not sink it. In these day and age, all you need is a network of sensors, smart mines or smart drones to damage the propellers of the behemoth, and you'll have a sitting duck. This is only the simplest and cheapest solution. There are others, such as sending a drone swarm to damage the deck so that planes can't take off or land. This kind of asymmetric jujitsu is infuriating but that's how I would defend myself if I was China.—Peter Man

Instead, there is a semi-secret Pentagon plan to reshape the navy by trimming the US aircraft carrier fleet by two, reducing the current 11 carriers to nine. The remaining nine carriers may still sound like a lot, but carriers are hugely difficult to maintain. At any given time, four or five carriers are undergoing major maintenance that can keep them out of service for one or two years. 

Given US strategic responsibilities in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Pacific, and the fact that carriers operate with task forces usually called Carrier Strike Groups and include surface ships and submarines to protect them, taking two carriers out of service also creates a significant redundancy for the other task force vessels. 

A Carrier Strike Group consists of a guided-missile cruiser for air defense, 2 LAMPS (Light Airborne Multipurpose Ships that carry anti-submarine warfare helicopters) warships and one or two anti-submarine destroyers. The Strike Group is also supported by an undeclared number of nuclear attack submarines. 

Carrier Strike Group 5 is based in Yokosuka, Japan, and is part of the US Seventh Fleet. The Seventh Fleet also has ship components in Sasebo, Japan, and at Apra Harbor, Naval Base Guam. If US carriers are cut back, will the US maintain its bases in Japan and elsewhere?

The Marines are also undergoing a major transformation including a downsizing of the number of serving Marines and a change in mission, making them more a US Navy adjunct than an independent strike force used in an expeditionary mission.

Overall, the rationale for getting rid of two carriers is to save money that can be sunk into buying a new class of small combatants like the European FREMM class frigate.

The FREMM is a joint French and Italian multipurpose frigate built by Armaris of France and Orizzonte Sistemi Navali of Italy, a joint venture between Fincantieri, Italy’s main shipbuilder, and Leonardo, Italy’s largest defense conglomerate. 

FREMM frigates have a sophisticated air defense capability and can be used as anti-submarine warfare platforms. Exactly what the US plans are for a FREMM-type warship is unclear, and exactly why it would be superior to existing platforms such as the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, has not been explained. 

Moreover, adding a new class of warship to the US fleet would seem to overburden the navy with another sophisticated system it would have to support. At present, the Pentagon plan does not appear to contemplate a move to unmanned semi-submersible vessels or to a new generation of missile defense systems, although unmanned platforms are under active review.

While the bomber redeployment is an accomplished fact, the navy’s plan to cut carriers and build a new class of smaller warships is far from decided. The plan, now circulating in the Pentagon, is not agreed internally nor has the proposal been tried out on Capitol Hill, which has a strong pro-carrier contingent of legislators. 

Peter wrote about methods of attacking carrier battle groups:

In these day and age, all you need is a network of sensors, smart mines or smart drones to damage the propellers of the behemoth, and you'll have a sitting duck. This is only the simplest and cheapest solution. Thanks Peter, I seriously distrust the Asia Times these days, but this article does point out some under-discussed possibilities. Observe an aircraft carrier sailing the Malacca straits, heavily laden with newly replenished with stores loaded in Singapore. It leaves a long mud trail behind the ship, far back to the horizon. The mud trail tells us that the ship's keel is only a few feet from the sea bed. In the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, oil and gas wells have been routinely drilled horizontally for 10km or more for many years. I often wonder whether such off-the-self technology has been deployed to mine the actual sea bed in certain strategic sea lanes. I also know from direct experience that detonating a mere 100kg of C4 explosive at the sea bed, can damage the hull of a ship floating overhead.  Hundreds of meters of 13-3/8" well casing set horizontally under the seabed could hold a thousand tons of C4. The shock from such an explosion would kill most of the crew on any passing ship - and wreck the hull beyond repair.  Well understood technical possibilities such as this, and dozens of others, must  render the 20th century capital warship obsolete.—Evan Jones

Given the navy’s recent wasteful record of failed programs, including but not confined to the Littoral Combat Ship, the hugely costly Zumwalt class destroyers, the failed Long Range Land Attack Projectile, unlikely deployment for its expensive and unneeded long-range electromagnetic “supergun”, the seriously troubled new aircraft carrier designs with questionable catapults and non-functioning aircraft elevators, Congress may not be keen on signing on to yet another project where the strategic rationale is in the best case murky.

Indeed, the FREMM-type frigate program contemplated by the navy sounds like a shipbuilding program to keep navy shipbuilding yards working and not of any strategic value. Even so, whether Congress acts or doesn’t, the posture of both the air force and navy, as understood from outside the US, looks like a retreat from current day responsibilities. 

From within the US, questions are bound to arise about America’s commitment to maintaining forward deterrence while a major potential adversary, China, is building up capabilities and adding impressive technology-based systems to its arsenal.