CNN –
The U.S. Air Force plans to restart the Pacific island airfield where the atomic bombing of Japan took place to expand its base options in the event of any hostilities with China, the Air Force's top officer in the Pacific says.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, told Nikkei Asia in an interview published this week that the northern airfield on Tinian Island will become a “substantial” facility once work is completed to reclaim it from the overgrown jungle at the base, since the last units of the US Army Air Force gave it up in 1946.
“If you pay attention over the next few months, you will see significant progress, particularly at Tinian North,” Wilsbach said. The air force is also expanding facilities at Tinian International Airport in the center of the island.
The Pacific Air Forces confirmed Wilsbach's comments to CNN, but said there was no official release on the matter.
Tinian is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific about 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) west of Hawaii in the Pacific. Only about 3,000 people live on the 39 square mile island.
According to the Nikkei report, Wilsbach did not provide a timetable for the airfield's commissioning.
Tinian, along with the nearby islands of Saipan and Guam, has a rich history of U.S. air operations.
During World War II, after being captured by Japanese occupiers, all three islands were home to fleets of B-29 Superfortress bombers that devastated the Japanese homeland.
The deadliest bombing raid in history, the arson attack on Tokyo on March 10, 1945, which killed up to 100,000 people and injured a million, was carried out by B-29 bombers launched from the three islands.
During the relentless bombing of Japan in 1945, North Field on Tinian became the largest and busiest airport in the world, with four 8,000-foot runways and 40,000 employees.
North Field secured its place in history on August 6, 1945, when, in the early morning darkness, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay taxied down its runway carrying the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima later that morning, killing 70,000 Killed people with its first explosion and ushering the world into the atomic age.
Three days later, another B-29 named Bockscar took off from Tinian to drop an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing 46,000 people in the first explosion.
The Air Force's fiscal year 2024 budget request shows $78 million was sought for construction projects on Tinian Island.
The reclamation project is part of the U.S. military's Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy, which, according to an Air Force doctrine document, “shifts operations from centralized physical infrastructures to a network of smaller, distributed locations, complicating adversary planning and increasing opportunities for “Commander of the Armed Forces.”
Much of U.S. air power in the Pacific is concentrated at a few large air bases, such as Andersen Air Force Base on Guam or Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
An attack on these bases could impact the U.S. military's ability to attack an adversary if too many U.S. air forces were concentrated there.
And as China, the country the Pentagon identifies as its “temporary threat,” expands its missile force, the Air Force is looking for places to disperse its fleet to make targeting more difficult.
A 2022 Air Force Air University paper states: “ACE helps mitigate (Chinese) threats by distributing forces across the theater using hub-and-spoke base configurations, making service unpredictable, and “Forcing the People's Liberation Army to deploy more missiles.” Reduce the impact on the U.S. Air Force's air power.”
“You create a targeting problem and you can actually take some hits, but you still have the preponderance of your forces still having an impact,” Wilsbach told Nikkei.
The Air Force has already practiced the ACE concept on Tinian, including deploying F-22 stealth fighters from its international airport during Exercise Agile Reaper in March.
The airport provided an environment in which U.S. warplanes could rely only on supplies that they carried themselves or that could be flown in C-17 transports, while demonstrating that they were “ready and capable in a contested environment.” “operating in a run-down and operationally restricted environment”. said a statement from the Air Force.
The F-22s also operated from Guam, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Tinian, during Agile Reaper.