USA jaotab varustust Aasias laiali
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — The risk of war with China is spurring the U.S. Air Force to create “air mobility teams” charged with dispersing quickly to deliver cargo to far-flung spots across the Indo-Pacific.
Airmen at the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo explained how the teams work during a Monday visit by Maj. Gen. John Klein, commander of the Air Force Expeditionary Center at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.
“The U.S. Air Force is absolutely reorienting toward our pacing challenge of the People’s Republic of China,” Klein told Stars and Stripes before departing Yokota on Tuesday.
The installation — along with Kadena Air Base, Okinawa; Osan Air Base, South Korea; Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii — serves as an air mobility hub that allows the United States to project power across the Indo-Pacific, he said.
Air mobility teams can disperse to other facilities —civilian airports, for example — to provide some of the same services available at the major hubs, Klein aid.
“The pacing challenge is going to drive a very rapid pace of conflict if we ever get to that stage,” he said.
The goal of an air mobility team is to provide cargo and passenger services in concert with aircraft and aircrew as fast and efficiently as possible, Klein said.
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Sarnasest teemast kirjutab ka AP
The U.S. military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, the Pentagon’s leaders said Thursday, pushing Congress to approve the Defense Department’s proposed $842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world.
“This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in testimony before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.
Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than $9 billion, a 40% increase over last year, to build up military capabilities in the Pacific and defend allies.
The testimony comes on the heels of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, which added to concerns that China will step up its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and increasingly threaten the West.
China’s actions, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States.” He said deterring and preparing for war “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., pressed the defense leaders on Xi’s meeting with Putin and its impact on U.S. competition with China, which he called “the elephant in the room.” The U.S., he said, is “at a crucial moment here.”
The growing alliance between China and Russia, two nuclear powers, and Xi’s overtures to Putin during the Ukraine war are “troubling,” Austin said.
He added that the U.S. had not yet seen China provide arms to Russia, but if it does, “it would prolong the conflict and certainly broaden the conflict potentially not only in the region but globally.”
Milley, who will retire later this year, said the Defense Department must continue to modernize its forces to ensure they will be ready to fight if needed. “It is incumbent upon us to make sure we remain No. 1 at all times” to be able to deter China, he said.
Two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan eroded the military’s equipment and troop readiness, so the U.S. has been working to replace weapons systems and give troops time to reset. It’s paid off, Milley told Congress.
“Our operational readiness rates are higher now than they have been in many, many years,” Milley said. More than 60% of the active force is at the highest states of readiness right now and could deploy to combat in less than 30 days, while 10% could deploy within 96 hours, he said.
Milley cautioned that those gains would be lost if Congress can’t pass a budget on time, because it will immediately affect training.
Members of the panel, including Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., also made it clear that while they support the ongoing U.S. assistance to Ukraine, “the days of blank checks are over.” And they questioned the administration’s ultimate goal there.
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-chi ... 58b173a03a