- The U.S. Air Force recently deployed Virginia-based F-22 Raptors to Kadena Air Base.
- Kadena, Japan is just 400 miles from mainland China.
- The Air Force is pushing more stealthy fifth-generation fighters closer to China, which is great in peacetime but not so great in wartime.
The U.S. Air Force has redeployed F-22 Raptor jets greater than 7,000 miles from home to a base literally on China’s doorstep. The twenty seventh Fighter Squadron, normally based in Virginia, touched down in Okinawa, Japan in late April as a part of a rotation of fighter jets to the island base. The F-22s can be inside range of their Chinese Air Force counterparts: the J-20 “Mighty Dragon” stealth fighter.
A Visit From the Raptors
In keeping with Air & Space Forces Magazine, F-22 Raptors of the twenty seventh Fighter Squadron, 1st Fighter Wing, began touching down on Okinawa last month. The trip from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia to Kadena Air Base on the island of Okinawa is a distance of seven,766 miles, nearly a 3rd of the best way around the globe. A typical F-22 squadron includes between 18 and 21 of the stealthy fighters.
Kadena Air Base has hosted U.S. fighter aircraft because the end of World War II. In 1979, the bottom received F-15 fighter jets, and the air superiority fighters have been a continuous presence at the bottom ever since. In 2023, the Air Force began withdrawing the 2 F-15C/D squadrons on the island. The F-15s have been replaced by fighters from elsewhere, temporarily rotating through the bottom, including F-16s, F-35s, and F-22s. This mirrors the general Pentagon strategy of rotating forces to bother spots, similar to sending Army brigades to Eastern Europe, allowing entire units to achieve field experience in potential combat zones.
A Frontline Base
The deployment is supposed to buttress Kadena Air Base’s defenses. Kadena, a U.S. base on a Japanese island within the Ryukyu Islands, is just 400 miles from mainland China and borders the East China Sea. The East China Sea is a serious exercise area for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, also referred to as the Chinese Air Force, with Chinese fighters and bombers often passing through the realm.
A map published by Newsweek shows the flight paths of not only Chinese, but in addition Russian aircraft over the East China Sea, with activity each south of Okinawa within the Miyako Strait and likewise flights over the Senkaku Islands, that are claimed by each Japan and China.
The F-22s won’t be the one fifth-generation stealth fighters within the region. Wuyishan Air Base, in China’s Fujian province, was until recently home to almost 50 obsolete Shenyang J-6W fighters converted to armed drones and the forty first Aviation Brigade, which counted greater than 30 Shenyang J-11A fighters, 2 J-11BS fighters, and two Russian-made Su-27UBK fighters. In late November 2023, in response to the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute, six Chengdu J-20 “Mighty Dragon” fighter jets were spotted at Wuyishan Airbase. The J-20, introduced in 2012, is China’s first fifth-generation fighter jet and emblematic of the country’s dramatic military buildup. CASI speculates the forty first Brigade is trading in its older jets for J-20s.
Wuyishan is 200 miles from the Chinese coastline, on the East China Sea. The gap between Kadena and Wuyishan is just 600 miles. It’s entirely possible that the F-22 Raptor deployment is a response to the J-20 deployment, and that Raptors and Mighty Dragon pilots might encounter each other in international airspace. The Air Force could learn quite a bit concerning the J-20 by openly confronting it within the air, and the F-22, a matchless air superiority fighter, is the best plane to do that. The more aggressive the confrontations, the more it should learn the capabilities of Chinese pilots and aircraft just like the J-20.
Lessons From Desert Storm
In 1991, China watched as the US and its Coalition allies rapidly destroyed the Iraqi military in a combined, coordinated air-land-sea campaign. The attack, with its heavy use of precision-guided weapons and air power, upended every thing Chinese military planners knew about modern warfare.
The People’s Liberation Army got here away from Desert Storm with two lessons. One was that their country’s military, organized and equipped along the identical lines because the Iraqi military, was just as vulnerable to a Western-style attack. The second was that the U.S. and its allies relied heavily on overseas bases to support the attack, and without them, the Pentagon couldn’t have projected its military power.
Within the event of war, the PLA might be expected to attack U.S. bases within the Western Pacific region. This includes Kadena, which is inside short-range ballistic missile and cruise missile attack range. China would wish to attack U.S. bases even when the most important goal were Taiwan, to forestall them from getting used to flow forces from North America to Taiwan’s rescue. The belief is that an attack on Taiwan would immediately attract the US, so the quicker the bases were taken out the higher. This is able to also likely attract Japanese forces because the attacks would happen on Japanese soil. All of this makes an invasion of Taiwan considerably more complex than it appears.
The Pentagon, and the Air Force particularly, seem reluctant to permanently base fifth-generation fighter jets just like the F-22 and F-35 on Okinawa. If Kadena is attacked on Day One in every of what would likely change into World War III, it is likely to be higher if the air base was empty, with aircraft flying in just after Chinese attacks had slowed. Within the meantime, nonetheless, Air Force pilots have the chance to cycle through Kadena, gaining firsthand knowledge of the realm and Chinese military air operations.
The deployment of F-22s to a tiny island off the coast of China comes with each opportunities and risks. In need of war, the risks are small, but if war were to interrupt out, the danger could include the lack of billions in irreplaceable fighter jets to a rain of Chinese missiles. It’s one in every of many choices the Air Force can have to weigh because the U.S.-China relationship grows sour, and the 2 countries must thread their way between peace and war.