US Air Force to send dozens of F-22 fighter jets to the Pacific amid China tensions

The US Air Force is sending more than two dozen F-22 stealth fighters to a western Pacific exercise this month, an unusually huge deployment of the powerful jets that observers believe sends a strong message to a potential foe in China.

Approximately 25 F-22 Raptors from the Hawaii Air National Guard and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, will deploy to Guam and Tinian islands this month for Operation Pacific Iron 2021, according to Pacific Air Forces in Hawaii.

The F-22s are fifth-generation fighter jets that include stealth technology and combine on-board sensor systems with off-board information systems to provide their pilots with a complete view of the fighting environment. Another example is F-35 fighter jets from the United States.

According to Carl Schuster, a Hawaii-based defense analyst and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, deploying a large number of F-22s for the exercise sends an immediate message to China at a time when relations are tense over Pacific flashpoints like Taiwan and the South China Sea. According to him, normal F-22 deployments consist of six to twelve aircraft.

According to Schuster, the Chinese air force has roughly 20 to 24 operational fifth-generation fighters, but Beijing’s capabilities are rapidly growing.

According to Air Force data, the US Air Force has roughly 180 F-22s in its fleet, although only about half of them are mission capable at any given time due to maintenance requirements. As a result, the United States will send nearly a quarter of its mission F-22s to the Pacific Iron exercise.

F-22s are likely to be among the first weapons employed in any confrontation, charged with taking down an adversary’s air defenses, among other objectives, due to their ability to elude radar detection.

“In the event of a severe crisis or conflict, the United States is actively practicing deployments. The United States is taking China seriously, improving its force posture and preparing its personnel to be prepared to get into position fast “Peter Layton, a former Australian air force officer who now works as an analyst for the Griffith Asia Institute, echoed this sentiment.

According to a statement from Pacific Air Forces, ten F-15 Strike Eagle fighters from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and two C-130J Hercules transport planes from Yokota Air Base in Japan will join the F-22s for Operation Pacific Iron to round out the air fleet for what the Air Force calls an Agile Combat Employment operation, also known as a combat dispersal operation.

According to the announcement, the exercise is in support of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which “called on the military to be a more lethal, adaptive, and resilient force.”

Agile Combat Employment is a proposal to disperse US combat planes and other warfighting assets across the region in order to maximize their survivability against hostile missile strikes.

For example, in the western Pacific, much of the US combat air power is concentrated on huge military bases like Kadena Air Base on Okinawa or Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. If too much US air force is concentrated there, a strike on those facilities may hamper the US military’s ability to retaliate against a foe.

Smaller, less developed airfields such as Tinian International Airport on the island of the Northern Marianas, Won Pat International Airport on Guam, or Northwest Field, a remote strip apart from the major runways at Andersen Air Force Base, will be used to train for Pacific Iron. The exercise’s lessons could be used to operate from smaller airports on islands in the western Pacific.

This would increase the number of targets that enemy missiles would have to destroy, giving US air power a better chance of retaliating.
The concept is envisioned to fight expanding Chinese capabilities, according to a 2019 paper from the RAND Corp think tank, which is supported by the US military.