According to the Global Network quoted by the US "power" website, the US Department of Defense's Pacific diversion airport plan has recently been put on the agenda, and the Tianning Island base expansion project has begun.
Due to growing concerns about China's missile development, the United States believes that once a military conflict breaks out with China, Anderson Air Force Base in Guam will inevitably be hit by Chinese missiles, and Tianning Island Air Force Base will become an important strategic fulcrum for the US Air Force in the western Pacific.
Tianning Island covers an area of about 100 square kilometers and belongs to one of the Mariana Islands, which is Saipan to the north and Guam to the southeast, with a distance of 170 kilometers. Tinian Island has experienced Spanish and German colonization, in 1918 Japan gained control of Tinian Island, but it was not until the end of World War II that Japan realized the importance of Tinian Island, on August 1, 1944, the Battle of Tinning Island ended, the United States occupied the island and rebuilt the airport on the island, in 1945 the US B-29 bomber took off from Tinian Island with atomic bombs to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After World War II, the United States took over Tianning Island. Since guam, which already controlled a larger area and better infrastructure, Tinian island had no use for the United States since 1947, and U.S. troops gradually withdrew from the island. The entire island, with the exception of a few inhabitants, is left with only the remains of japanese and American buildings and aircraft, the island is overgrown with weeds, and the only important military airfield is abandoned.
In 2003, the U.S. military returned to Tianning Island and began to repair the island's airfield and clean up the ruins left over from World War II, and Since then, Tianning Island has become a training base for the US military.
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense signed a 40-year lease agreement with the Confederation of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Naval Engineering Command contracted a modernization project to upgrade the base on the island. The airfield left over from World War II will be used for U.S. military training and exercises, and the U.S. Naval Engineering Command plans to build a new airfield that will be able to host more fighter jets and strategic bombers, which will be handed over to the U.S. Air Force after the modification is completed.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the Tianning Island Air Base Expansion Project was held in February this year, and the U.S. Department of Defense invested $162 million and is expected to be completed in October 2025. Brigadier General Jeremy Sloan, commander of the U.S. Air Force's 36th Wing, said the construction contractor plans to expand the island's airfield, roads and ports, and that the future Tianning Island base will enhance the U.S. Air Force's strategic, operational and operational capabilities in the western Pacific.
According to satellite images, Tianning Island Airport is already in the construction phase, and the land in the northwest of the main runway of the airport has been cleared. A pre-existing passage runs through the workspace center from east to west. The grey part is the new apron and taxiway planning location, and the yellow and purple lines are the proposed part of the fuel pipelines that will be connected to the fuel storage facility in the southern port of the island.
The old tianning airport and the saipan airport in the north are now operational, and the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps have deployed fighter formations at these two airports for use in emergencies. After the completion of the new airport on Tinian Island, the U.S. military plans to deploy 12 large tankers to support fighters and strategic bombers on long-range raid missions.
The Tianning Island base expansion program is part of the U.S. Air Force's distributed operations strategy. In 2018, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfain proposed that in order to break through the regional denial and anti-access combat systems of China and Russia, the U.S. Air Force must change the original rapid deployment combat strategy and adopt the emerging distributed combat strategy.
David Goldfain believes that almost all U.S. military bases or bases where the Air Force can be stationed, even if a runway is covered by Chinese and Russian ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles, the U.S. Air Force must develop a combat plan that does not include existing base support.
On the other hand, the number of adversaries' missiles and long-range weapons is limited and can only be used to attack known and potential U.S. military bases, and if the U.S. Air Force builds a large number of airfields in remote areas that can be immediately put into service, it will force the opponent to disperse its missiles to more targets, and there will always be a force in these airfields that can break through the opponent's fire network, make its unintentional attacks, and destroy the opponent's battle plan.
Goldfayn said the U.S. Air Force, which implements a distributed combat strategy, will place greater emphasis on civil engineering units, explosive ordnance disposal units, air traffic control systems and other often overlooked Air Force ground forces.
In addition to Tinian Island, the guam, Saipan and Wake Island air bases are also undergoing intensive expansion work, of which the Guam base is the core of the U.S. second island chain strategy, holding the key points in the western Pacific. Anderson Air Force Base on the island is the most important U.S. air base in the western Pacific, and the U.S. Air Force's B-1B, B-2A, or B-52H strategic bomber groups often rotate missions in Guam, and strategic bombers taking off from Guam can reach any country in the Asia-Pacific region in 12 hours.
At present, the US military is building a large number of construction projects between the Pacific islands, but the US media has poured cold water. The U.S. "Power" website believes that even after the expansion, the infrastructure such as the airport on Tianning Island and Saipan is still rudimentary, unable to be compared with the Guam Anderson Air Force Base, which has been operating for decades, and the three islands belong to the Mariana Islands, the distance is very close, and once the United States breaks out into a military conflict with China, the three islands are still at risk of being attacked by Chinese missiles at the same time.
In response, U.S. Air Force Pacific Commander Kenneth Wellsbach said that the U.S. Air Force does want to build Tianning Island, but will not station any pilots or military facilities on the island, Which is an alternative to Anderson's base, mainly for take-off and landing tankers and cargo aircraft.
So what impact does the EXPANSION of the TIANNING ISLAND AIR BASE by the US military have on the mainland?
The expansion of the Tianning Island base by the US military also reflects the ambivalence of the United States today: On the one hand, the US ambition to contain and blockade China militarily will not die, and the expansion of the Tianning Island base also proves that in the future, the United States still vainly attempts to intervene in the Taiwan issue by military means; On the other hand, the U.S. military is well aware of the development of China's military capabilities, especially ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons. The US military understands very well that once a military conflict breaks out between China and the United States, even if the THAAD system has been deployed at Anderson Air Base in Guam, it will be difficult to intercept incoming Chinese missiles, so the US military has been building a lot of construction between the Pacific Islands in recent years to create "alternatives" for Anderson Air Force Base.
For the mainland, except for the first island chain, only The Anderson Air Force Base on the island can threaten the mainland's national defense. In wartime, U.S. strategic bombers at Anderson Air Force Base could directly bombard the Continental Naval Fleet and coastal land-based military forces, and U.S. fighters, with the support of tankers, could also intervene in military conflicts between the two countries. Therefore, Guam's Anderson Air Force Base has always been the focus of the mainland region's refusal and anti-access capacity building, and China's DF-26 ballistic missile, KD-20 long-range cruise missile and Long sword-10 cruise missile can completely cover the Guam base.
Tianning Island and Saipan are not far from Guam, and naturally within the strike range of the mainland's missile forces, but the US strategy of "saturating" base construction is indeed worthy of China's vigilance.
In the short term, these military bases will enhance the presence of the US military in the Pacific region, the US military can deploy more combat troops, form a tighter military blockade network against China, will have a certain impact on the mainland's previous regional denial and anti-access capabilities to build a certain impact, as the US Air Force Chief of Staff Goldfayn said, a country's missile number is limited, and the US Air Force will always have a unit that can break through the opponent's defenses.
At the same time, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict have proven that to break through enemy air defense systems and completely destroy a military airfield, it takes a lot of ballistic missiles or cruise missiles. At present, the US military's airfields all over the Pacific Ocean also show that the construction of the mainland's national defense forces still has a long way to go.