Recently, Super Typhoon Mawa in the middle of the Pacific Ocean hit the US military base in Guam head-on. According to US media reports, during the transit of Typhoon Mawa through Guam, the most critical large anti-missile radar, long-range search radar, and many military facilities on the island suffered a "catastrophe", especially the collapse of the US military base in the northern part of Guam, the expensive giant radar was also "uprooted", and the covers of two large satellite communication antennas were even directly "shattered into slag". Although there were no major casualties, the widespread power outage caused by the strong typhoon brought a lot of trouble to the US military base.
(Large satellite communication radome shredded by hurricane)
Analysts pointed out that from the historical record, Guam and the waters around Guam rarely have major severe weather, because of its special and strategic geographical location, rarely occur large natural disasters excellent characteristics, has always been a "blessing for the US military". Guam is located in the center of the "second island chain" of the Pacific Ocean, and its military power directly radiates to Northeast Asia, the South China Sea, and Southeast Asia to the west, such as B-52 bombers taking off from this base, they can arrive at any location in the Asia-Pacific region within 12 hours to carry out air strikes, and it only takes 5 hours to the Northeast Asian Peninsula. Guam connects Hawaii to the east, and can be attacked, retreated, or defended; North-south direct to allies Australia and Japan. It is precisely by occupying this strategic point, supplemented by strong naval and air forces and an alliance system, that the US military can effectively control the vast sea area between the first island chain and the second island chain.
(U.S. Coast Police base attacked)
In fact, Guam has always been under the painstaking management of the US military. After a brief "pause" after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military has further increased its investment and adjustment in Guam to match its Asia-Pacific strategy as the geostrategic value of the Indo-Pacific region has risen sharply. It can be predicted that Guam, which has its superior geographical location and political conditions, will play an increasingly important role in the Asia-Pacific layout of the US military.
According to the records of meteorological professional media, Guam has suffered only five catastrophic typhoons in more than a hundred years. The largest was Typhoon Karen during World War II, which destroyed all meteorological instruments on Guam. After entering the new century, in 2002, Typhoon Fengxian seriously damaged Andersen Air Base. However, 21 years have passed from Typhoon Fengxian to Typhoon Mawa. So Guam is generally calm and is indeed a good place to set up a military base. Even if it is accidentally damaged by a typhoon, there is no need to greatly increase the wind resistance level, even if some military infrastructure is blown and rebuilt.
【Family portrait of the fighter aircraft at Anderson Base in Guam】
Of course, global climate change is an irreversible trend. Whether the US military's base groups around the world, including Guam, can be maintained according to the current pattern is a question that the US military is very worried about at present. Climate change affects military bases in several patterns, starting with rising sea levels, which can flood large areas of land at bases like Guam, Diego Garcia, and even Okinawa. Guam is a volcanic island with a relatively high altitude and is not yet sensitive to sea level rise. But Diego Garcia's base is only 1.8 meters above sea level, and a little rise in the sea level can easily affect the airport runway. In addition, the rise in Arctic temperatures has caused the permafrost to melt, destroying the foundation of the base in the cold region, which is a problem that is prominent in several military bases in Alaska.
Of course, the increase in storm disasters has the greatest impact on naval and air bases and electronic facilities. This time Typhoon Mawa passed through Guam, the impact on the large reinforced buildings of the US military is not obvious, and the bombers at Anderson Base can also be withdrawn in advance or hide in hangars, but fixed electronic facilities cannot escape. According to the newly released satellite photos, a large electronic antenna group has been severely damaged, and the spherical fiberglass covers of two radar antennas have completely disintegrated, and the antennas have to be repaired at a high price, if not scrapped. The losses of the US military this time were indeed very large.
(Typhoon accurately sweeps Guam)
Guam is located in the southwest Pacific Ocean and far from the United States mainland, which is very good conditions for space monitoring and control. Setting up measurement and control stations here can form a long baseline with measurement and control stations in the United States, Australia, Bahrain and Europe, and effectively improve the accuracy of measurement and control. A large-capacity information transfer station can also be set up here to provide satellite communication services for the entire Western Pacific US military. According to the official website of the US Department of Defense, Guam has set up two types of satellite ground stations.
【Satellite communication antenna group at the Guam base】
The first is teleport facilities, which deploy satellite dishes and processing facilities in the UHF, C, Ku, Ka and EHF bands. The satellites involved include Mobile Target User System (MUOS) satellite stations for tri-service mobile communications, Broadband Global System (WGS) satellites for large-data volume broadcasting, Advanced Extreme High Frequency (AEHF) satellites for secure and nuclear war emergency communications, and commercial satellites that are also compatible with leased commercial satellites. These satellite systems are of great significance, such as the MUOS satellite, which can directly provide call and datalink services to F-35 fighters, and are one of the core elements of F-35 operations.
【Large satellite dishes are complex and expensive】
The other category is GPS system support stations. Deployed in Guam is a GPS remote tracking station to monitor the health of GPS satellites. It can also be used to inject data if necessary. These are public announcements by the U.S. military, but there must be speculation that Guam must have deployed some secret military satellite facilities. In particular, data receiving and processing stations for electronic reconnaissance satellites. These receiving antennas are difficult to judge based on their shape alone.
Satellite dishes seem to be a common facility, destroyed by a storm, will the damage be large? It must be noted that although the antennas of the Starlink system are only a few hundred dollars a pair. However, large antennas with a diameter of several meters or even more than a dozen meters are very expensive assets. We talk about the most traditional parabolic antennas. This kind of antenna needs to be aimed at satellites 35,800 kilometers away to transmit and receive data at high speed, so the processing accuracy and installation accuracy of parabolic surfaces are very high. Devices such as antenna-related power amplifiers and feeds are also difficult.
According to the US military procurement documents, the cost of purchasing and installing large antennas installed at the Guam base may be in the order of millions of dollars, or even higher. Therefore, the US military may initiate an emergency repair process to resume the work of these ground stations as soon as possible, otherwise it will seriously affect the combat capability of the Western Pacific. Perhaps because these large communications facilities on Guam are so critical, some Americans believe that this typhoon was "imposed on the United States by external forces", and some even accuse it of being China's "weather weapon" to carry out a precision strike on Guam.
【Satellite image of Anderson base】
Analysts pointed out that the accusation of the so-called "meteorological weapon" is completely false, but just some conspiracy theorists created nonsense, at present there is no relevant technology and ability in the world to accurately control the direction of the wind, even if the prediction of the trajectory of the typhoon is still in the groping stage, let alone actively intervene or even control the typhoon movement, the use of "meteorological weapons" to throw the pot is really out of standard.