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A new Hudson Institute report has shed light on the scale and scope of Beijing’s hardening of critical base infrastructure to protect their tactical and strategic forces from any potential US-led counter-attack following a confrontation over Taiwan, revealing major challenges for allied planners.
Base hardening, particularly across northern Australia and other critical allied nodes in Japan, South Korea and across the Western Pacific’s “Second Island Chain” has increasingly come to the forefront of allied planners’ tactical and strategic planning.
Australia, in particular, has repeatedly sought to expand, enhance and harden its network of northern Australia bases that play host to Australian and American forces, with the 2024 Integrated Investment Program in particular devoting AU$14–18 billion over the decade to enhance the bases from the Cocos (Keeling) Island airfield through Darwin and Tindal to RAAF Base Scherger in Far North Queensland.
At critical US facilities in mainland Japan, South Korea and islands like Okinawa and Guam, the US has rapidly accelerated plans to harden both the physical and kinetic defences of land, air and sea assets, with large-scale programs like the deployment of Aegis Ashore at Guam.
However, all of these developments pale in comparison to program of works embarked upon by the world’s rising superpower, the People’s Republic of China, across critical defence infrastructure across the nation, but with particular emphasis on bases and infrastructure in close proximity to Taiwan.
Highlighting this is a report by Timothy Walton and Thomas Shugart for the US-based Hudson Institute, titled Concrete sky: Air base hardening in the Western Pacific, in which they detail the true scale and scope of the works undertaken by China as it prepares to challenge the regional and global order.
Detailing the scale, Walton and Shugart stated, “The People’s Republic of China (PRC) expects airfields to come under heavy attack in a potential conflict and has made major investments to defend, expand, and fortify them. Since the early 2010s, the PLA has more than doubled its hardened aircraft shelters (HASs) and unhardened individual aircraft shelters (IASs) at military airfields, giving China more than 3,000 total aircraft shelters – not including civil or commercial airfields.”
Adding further details, the pair stated, “This constitutes enough shelters to house and hide the vast majority of China’s combat aircraft. China has also added 20 runways and more than 40 runway-length taxiways and increased its ramp area nationwide by almost 75 per cent. In fact, by our calculations, the amount of concrete used by China to improve the resilience of its air base network could pave a four-lane interstate highway from Washington DC to Chicago. As a result, China now has 134 air bases within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait – airfields that boast more than 650 HASs and almost 2,000 non-hardened IASs.”
In stark contrast to this, the US and its allies have been rather slow to harden their own critical basing infrastructure across the region, with Walton and Shugart explaining, “US airfield expansion and fortification efforts have been modest compared to US activities during the Cold War – and compared to the contemporary actions of the PRC. Since the early 2010s, examining airfields within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait, and outside of South Korea, the US military has added only two HASs and 41 IASs, one runway and one taxiway, and 17 per cent more ramp area.
“Including ramp area at allied and partner airfields outside Taiwan, combined US, allied and partner military airfield capacity within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait is roughly one-third of the PRC’s. Without airfields in the Republic of Korea, this ratio drops to one-quarter, and without airfields in the Philippines, it falls further, to 15 per cent,” they said.
Even to an outsider, this indicates that Beijing is preparing for something and something big, with “reunification” of Taiwan a well stated goal to achieve by 2027 clearly the most likely flashpoint between the US and China.
While in its own right, the expansion and enhancement of the Chinese basing infrastructure is telling, it is the scale, particularly the quantities of concrete and steel, that presents significant challenges for allied planners, and not necessarily for the reasons people may expect.
In particular, the hardening of this infrastructure serves as a significant hurdle for war planners as they already face a constrained supply chain for critical munitions war stocks, particularly as conflict continues to rage in Europe and parts of the Middle East that are serving to drain the US and allied munitions stocks at a rapid rate, while also stretching the existing supply chain and industrial base to breaking point.
It is here that true dilemma begins, with Walton and Shugart’s analysis revealing, “Overall, this creates an imbalance in which PLA forces would need to fire far fewer ‘shots’ to suppress or destroy US, allied and partner airfields than the converse. This imbalance ranges from approximately 25 per cent if the US employed military airfields in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan to as great as 88 per cent if it employed only military airfields in Japan.
“Operationally, this could make air operations in a conflict significantly easier to sustain for the PRC than for the United States; strategically, this destabilising asymmetry risks incentivising the PRC to exercise a first-mover advantage. China could initiate a conflict if it sees an opportunity to nullify adversary airpower on the ramp,” they said.
Simply put, this means that the US and its allies, including Australia, will be required to expend an already limited number of exquisite, expensive and time-consuming munitions significantly more than what Beijing will be required to do in order to achieve the same tactical and strategic outcomes.
This uncomfortable reality raises further issues for allies, particularly Australia, as undoubtedly, the United States will (and rightfully so) reserve critical munitions for their use, leaving allied partners with an ever dwindling stockpile of munitions, with potentially dramatic, long-term consequences.
It is the “missile gap” that increases both the military and business cases for Australia’s multi-billion dollar Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise, but this requires further advocacy by the Australian government with the United States and the key companies, under the auspice of AUKUS, to domestically build critical munitions stockpiles to support Australian, American and allied forces in the event of conflict.
If we don’t, China may prove to be a nut that is simply too hard and too costly to crack.
