Sunday, January 04, 2009

Staging Area

Guam will, by 2014, be an even more important base for operations in the Western Pacific than it is today. This article has valuable details:

_About 8,000 Marines are to be shifted 1,200 miles southeast, from Okinawa to Guam, making it the Corps' second largest permanent overseas staging and training area.

_The Navy has already deployed three nuclear-powered submarines to Guam and is seeking improvements to accommodate the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which carries about 5,000 sailors and airmen.

_The Army wants to deploy a ballistic missile defense task force, which would bring roughly 630 soldiers and 1,000 dependents to Guam.

_Long-range B-2 bombers have begun regularly deploying to Guam, along with squadrons of F-16 fighters. Military planners are considering bringing in the new F-22 fighters as well — though details remain sketchy — along with Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft and a dozen tankers.


I'd guess Littoral Combat Ships would base out of Guam, too, to be in range of the Taiwan Strait.

Marine aircraft are to remain on Okinawa, according to the article. And in an amusing note, it states that North Korea sees our moving Marines further away from North Korea as all part of the plan to attack them. They said much the same when we pulled Army troops south from the DMZ in South Korea. The North Koreans are as flexible as the global warmers in counting warming or cooling as sings of the imminent global warming calamity.

I wrote about Guam's role here, here, here, and here (and probably in other posts, too).

Will China cooperate in refraining from attacking in the next 6 years until we are reset?