America Prepares for a Pacific War With China It Doesn’t Want

I watch as digital displays on five fuel gauges slowly tick down from 50,000 pounds to just under 20,000. As the F-35C’s disconnect and drop away, a core challenge to U.S. strategic objectives across the Pacific theater comes into focus. To operate across this vast region and prepare for a potential conflict with near-peer competitors, the U.S. military needs shrewd solutions for complex logistical puzzles of time and distance.

Ensuring the Indo-Pacific region remains “free and open” is the primary strategic objective of the Biden administration. It seeks to protect the law of the sea, maintain open sea lanes and the free flow of seaborne trade, and resist coercion against Taiwan. To this end, the United States is working to ensure its military capacities can be intermingled with local allies and partners in “integrated deterrence.” This requires sustaining forces thousands of miles from the United States, sitting at the end of intricate supply chains that China has every interest in breaking.

It’s not just that the mission is far away; the theater itself is enormous. Nearly 6,000 miles lay between the U.S. military bases in San Diego and Iwakuni, Japan—more than twice the distance from Washington to Los Angeles. The United States and its allies need to minimize travel time and maximize the time their forces can remain deployed in forward areas.

This requires systems for moving and using fuel, weapons, and other critical supplies, for repairing equipment, and for setting up and maintaining bases. Moving U.S. military personnel and equipment from Australia toward the Chinese coast, for example, requires traveling more than 5,000 miles through Indonesia, the Philippines, and on toward the Taiwan Strait. It can require aerial refueling or airstrips to land on with prepositioned fuel, ordnance, and other supplies.

But these supply chains can be perceived as offensive provocations by China. The United States accumulating access to new airfields and military bases and building up partner military forces it can integrate with seamlessly feeds into Chinese narratives that China is being contained by the United States. I saw this firsthand.

This July, I embedded for a week with a Marine Corps F-35C squadron nicknamed the “Black Knights.”  I observed them conduct bilateral training with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and participate in a bilateral exercise with the Philippine Armed Forces during Marine Aviation Support Activity 2023. I watched the Black Knights, elements of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, and the I Marine Expeditionary Force to which they belong test features of new logistical systems for distributed maritime operations.

Their systems are thoughtful and sophisticated—but at the same time as deterring China in the name of a free and open Indo-Pacific, they may also risk provoking it.

A U.S. Marine watches as an F-35 fighter jet lands during a joint military exercise at Subic Bay in the Philippines on July 13. Ted Aljibe/AFP via Getty Images

At Williamtown, the Black Knights operate out of a pristine two-story hangar. The hangar is part of a complex of buildings servicing two Australian F-35A squadrons. While the RAAF operates the land-based F-35A, the Black Knights fly the land- or aircraft carrier-based F-35C. The planes are outside, parked in columns under awnings to protect their delicate skin from the elements. The contours of the plane’s design, the metal composite of its panels and parts, and the radar-absorbent material coating the entire jet contribute to its low observability—its stealth. The awnings have power hookups and are Wi-Fi-enabled, allowing mechanical crews to download data from the plane to guide their maintenance work. Snooki’s executive officer, Maj. Derek Heinz (call sign Shootsbe, who left the Black Knights on terminal leave in August to work for Delta while completing his military service with the Marine Reserves), told me the aircraft is essentially several computers, with a pilot managing the plane’s systems along for the ride.

The U.S. and Australian aircraft trained together in the air twice a day while their staffs worked closely on the ground. RAAF No. 3 Squadron Wing Commander Adrian Kiely (call sign Kenny) said he trusts Marine F-35 maintenance crews to conduct unsupervised work on his aircraft. And when a 270-volt battery in a Black Knight F-35C stopped working, Kenny’s squad provided the component from one of their out-of-service aircraft.

The contours of the plane’s design, the metal composite of its panels and parts, and the radar-absorbent material coating the entire jet contribute to its low observability—its stealth.

Aircraft maintainers for the Black Knights noted that they could have procured a spare engine or munitions from the Australians if it had been necessary because of the similar aircraft systems. One said that if getting a component from the Aussies didn’t limit their ability to fight, the Marines could have any part they needed. They would then backfill it.

In this case, though, the battery could not be easily procured through the global spares pool. Kenny noted that challenges remain with the sufficiency of spares. In his view, the solution is still “maturing.” But he and Snooki demonstrated an ability and willingness to work toward solutions regarding spare parts at the unit level.

During their training at Williamtown, the Black Knights tested new systems as well. They are the first Marine fighter squadron to use Elon Musk’s Starlink internet system to log data from their aircraft computers to the Defense Department’s cloud-based logistics system. Snooki and his staff reported that the commercial Starlink system the Marines are using while they wait for a hardened version for forward operations is better than the legacy Marine option. But it was dropped at some point on their way to Australia, and the hardware did not function when they arrived at Williamtown.

The Black Knights deployed to the Pacific alongside other units working with U.S. allies and partners. The “Death Rattlers,” an F/A-18 Hornet squadron, were in the Philippines for Marine Aviation Support Activity 2023. Other Marines, including Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, were deployed in Darwin, Australia; Micronesia; Papua New Guinea; and Palau. The Marines I met were curious, funny, and content to be forward deployed. While they enjoyed their down time, they are hyper-focused on their tasks. They swarm aircraft, working like a coordinated hive.

All of these forward-deployed Marines were under the command and control of Brig. Gen. Robert Brodie (call sign Bams), a career F/A-18 pilot, to, among other objectives, test the systems that make up Force Design 2030.

The Marines, like every branch of the U.S. military, are working to counter China’s anti-access/area denial capability—the use of long- and short-range precision-guided missiles to prevent opposing militaries from operating freely within a predetermined bubble around China’s coastline. Chinese missiles are currently able to target the first island chain, including Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysia, about 800 miles from China’s coast. Their range is growing to encompass the second island chain as well—a line connecting Japan’s Bonin Islands, the Mariana Islands (including Guam), the Caroline Islands, and Western New Guinea, about 1,800 miles from China. Most concerningly for the United States and its allies, this emboldens China to act aggressively in the Pacific because it provides an umbrella of protection for its military forces.

The Chinese missile force is currently capable of attacking and destroying U.S. air bases in Japan—including, among others, Kadena Air Base and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni—and is growing to include Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. According to Rand Corp. calculations, even if one-third of Chinese cruise missiles targeting aircraft hangars and open-air parking at Andersen missed or were shot down, a barrage of 53 missiles could incapacitate the base. And stationary air defenses and aircraft can be targeted and destroyed by only a few precision-guided munitions.

For the Marines to get close to China and fight, they must be able to operate within range of China’s missiles. To achieve this, Force Design 2030 conceptualizes a distributed forward operating system, operationalized through hubs, spokes, and nodes.

For the Marines to get close to China and fight, they must be able to operate within range of China’s missiles.

This system divides Marine forces into smaller elements, distributes them at multiple locations, and sustains forward operations using pre-positioned supplies. This new system faces dire wargame projections. In a war with China over Taiwan, in the most likely “base” scenario, the United States could lose between 168 and 372 aircraft, several submarines would be destroyed, and up to 20 surface ships (including as many as two aircraft carriers) would be damaged or destroyed. China would lose more than 160 planes and as many as 140 surface ships. Both sides would deplete their long-range missile stockpiles. And at least 40,000 Chinese military personnel would die, according to one scenario. The United States could run out of sea- and land-based missiles within two weeks of fighting.

The Marine Corps is making its bases and forces more survivable. It is increasing the number of targets that Chinese rockets must hit and the number of rockets each target will require to incapacitate.

“Hubs” are the largest element in the new Marine forward operating concept. They are permanent sites where the U.S. and allied militaries have a higher level of supply and command and control capability. The Williamtown base is an example of a hub for both U.S. and Australian F-35s.

Immediately beyond a hub are “spokes”—forward bases within China’s missile range with a small temporary military presence. They rely on existing infrastructure, including airfields.

The last layer is the temporary “node.” A node has no personnel presence and likely lacks existing infrastructure. A node can be temporarily stood up in a forward area. Supplies for sustaining forward operating units can be pre-positioned at nodes, including fuel and weapons or airfield quick repair equipment. When needed, personnel arrive, stand up the node, use it, and then move on.

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A view from the KC-130J as it flies above the Australian Outback en route from Williamtown to Darwin on July 12. Zuri Linetsky for Foreign Policy

Napoleon’s campaigns across Europe pioneered new systems for supplying, feeding, and therefore moving La Grande Armée. But they failed him in 1812. The Nazi Afrika Korps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel cannibalized its equipment and resources because it was operating beyond the reach of its supply lines. The North Africa campaign collapsed as a result.

In the Pacific during World War II, logistics shaped battle planning. Allied capabilities west of Pearl Harbor were determined by shipping capacity. It required the same amount of merchant ship tonnage to move two men to the Southwest Pacific as five men to England. The Battle of Midway was fought over two uninhabited islands, Sand Island and Eastern Island, because the United States and Japan both needed a way station to advance their military forces in the Pacific.

Today in the Pacific, U.S.-led integrated deterrence—introduced by the Biden administration in its 2022 National Defense Strategy—requires the U.S. military to intermingle its capabilities with those of its allies and partners, across air, land, sea, cyberspace, and space, in all manner of conflicts. This intermingling creates forces that work together seamlessly and easily exchange information, equipment, and weapons systems.

At the heart of this, as in World War II, are the U.S. Marines. They’re an expeditionary force—their job is to get close to the enemy and fight as soon as a conflict breaks out. But behind the fighting Marine at the front has always been a vast infrastructure of support and logistics, one that has only grown more complex with modern technology. Force Design 2030, a controversial overhaul of the Marine Corps’ structure, is part of the force’s effort to deter China’s growing military capabilities. Force Design 2030 reconfigured the Marines into three distinct Marine Expeditionary Forces, two of which are focused on the Indo-Pacific. It stresses distributed forward operations and related logistical capabilities as well as preparing military installations for a contested Pacific theater.

A Marine F-35 unit is in a particularly complex position. The F-35 is the cornerstone of U.S. and allied country airpower. It is such an advanced platform that China stole its design information to inform the development of its own fifth-generation fighter, the Chengdu J-20, for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. It costs about $42,000 per flying hour, compared with legacy Marine aircraft such as the F/A-18 Hornet, which costs about $50,000 per flying hour. But across the U.S. military, according to government reporting, the plane is unavailable at high rates, spare parts are not tracked effectively, and its cloud-based logistics system is still being refined.

The F-35’s complexity makes it a template for military-to-military collaboration between the United States and its allies and partners. The Defense Department and Lockheed Martin developed a global shared pool of spare parts located at bases and on aircraft carriers around the world to maintain U.S. and partner aircraft. Watching the Black Knights and the RAAF train together demonstrated how logistically demanding modern weapons systems are—and just what it takes to keep something like the F-35 functioning in the field.

A U.S. Navy photo shows an F-35B getting refueled by a KC-135 Stratotanker over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 4, 2022. Airman 1st Class Moses Taylor/U.S. Navy

Aerial lift and seaborne cargo are provided for all branches of the U.S. military by the Air Force and Navy, respectively. But coordination between the Black Knights and the Air Force was limited while I was with them. As a result, the Boeing 747s carrying cargo to Williamtown for the Black Knights were privately contracted, and they used contract shipping for all seaborne cargo.

Getting to out-of-the-way places in an F-35 is easier than in other fighters because the F-35A and C have a range of about 1,400 miles. This exceeds that of an F-35B and the legacy F/A-18 (both about 900 miles). Unfortunately, in the Pacific theater 1,400 miles is not far—the distance from Hawaii to Japan is about 4,000 miles. So they aerially refuel, or “tank,” from Marine, Air Force, and allied and partner nation planes. But aerial refueling from non-Marine aircraft can be a complicated process.

The F-35A and C have a range of about 1,400 miles—but that’s not very far in the Pacific theater. And aerial refueling from non-Marine aircraft can be a complicated process. 

Traveling to the Williamtown hub, the Black Knights tanked off Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers—the most common Air Force aerial refueler. According to Snooki and Shootsbe, less experienced F-35C pilots struggle to refuel from Stratotankers. F-35B and C variants have intentionally delicate aerial refueling probes to protect the plane if there is a problem during refueling.

The Stratotanker refueling assembly must be kinked at a 90-degree angle by the F-35 fuel probe to initiate refueling. This is not an easy process. It is common for probes to break off inside the Stratotanker refueling line. A broken fuel probe grounds both an F-35 and its aerial refueler. Snooki and Shootsbe oversaw when, where, and if less experienced pilots refueled from KC-135s. On the way to Williamtown, knowing that Stratotankers would be their refuelers, not all the Black Knights’ young pilots flew their planes, out of an abundance of caution. They flew as passengers on KC-130J’s.

The F-35 faces other challenges at spokes and nodes. Both the F-35A and C need approximately 6,000 feet of runway for landings, primarily for landing on wet surfaces. Runways must be free of foreign objects and debris, such as rocks and birds, which can cause catastrophic damage to the aircraft’s single Pratt & Whitney F135 engine. Before landing on a runway, a Marine Wing Support Squadron must sweep it for foreign objects and debris and check it for viability and security.

Not all spokes and nodes are created equal. While 6,000-foot-long runways exist across the Pacific theater—such as at the air base in Butterworth, Malaysia—some are easier to use immediately, while others require time, effort, and human power to prepare. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and its various military elements conduct regular regional surveys to move runways from red (unusable) to green (the military can land fighter aircraft). The key is local security, removing foreign objects and debris by getting sweepers and vacuums to austere locations, and, most critically, distributing fuel to nodes.

Despite being designed to operate from aircraft carriers, the Black Knights’ F-35C’s are dealing with corrosion. Ferrous metal in the planes’ stealthy skin reacts with salt water. Williamtown’s awnings helped mitigate this. But this infrastructure is not available at spokes and nodes or on aircraft carriers. While the Marines are working toward a solution, corrosion has been an issue with stealth fighters for more than a decade.

Armed Death Rattler F/A-18s sit on the tarmac at Subic Bay on July 13. Zuri Linetsky for Foreign Policy

On a bright Wednesday morning, I boarded a Marine KC-130J commanded by Britney (who happens to be Snooki’s wife, and the Marines rank as one of their top pilots). Britney leads the “Raiders,” the Black Knights’ sister KC-130J squadron. The flight was the first leg, or about half the distance, of the nearly 5,000-mile journey to Subic Bay, where the Black Knights were scheduled to join the Death Rattlers for an aerial strike demonstration.

The KC-130J is a turboprop plane that plays a vital role in everything the Marines do. It can ferry personnel and carry tons of F-35 spare parts or other cargo, such as ordnance. It can land on any surface and requires only 3,000 feet of runaway. Britney said it’s “formatted for the distributed operations concept.” For this flight, in addition to people and cargo, it carried more than 60,000 pounds of fuel for aerial refueling fighter aircraft.

Two hours after Britney’s plane lifted off, it turned back. One of the two Black Knight F-35s making the journey north was unable to take off because of an issue with an onboard computer. After fueling the KC-130J again and a maintenance delay for the F-35, we set off again. The aircraft flew north, toward the setting sun and the RAAF Base in Darwin. During the five-hour flight, Britney tanked Snooki and his wingman, Capt. Christian Scroggs (call sign Dory).

The flight to Subic Bay covered about 2,500 miles (nearly the width of the continental United States) and took more than six hours. It highlighted the importance of regional partnerships for the U.S. military. The United States and Indonesia have a strategic partnership. They conduct bilateral military exercises. But the United States does not have unrestricted access and overflight rights in Indonesian airspace. All overflight requires lead time and coordination. Snooki told me that while the Black Knights transited over Indonesian land, our KC-130J could not. Britney referred to the flight path as “the snake around Indonesia.”

We arrived in Subic Bay by Wednesday afternoon, without the Black Knights. Snooki and Dory turned around after a new Air Force KC-46 Pegasus refueling basket failed to deploy.

The following rain-soaked day, parts of several 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing squadrons were gathered in a nondescript airplane hangar in the Subic Bay airport serving as a command and control center. Other areas in the local airport temporarily hosted Air Force and Army Special Operations Aviation aircraft, drones, cargo, and personnel.

For the upcoming aerial strike demonstration, four Death Rattler F/A-18s and two Black Knight F-35s would fly 15 miles off the Philippine coast and strike a vessel towed into place by the Philippine Armed Forces. A fifth F/A-18 would fly to an air base in Palawan province to demonstrate the Marine ability to refuel and rearm aircraft at a separate spoke.

At approximately 1:30 p.m. local time, the Black Knights circled the airport and landed. It was still raining. Snooki and Dory taxied around the airstrip as the Death Rattlers’ planes were armed with ordnance. The rain intensified. The F/A-18s waited for the rain to abate to start their strike. An hour later, the Death Rattlers pilot scheduled to fly to Palawan climbed out of his plane. Something had gone wrong. While he could fly in an emergency, he would not fly in the rain that day.

I met Snooki again at 3 p.m. He was animated. The bad news was his plane was out of service. He and Dory flew through an intense storm to get to Subic Bay, which damaged several parts in his plane. The good news was, despite the storm, they had conducted valuable auxiliary surveillance during their flight.

Both Snooki’s broken plane and Dory’s aircraft were parked in Bams’s command hangar at approximately 3:30 p.m. They sat alongside two privately owned Gulfstream jets. Dory helped me determine that both planes were fractionally owned by U.S. holding companies. The hangar’s director of flight operations told me that one is owned by a Filipino. The other is owned by someone in Singapore, who rumors circulating among the Marines suggested is Chinese. One of the challenges of working from spokes is they are not exclusively for U.S. use, and it is difficult to secure a stealth aircraft while hangar staff snap photos.

Snooki’s aircraft took four days to be repaired. It was guarded 24 hours a day while it was out of service. A Raider KC-130J ferried parts, a RAAF 28-volt battery, and people to Subic Bay from Williamtown to diagnose the damaged plane. Then a Raiders plane flew to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, where an F-35B squadron called the “Green Knights” is stationed. Snooki served as the executive officer of the Green Knights, and he planned their move to Iwakuni. The Black Knights drew on F-35B parts, including a generator, to fix Snooki’s aircraft. There were no C model-specific parts in Williamtown, and the supply was limited in Iwakuni.

While the Marines reported that they learned many valuable logistical and coordination lessons, exactly how these lessons will be applied and scaled for wartime mobilization is unclear.

Snooki told me that repairing his plane was a success for F-35 logistics. His unit drew on a range of spare parts available in theater that they were unable to bring or ship. Lockheed Martin, Black Knights pilots observed, controls the proprietary parts of the F-35 and can slow repair troubleshooting. Pilots and maintenance crews are consistent: The major impediment for Marine operations in the Pacific is the erratic process for getting spare parts and cargo into and inside the theater, followed closely by access to fuel and the rigors of aerial refueling.

Due to the unrelenting rain and storm and the two broken planes, neither the planned ship strike nor the F/A-18 refueling flight happened.

After repairing his plane, Snooki and Dory flew to Wake Island, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, to meet their squadron. But they got stuck. There were no Air Force tankers available to move them. Ultimately, the squadron relied on two Raider KC-130J’s to move them, two at a time, back to Hawaii over five days. Britney told me that her unit takes a twisted pride in this: “We like being the ones who always find a way to get to yes.” From Hawaii to San Diego, the Black Knights contracted a private aerial refueler. This was despite an ongoing Air Force exercise in the Pacific at the time, which was ironically designed to test Air Force logistics and coordination with allies and partners.

In peacetime, the Black Knights had to navigate several logistical hurdles to fix Snooki’s plane, from diagnosing the issue to traversing the Pacific for spare parts and then making their way home. They did it on their own with the support of the Raiders and contract aerial refueling and shipping.

This is in ideal circumstances, when Marine systems do not have to cope with many different F-35s or F/A-18s breaking and being shot at once or partner and allied militaries needing all the spare parts available to them. And while the Marines reported that they learned many valuable logistical and coordination lessons, exactly how these lessons will be applied and scaled for wartime mobilization is unclear.

A J-20 fighter jet performs during the Changchun Air Show in China’s Jilin province on July 26. Wan Quan/VCG via Getty Images

The United States does not know the variables involved in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s calculations about conflict in Asia. U.S. leaders trying to find an equation for when enough military intermingling with allies and partners produces sufficient integrated deterrence face an inherently unprovable problem. The success of deterrence can only show over time; its failure is more immediate and far more costly.

And it’s hard to know the impact U.S. doctrinal and tactical choices have—unintentionally or otherwise—on China. Huang Xilian, the Chinese ambassador to the Philippines, said in April that offering the United States access to military bases near the Taiwan Strait was “stoking the fire” of regional tensions. But Beijing has an inherent interest in saying any action that deters it is a provocation.

Yet surrounding any country with permanent and temporary bases that can be used to deny access to sea lanes and launch standoff fire power could reasonably be viewed as provocative—even if the countries involved welcome it. This concern is magnified by the F-35 because of how well it operates with allies, common logistical networks, its stealth, and its longer range.

Both Air Force and Marine refuelers are large aircraft that attract the attention of adversaries, especially if they are in the air for long periods of time. As the Air Force and Marines address their coordination issues (on refueling booms and refueling in general), and both employ common hubs, spokes, and nodes to support integrated deterrence, near-peer competitor security concerns might be further magnified.

It’s equally clear that elements in the Chinese leadership believe U.S. efforts to be tantamount to offensive encirclement—and thus preparation for an unprovoked war.

The sheer scale of the U.S. military is intimidating to any adversary—and might prompt worries that the United States intends to strike first.

Washington pays little regard to these Chinese concerns. And to be sure, for the last two decades China has built up military infrastructure across the South China Sea, which it continues to expand. It has armed man-made islands with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems as well as electronic warfare tools. These islands support China’s menacing of neighboring countries, against which it makes extensive territorial claims. From the U.S. perspective, even if China views U.S. actions as provocative, Beijing has built its own arguably defensive but certainly provocative military systems.

The Biden administration and the I Marine Expeditionary Force believe their tactical efforts in Asia are clearly defensive. This is demonstrated by their coordination with partners and allies. Indeed, several U.S. allies and partners in the region have expressed their preference for the United States to help deter China. But it’s equally clear that elements in the Chinese leadership believe these efforts to be tantamount to offensive encirclement—and thus preparation for an unprovoked war.

Every pilot I spoke to believed investing in deterrence is right and necessary and that allies and partners are key. Yet it’s hard to know how these systems will cope in the event of war. It is impossible to determine if all this preparation, and the costs that come with it, is deterring China—or ultimately provoking conflict.