Air Force wants
fighting forces on GuamThe U.S. territory is within ready
striking distance of the Korean peninsula
WASHINGTON >> The Air Force wants to return to the Cold War-era practice of basing fighter jets and other strike and support planes on Guam, the Pacific island that is in ready striking distance of the Korean peninsula, the Air Force's top officer in the region said yesterday.
"It's an active proposal," said Gen. William Begert, commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces.
While no final decisions have been made to add air power in the Pacific, the Air Force has made the case for basing a variety of aircraft on Guam, a U.S. territory that generally welcomes an expanded military presence, he told reporters in a wide-ranging interview.
"The ability to project force from Guam is very valuable to us," Begert said.
Aircraft and other U.S. offensive forces that had been based on Guam during the Cold War were withdrawn during the 1990s defense budget cuts and drawdown of U.S. military capabilities worldwide.
A few years ago, the Air Force began building up the infrastructure on Andersen Air Force Base, the main air base on Guam, including stockpiling large amounts of munitions.
In 2002, the Navy based two attack submarines at Guam, the USS San Francisco and the USS City of Corpus Christi, and it plans to add a third this year.
The Navy also is considering basing an aircraft carrier there.
Begert mentioned basing a fighter wing on Guam, as well as air refueling aircraft, the new unmanned Global Hawk spy plane and long-range bombers like the B-2 stealth bomber, for which special air-conditioned hangars were positioned there last year before the start of the Iraq war.
These are "very attractive kinds of options that in today's world, with the importance of Asia in this century, all make good sense," he said. Begert noted that last spring the Air Force deployed B-1 and B-52 long-range bombers to Guam temporarily.
Begert also pointed out that Guam is about 1,500 miles from the Korean peninsula and a similar distance from the Taiwan Straits, which is a potential flashpoint for conflict with communist China.
"As I travel around Asia, it's clear to me that the countries in Asia like our presence in Asia," he said. "They don't see us as threatening; quite the opposite, they see us as stabilizing. So I don't see (that) if we make decisions to put forces at Guam that anybody's going to be threatened by that at all."
Guam was ceded to the United States by Spain in 1898. It was surrendered to the Japanese on Dec. 10, 1941, and it remained under Japanese occupation until July 1944, when U.S. forces led by the 3rd Marine Division liberated the island.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Guam last November to get a firsthand look at U.S. military facilities there, including Andersen Air Force Base and Navy installations.