From: Karsten Heckl, retired Navy Lieutenant General / The Washington Times
Translation: Television. com
In this autumn’s review of the defence budget, Congress should fully finance the plane F-35B Lighting II. America simply cannot afford to interrupt or delay in securing this fighter plane.
This particular version of F-35The one with the lift and vertical landing skills plays a huge role in the U.S. Marine Corps strategy to contain it and, if necessary, defeat China’s aggression.
Imagine the first days of a conflict with Beijing: a full-scale missile attack hits the American airfields and Allied bases along the First Islands Zinder, seriously damaging the power of the US Air Force.
Guam, the centre in which the Pentagon is based to send forces and logistics to the West, is also under serious attack. US Navy carriers are forced to stay much farther in the East to avoid the strike zone, while their effectiveness is limited by the great distances involved.
This is not merely a thought of the worst scenario; it reflects Chinese military doctrine.
Air fields are especially vulnerable. A study by the January 2025 Hudson Institute found that China has doubled the number of fortified and unconvincing shelters for aircraft since the early 2010 ʹ in more than three thousand CHA, while during the same period, the United States has added only two fortified and 41 unfortified shelters near the municipality of Taiwan.
Much of our forward deployed air power remains exposed on track platforms, and the newly launched efforts to fortify it are far from over.
Ukraine has shown what costs such vulnerability can have. In June 2025, Kyiv’s Operation Spider’s Network used underground fears on Russian territory to hit strategic bombers on land on several air bases. The U.S. has not deployed protection that can counter a similar attack as we have seen from the huge damage the planes have suffered on land in the Middle East during the ongoing conflict with Iran.
China’s first blow against bases in the Western Pacific would exceed anything seen by Ukraine or Iran.
Part of the response to this dilemma is distribution: the spread of forces, including planes, in many locations with minimal infrastructure.
A Rand study warned that although distribution can protect planes from this kind of attack, it can lower the number of combat flights by spreading too much force. To be effective, a force must be able to arm itself, fuel them, and launch planes from those scattered locations.
An analysis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on a simulated conflict for Taiwan reached the same conclusion: Survival without the ability to continue combat flights will end in defeat.
The power that can be distributed and yet fly has a chance to win, and that’s why the plane was built F-35 B.
In scattered dislocation. F-35 B– has unique survival skills among aircraft with fixed wings. Unlike planes that depend on permanent tracks, F-35 B can continue to carry out combat flights from countries with minimal and unimproved infrastructure. It can be hidden in an extremely short or too rough path for any conventional fighter aircraft; small marine teams can re-armed and fuel it there.
Then he returns to combat with his leadership skills in in invisibility and the combination of data from sensors.
scattered along coastal areas into small, mobile units, these planes F-35 B They also provide critical air coverage for marines carrying weapons against ships, which is central to the operational concept of the Pacific Marine Corps.
This is not theoretical. Marine units have been training for years at advanced arm stations and fuel supplies, lowering F-35 B-on remote islands and short track, re-arming and fuel-fueling mobile teams and turning them back into combat.
The concept is confirmed in a real shooting fight. During this year’s operations against Iran, marines used fuel supply stations with minimal infrastructure to quickly return F-35 B-to operate and reduce dependence on vulnerable orbits of tankers.
F-35B is able to survive combat, but if it can afford Washington’s budgetary maneuvers, that remains an open question. Let’s hope wisdom prevails and that securing more F-35B planes will be up on the list of priorities of Congress and Pentagon.
The outcome of this autumn’s budgetary battle could be crucial to determining whether we will win a Pacific war. /Telegraphy/
