08.10.2021, 18:27
Zitat:Biden Administration Should Make Guam’s Defense Center of Indo-Pacific Strategy, Expert Sayshttps://news.usni.org/2021/10/07/biden-a...xpert-says
The defense of Guam should be the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s focus on countering threats from China in the Indo-Pacific, an expert on missile defense said Wednesday.
“Make the main thing the main thing,” Thomas Karako, director of the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. He stressed the island’s strategic importance to American presence and operations in the region. The U.S. territory provides major support for Navy submarines operating in the Pacific, an air base capable of sustaining Air Force strategic bombers and a Coast Guard headquarters and several cutters. [...]
The former head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, has advocated for the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system to defend Guam from Chinese missiles. Davidson included the system in a list of priorities he sent to Congress about the Indo-Pacific.
To defend Guam against new hypersonic and updated cruise missiles or an “old-fashioned ballistics’” attack from China or North Korea, Karako said the threats have to be identified. Defending Guam would require working with mature technologies, providing integrated air and missile defense systems for the island, and having these systems be interoperable among the services and with allies.
Schneemann