While technology and delivery methods continue to evolve, military air bases remain the most crucial platforms for the projection of air power.
Yet they are expensive to build, operate and maintain. Because of their strategic importance and high costs, they ought to be designed and built to provide the most efficient and flexible use for the widest variety of air platforms. Moreover, these bases should be designed to support joint strategic needs rather than special purpose, service specific uses.
The capability to support joint service, allied and coalition operations is vital: All allied or coalition aircraft should have the ability to use any air base at any time. Because Northeast Asia has become a contested environment due to the rise of China as an aspiring regional hegemon, and because air bases are alluring targets vulnerable to enemy attack (by missiles or other means), any such base in this region that is not multicapable and adaptive to support distributed air operations will be obsolete.
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