Old things rarely go away forever. In military terms, many things are frequently relegated to museums. But sometimes – things lay dormant, “sleeping” if you like, waiting for someone to need them again.
Like, for example, old air bases.
Eighty years after B-29 Superfortresses thundered down its runways carrying atomic bombs toward Japan, the airfield complex at Tinian, in the Northern Marianas Islands, is awakening from its jungle slumber. What was once the world’s busiest airport in 1945 — with 40,000 personnel and four 8,500-foot runways — has become ground zero for America’s most ambitious Pacific military infrastructure project since World War II.
The U.S. Air Force has committed nearly half a billion dollars to restore this historic airfield in the Northern Marianas, with satellite imagery showing dramatic progress as over 20 million square feet of degraded pavement emerges from decades of tropical overgrowth. Fluor Corporation received a $409 million contract in April 2024 to complete the restoration within five years, transforming what Pacific Air Forces commander General Kenneth Wilsbach called an “extensive facility” back into operational readiness.
But this isn’t nostalgia driving American bulldozers through Tinian’s jungle. This is strategic necessity in an era of renewed great power competition. The reclamation project is part of the U.S. military’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy, which shifts operations from centralized physical infrastructures to a network of smaller, dispersed locations that can complicate adversary planning. Translation: China’s expanding missile arsenal can now reach America’s major Pacific bases like Andersen Air Force Base on Guam and Kadena in Okinawa, making distributed basing a survival imperative rather than strategic preference.
The timing is no coincidence, either. The Pacific Deterrence Initiative, established in fiscal year 2021 and modeled after the European Deterrence Initiative created following Russia’s 2014 Crimea invasion, represents the largest regional deterrence investment since the Cold War, with congressional authorizations totaling over $40 billion from fiscal years 2021-2024. Tinian sits at the heart of this investment, positioned strategically in what military planners call the “Second Island Chain” — a defensive arc spanning from Japan through the Marianas to Australia designed to project American power deep into the Western Pacific.
The Pacific Ocean is massive. Most people don’t think of this on a daily basis, as if it comes up at all, it is in the form of air travel, measured in hours. A modern United States Navy supply ship, moving at 20 knots (about 23 mph) will require a minimum of 13 days to move from San Francisco, California to Manila in the Philippines. For modern armed conflict, this is a crushingly long distance. As a result, maintaining bases across the wide expanse of the Pacific is not an optional decision. It is for this reason, that the Second and Third Island Chains have been defined, and why real money is being spent to fortify both strategic lines.
Recent analysis by the Hudson Institute suggests just 10 missiles with cluster munitions could neutralize all exposed aircraft and fuel facilities at major U.S. airbases, underscoring why dispersion has become doctrine. Tinian’s restoration provides what one Pentagon official described as critical “divert capability” if primary bases become “unusable” — a euphemism for what happens when Chinese missiles start flying with any accuracy.
The island’s compact 39 square miles and sparse population of 3,000 residents belie its outsize strategic importance. Located less than 1,500 miles from both Tokyo and Beijing, Tinian still offers the same geographic advantages that made it invaluable in 1945. The difference now, is that instead of targeting Imperial Japan, American planners are positioning combat power to deter — or if necessary, directly combat — Chinese aggression across multiple potential flash points from the Philippines to the South China Sea.
Work that began in January 2024 has already achieved significant milestones, with a groundbreaking ceremony in August marking “one of the most extensive rehabilitation projects in Air Force history”. RED HORSE engineering squadrons — specialists in rapid runway construction — have been clearing jungle and restoring infrastructure that lay dormant since 1946, when the last American units departed what was then the world’s most formidable air base.
The symbolism is inescapable: where atomic weapons once departed to end one world war, conventional deterrence now prepares to prevent the next one. History may not repeat on Tinian, but it certainly echoes in the roar of returning American aircraft engines.
But…why? Why are both the United States and Communist China struggling so hard over the regions off the Asian eastern coast? In a word – money. Ocean commerce currently accounts for between $2.5 and 3 trillion of revenue, yearly, providing around 150 million full time jobs. Look around your house – chances are nearly certain that at least one expensive item within your sight came from overseas, unless you are living in a wooden hut – and even then, at least one of the tools used to build that hut probably came to you via ship, whether you realize it or not.
The world is getting progressively more dangerous as 2025 winds onwards. It is neither hyperbole nor paranoia to chant “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” when one goes to bed at night, because things have a tendency to creep up on you in the dark. It is for this reason that smart military’s only throw things that work away very slowly.
Including real estate…something that the BRAC should have paid more attention to.
