US forces on Guam are facing a Chinese missile threat unlike anything else and need more air defenses with deeper magazines, Army officials say (2024)

At a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel on the defense of Guam late last month, Army Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, the program executive officer for the US Army's Missiles and Space program, said that he'd called for, among other capabilities, something like the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile but with smaller rounds.

"Because the key is magazine depth. I'm looking for magazine depth," Lozano said, noting that only "having six missiles on a launcher and having about a 45-minute reload time, you're not going to be survivable in a Guam defensive situation."

The Army has said that capabilities like the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System with a magazine depth of six rounds are insufficient. The NASAMS can fire the AMRAAM.

Instead, the Army wants "an AIM-120D-like capability, but with smaller rounds that fit inside an IFPC Increment 2 launcher holding 18 interceptors," according to a Congressional Research Service report. The Army Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 can fire AIM-9Xs. Lozano said he needs an AIM-120 capability in an AIM-9 package to "be able to service the quantity of threats we expect to defend against."

And this is just one line of effort, though, for Guam. A challenge facing the US joint force efforts to build a layered, integrated defense network for Guam is fielding systems capable of working together to intercept an adversary's attack. Such a barrage could be complex and include waves of unmanned systems, ballistic missiles, and supersonic missiles.

"We're looking at a pacing threat of China that has offensive capabilities unlike anything we've been seeing," Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, Director of Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and Executive Officer for the Joint Program Office for Guam, said at the CSIS event, explaining "it requires us to think differently."

"We're looking at a small space, we're looking at a potential adversary that has a lot of capability and capacity, and so we have to be very efficient with how we utilize the capabilities we have, so it's causing us to think differently," he said.

Efforts to develop defensive capabilities for Guam have been underway for a few years now, but major decisions on which agencies will own which equipment and how the capabilities will work together in an integrated fashion still remain to be made.

At the CSIS talk, Army officials noted that work is underway on how to best incorporate a range of different offensive and defensive capabilities. These include Patriot air- and missile-defense systems, the in-development Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor planned to replace Patriot's radar, newly fielded Mid-Range Capability missile launchers, and prototype Indirect Fire Protection Capability launchers.

Beyond the Army, other US service branches are also planning to incorporate their systems into the defense network. For the Navy, this includes the Aegis weapon system on destroyers and cruisers.

Perhaps the most difficult and daunting aspect of defending Guam, Rasch said, will be ensuring that all of the joint force's capabilities are able to operate together in one environment.

The nature of the threat "requires us to try to maximize the performance of these different systems brought in from the services to make sure that we're looking at what's the most effective interceptor against the threat and to not leave it to chance that we have two really bad situations occur: a threat's coming in and one service thinks the other service has it and nobody engages or, almost as bad, both services engage," he said.

US military officials and lawmakers have expressed growing concerns that Guam is vulnerable to a devastating missile attack from an adversary such as China.

Department of Defense reports on China's military highlight the capabilities that threaten the island, such as the DF-26 missile, and in May, 13 members of Congress, including the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote a letter to military leaders detailing their concerns about glaring weak spots in US bases and airfields in the Pacific. Guam is notably home to Andersen Air Force Base.

"We are concerned about the alarming lack of urgency by the Department of Defense in adopting such defensive measures," the lawmakers wrote, demanding "immediate changes" to defending US positions, including passive defenses such as hardened aircraft shelters and force dispersal.

The main prompt for this letter was, the lawmakers wrote, fear that a preemptive missile attack from China could wipe US forces out of the Pacific.

They argued that "with its current strike capabilities, China can attack all US bases in the region, targeting US service members from Okinawa to those on US territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands."

China's missile force, known as the Rocket Force, is the crowned jewel of the People's Liberation Army.

In recent years, the US has tracked a meteoric rise in the force's capabilities, arsenal size, and testing. From 2021 to 2022 alone, the Chinese military effectively doubled its stock of some missiles, including medium-range ballistic missiles capable of targeting US bases in Japan, as well as intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching Guam, according to the Pentagon's report last fall.

One such missile, the DF-26, has been commonly referred to as the "Guam Express" or the "Guam Killer."

The sheer number of ballistic missiles in China's growing arsenal is particularly concerning, but the configuration of such a missile barrage is also worrying for US military officials.

"You have to have a battle management, fire control system capable of adjusting on the fly based on how threats are presented," Lozano said. "And then, real-time, making decisions, teeing up decisions for operators to make so that they're survivable and they win in that defensive scenario."

Although some would argue it could take it further, Guam's defense is a priority for the US military amid a shift toward strengthening its position in the Pacific in order to deter further aggression from China.

But with the island closer to Beijing than Hawaii, a problem quickly becomes how to ensure the US can maintain that key position should a conflict arise. In Chinese military doctrine, there is a notable emphasis on the idea of a preemptive, surprise strike being ideal for crippling an adversary's ability to respond.

Guam is currently protected by air- and missile-defense systems like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, as well as Navy ships equipped with Aegis missile defense capabilities. But people who have been tasked with defending Guam argue additional steps ought to be taken.

A former leader of US Indo-Pacific Command previously told Business Insider that one of the best ways to counter China's missiles is to make "robust" air and missile defenses a reality this decade — not just in Guam, but also across other Pacific islands, as well as in US allies.