When American military planners discuss preparations for a potential war with China, they talk mostly about the threat such a conflict would pose to U.S. high-tech fighters, stealth bombers, or hypersonic weapons.But the first thing Beijing would do is fire off thousands of missiles and knock out communications systems across Asia in a matter of hours. But underneath all those whiz-bang gadgets and gizmos sits something a lot more basic — old-school, unglamorous and absolutely critical. And as far as defense analysts go, it might be the very thing that lets them down in a war if one ever happens: airlift.
Airlift isn’t flashy. It is not the kind of capability that gets featured in recruitment videos or hyped in congressional hearings. Yet it is the backbone of nearly every military operation the United States has ever conducted. Material — fuel and ammunition, but also spare parts, rations, medical supplies; vehicles and drones; armor ranging from artillery shells to repair kits — all of it must be moved rapidly from Point A to Point B. And in a war as massively geographic and logistically brutal as anything in the Pacific, airlift is not just important but the essence of staying alive.
That’s where the problem quietly exists for the US Air Force.
For decades, a massive fleet of cargo aircraft — C-17s, C-5s and their workhorse older brother the C-130 — has enabled America to rush its fighting power halfway around the world. But those fleets are aging. They are airborne virtually 24/7, difficult to support and the Air Force is purchasing new planes so slowly that it is taking more old jets out of service than it is putting new ones in. The math just doesn’t work. In the case of a war with China, need for airlift would surge just as the United States was least equipped to meet it.
The Pacific doesn’t help. Everything is far apart. All the islands are long flights away. Every base needs the equivalent of infinite supply just to function at minimal capacity. Ground convoys and shorter distances in Europe or the Middle East can take up some of the slack. There is no such net in the Pacific. If air power can’t show up, forces go blind, weapons go silent and bases grind to a halt.
This is what analysts are talking about when they talk about airlift as the “Achilles’ heel” of US strategy. The Pentagon and the companies it pays are doubling down on long-range strike systems — the sorts of weapons designed to endure a first strike or strike back fast at such bullying. But those systems can’t work in a vacuum. Without fuel, a long-range bomber is just a museum exhibit. If you lose your missile truck, the battery does nothing. A forward base with no supplies is simply a target.
The other problem is vulnerability. Freight planes are big, slow, and easy to follow — precisely the kind of platform that China has spent years devising weapons to hold at risk. In such a high-intensity conflict, airlift planes would need to fly further, take longer routes, spread themselves across smaller airfields and operate in conditions far more dangerous than the US has experienced in generations. And even though the US is adjusting, it’s not doing so quickly enough for the threat.
Then there’s the human dimension of the problem. Airlift crews are already stretched. Retention is tough. Training pipelines are overloaded. Crews of maintenance workers are fatigued as they work to keep aging fleets flying. There’s a lot of talk in the Air Force about readiness, but logistics wings have been sending signals for years that they are carrying more weight than the system will bear.
That does not in any way mean the US is unprepared or unable. It signifies that the strategy has a pressure point — one that all hope never gets tested. The military is rushing to buy additional cargo planes, experiment with rehearsing resupply missions via drone, harden airfields, and move toward a “distributed” posture in which assets are spread across dozens of remote sites. But all of that requires time, money and political will.
The paradox is that airlift isn’t sexy, so it’s never catnip to the spotlight. Missiles and jets are ever the headliners, but they do not fight a new kind of war on their own. History shows that wars typically are not won on the basis of which side has the flashiest technology, but rather which can keep its machines fueled, repaired and supplied sufficiently to remain in the fight.
Which is why the problem about airlift has such an urgent feel. In a future war with China, the United States will need more than advanced weapons. It will require the unsexy, ignored, brutally essential backbone that keeps everything running. And that backbone is thinner now than military leaders are willing to acknowledge.
No amount of strength matters if you can’t move. And movement is everything in the endlessness of the Pacific.
