More subs in the Pacific, F-35s in Southeast Asia, and ‘a daggum trillion dollars’ on defense

The Russian and Chinese navies are fielding submarines that could bring new missile threats to the US mainland, the military commander responsible for North America told lawmakers last week.

In statements to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees during annual posture hearings — where commanders answer questions and outline their needs as Congress begins work on next year’s budget — US Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of US Northern Command and NORAD, highlighted the growing threat of cruise missiles launched by Russian and Chinese subs.

In written testimony, Guillot said that in the past two years China has launched its first two Shang III-class nuclear-powered guided-missile subs. If armed with land-attack cruise missiles, those subs “could provide Beijing a clandestine land-attack option beyond the Indo-Pacific region, potentially holding at risk critical infrastructure in Alaska and the US West Coast,” Guillot wrote.

China could use that capability, along with its “world-class” cyber capability, “to threaten or attack our critical defense infrastructure in an attempt to dissuade or frustrate our force flows across the Pacific and degrade the effectiveness of our forward combat operations,” Guillot added.

While China’s capabilities are improving, Russia is still “the greatest military threat to the homeland today,” Guillot said, singling out Russia’s Severodvinsk-class subs, which not only have features that make them harder to detect but have already demonstrated the ability to launch cruise missiles at land targets, a relatively new capability for the Russian navy and one that worries officials in the US and in other NATO militaries.

A number of US officials, including Guillot’s predecessor, have cited the Sev-class as a potential threat, one that “will only become more acute later in the decade” when those subs are armed with Russia’s Tsirkon hypersonic missile, Guillot said in his written testimony.

The first Sev-class sub took 20 years to build, its construction delayed by post-Soviet dysfunction, and entered service in 2014. Russia has churned them out since then, with nine now in service, launched, or under construction. The first two to enter service were assigned to the Northern Fleet, based in northwestern Russia. The next two, commissioned in December 2021 and December 2023, were assigned to the Pacific Fleet. Sev-class subs operating in the Atlantic and the Pacific pose what US officials have called “a dual flank” threat.

"The ability to detect with undersea sensors is more important today than ever before because of the advances in the Sev,” which is “now a threat to both coasts,” Guillot said at the House hearing. “The quiet nature with which those submarines can operate mean that they could very easily get much closer to the US and then deploy their large arsenal of cruise missiles to a point where, if that were allowed to happen, the first detection we would likely get could be the explosions of the cruise missiles.”

The Pentagon is reinvesting in its Cold War-era undersea surveillance system, and the fleets that Guillot mentioned will likely remain small — China could have three Shang III-class subs operational by 2025, and Russia is reportedly considering building 12 Sev-class subs to divide between its Northern and Pacific Fleets — in comparison to the 25 attack subs the US Navy has based in the Pacific (though there are doubts about the future size of the US sub fleet).

But Western officials say they have trouble keeping track of Sev-class subs in the Atlantic, and fears that one of them or a Chinese sub could evade detection and fire the kind of missiles "you can fly into a garage” at a US military base or port will only increase.

In other news

I have a story in Breaking Defense about Philippine and Japanese cruise missile acquisitions. By the end of March, Manila expects to have its new Indian/Russian-designed BrahMos anti-ship missiles and Japan plans to begin training its personnel to operate US-made Tomahawks. Their purchases, and similar acquisitions by other countries, reflect growing investment across the region in new missile technology — a trend driven by increasing concern about the missiles fielded by China and North Korea.

I also wrote last week about a milestone tour of Southeast Asia by US F-35s during the first half of March. The stealth jets landed in Brunei for the first time and then headed to Singapore for first-of-its-kind bilateral training. F-35s then arrived in Thailand to take part in the US-Thai-Singaporean exercise Cope Tiger for the first time. The Brunei visit reflects Pacific Air Forces’ search for more places to operate from, part of a broader strategy focused on dispersing in a crisis or conflict (I wrote about that ongoing search for The Diplomat earlier this month), and the tour as a whole reflects how the US military is trying to bolster its partnerships in Southeast Asia.

As part of that effort to spread out, the US Air Force is seeking $400 million to improve airfield facilities on Yap, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia. Yap International Airport “will be used as an important divert location for aircraft,” budget documents released this month say. A longer runway is needed so larger aircraft can land and take off “quickly and safely” and to provide “increased capacity” that supports “multi-service forces in the rapid establishment of operational capabilities in various locations.” The US has funded similar work across the region. In addition to upgrades at its air bases on Guam, it is making improvements to airfields on the nearby island of Tinian and in the Philippines and Australia.

Amid its civil war, Myanmar has regained the title of world’s biggest opium producer. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report released this month that the estimated amount of land used to grow opium there rose 18% to 116,400 acres from 2022 to 2023 — that’s lower than the peak of 143,300 acres in 2013, but the expansion was accompanied by a 16% increase in estimated yield to a record of 20.43 pounds per acre. The UNODC report also said Colombia finished 2023 with a record amount of land being used to cultivate coca, the base ingredient in cocaine: more than 607,000 acres.

What they’re saying

“I was also pleased to be joined on that mission by the Indo-Pacom commander, Adm. Aquilino, whose presence with me underscored that the US has a whole-of-government approach to the Philippines and that the strength of both our national and our economic security relationship with the Philippines. As he and I said, economic security is national security.” — Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo during March 14 press briefing, after leading a presidential trade mission to the Philippines.

“We do not need to spend more on defense than we are spending right now, period. We need to spend it better. But we're approaching a daggum trillion dollars per year in defense. [If] we can't defend the United States, our allies and partners for that, that's on us, as a people. And I will tell you right now, we don't need to spend more. We need to spend it better. That means that there are private and public interests that have to be subordinated to the national interest.” — Clinton Hinote, who retired last year as the general in charge of Air Force Futures, at an event in November. Hinote cited opposition from Congressional delegations, such as Arizona lawmakers’ objections to the A-10 retirements, as an obstacle to better spending. The Biden administration’s 2025 budget proposal, released last week, included $895 billion for defense.

Here’s a map

A Congressional Research Service map of US bases in the Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. Included are the nine bases the US is allowed to access as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines.