Western debates about air power are increasingly driven by raw arithmetic. Analysts weigh missile stockpiles, range, and the ability to generate sorties against a limited number of key runways, fuel systems, and aerial refueling tankers. The prevailing conclusion is that U.S. and allied air power could be severely impaired early in a conflict with China. While China’s denial-of-access and zone-blocking capabilities pose a sustained, serious, and deadly threat to U.S. and allied air operations in the Indo-Pacific, the belief that this "numbers game" guarantees victory is misguided—something Russia is learning the hard way in Ukraine. The US-Iran war of 2026 showed why: real combat is an interaction shaped by friction, adaptation, and mutual counter-air actions, David Deptula and Jahara Matisek write in War on the Rocks.
The US-Israeli war against Iran made these processes even clearer, as Iran struck US and allied military targets in the Middle East, damaging aircraft, infrastructure, and radar. This was achieved with ballistic missiles, as well as munitions that many people call drones (such as the "Shahed") but are more accurately cruise missiles. At the same time, US and Israeli forces attacked Iranian leadership, missile launchers, weapons depots, naval facilities, and air defense systems. The conflict has shown that missile campaigns are not one-sided displays of superiority, but dynamic clashes of strikes, distractions, interceptor depletion, "strikes and withdrawals", repair, adaptation, and tempo.
A 2024 Stimson Center report illustrates the scale of the problem. Repeated missile strikes can limit fighter operations at U.S. bases in Japan for two weeks and disrupt tanker aircraft for a month, with lesser effects in Guam. New Chinese missiles with ranges of more than 5,000 miles also put aircraft carriers at risk, as well as bases in Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast.
The distances in the Pacific Ocean make this dependency inevitable. Most U.S. fighter jets have a combat radius of about 500 to 900 miles. The nearest major U.S. base to Taiwan—Kadena Air Base in Okinawa—is about 370 miles away. Fighters can reach the combat zone without refueling, but without tanker aircraft, they have very limited time over the combat zone. From Guam, the distance is over 1,500 miles, requiring multiple refuelings for a single mission. In practice, operational range in the Indo-Pacific is a problem limited by the availability of tankers long before it becomes a question of aircraft.
The People's Liberation Army's missile force has hundreds of intermediate- and medium-range ballistic missile launchers capable of striking U.S. and allied bases throughout the Pacific. China is estimated to have about 1,800 intermediate- and medium-range missiles, supported by a growing stockpile of cruise missiles. Against this structure stand about 20 major US air bases in the region.
This is the sobering reality for military planners, and it is why the US military is building new air bases and strengthening existing ones in the Indo-Pacific. Current "missile math" suggests that relatively limited salvos, if targeted at key nodes, can inflict disproportionate operational damage. But stockpiles, range, and timing alone do not determine the outcome. They are means that shape the initial phase of a campaign — not necessarily the final outcome. Strategy is not about counting missiles, but about how forces conduct offensive and defensive operations and adapt under pressure.
The Limitations of Missile-Based Logic
There is an analytical risk in approaches that focus on missiles. As Carl von Clausewitz warned in "On War", warfare cannot be reduced to mathematical rules because of the complex interplay of people, governments, armies, politics, emotions, and chance. War games that assume that one side can launch repeated massive strikes under near-ideal conditions while the other merely suffers defeat and repairs present a simplistic, two-dimensional picture of war. War is dynamic, not a static scenario. It is shaped by adaptation, disruption, deception, initiative, and counteraction. When models take the active role of one side away, strategy is replaced by arithmetic.
This is important because missile-based logic often treats the neutralization of air bases as a binary outcome. In reality, it is a dynamic process between attack rate, repair capacity, distraction, and operational adaptation. The question is not whether bases will be attacked — that is certain — but whether those attacks will result in a permanent loss of combat power and how they will be responded to.
Missiles depend on intelligence, targeting, command and control, logistics, and time. Every missile aimed at one target cannot be used on another. Every salvo attack requires an accurate assessment of the damage to justify subsequent strikes. Mobile launchers must be moved, loaded, and re-prepared. Missile storage facilities, reloading systems, and command centers are fixed, vulnerable, and limited. Maintaining multiple massive salvos requires real organizational and logistical efforts, including reload time, which static models often ignore. The difference becomes clear only when looking at real combat experience, not just models. Static assumptions describe theoretical vulnerabilities. The real-world campaign determines the outcome.
What recent combat actually shows
Since 2022, Russia has been consistently attacking Ukrainian air bases with various types of missiles. The effect on Ukraine has been more of a disruption and adaptation than annihilation, with the success rate of Russian strikes remaining around 20%. Air bases have been damaged, operations have been relocated, and deployment patterns have been altered — but Ukraine has adapted through better air defense and dispersal of assets, without permanently disabling bases. Russia is also adapting its methods for repairing airfields in response to Ukrainian strikes.
Modern air forces operate as systems. Distraction, deception, interception of munitions, rapid repairs, alternative bases, and changes in the way sorties are generated make the simple logic of "hit runway = end of operations" unworkable. Ukraine has limited the long-term effect of Russian strikes by adapting, and Russia is also changing its tactics in response. The country with the better ability to learn quickly has the advantage.
The war with Iran also shows how drone and missile strikes can hit bases, radars, and support systems. But offensive air operations and counterstrikes against the sources of attacks themselves can change the pace of missile strikes. Ukraine and Iran together show that neutralizing air bases is an interactive campaign shaped by adaptation, disruption, and recovery.
However, the analogy has limitations, and they are important. China is not just a bigger version of Russia or Iran: the People's Liberation Army's missile forces have specialized anti-ship ballistic missiles with maneuvering warheads, hypersonic warheads, and an integrated maritime reconnaissance and strike system that links surveillance and strike at ranges of over 1,500 kilometers. This system is supported by the Yaogan satellite network - over-the-horizon radars and data fusion systems designed for maritime strikes.
Russia has over-the-horizon radars and satellite networks, and Iran has demonstrated the ability to use Chinese satellite data in the 2025 conflict, but neither of these countries has achieved the scale, integration, and specialization of the Chinese strike system. The Chinese case is not just bigger - it is more complex. This does not weaken the argument, but rather strengthens it, because even a more integrated system remains vulnerable to disruption, deception, exhaustion, and adaptation.
This distinction is important for the Indo-Pacific debate. China has far more capable missiles and drones than Russia or Iran. But sustained suppression of air bases requires repeated success in conditions of uncertainty, retaliation, damage assessment, and the ability to retaliate over time. The side that best manages this dynamic process by adapting more quickly, repairing, distracting, and counterattacking will dictate the terms of the conflict.
Runways are not binary targets
Attacks on air bases are often perceived as decisive: hitting the runway halts air operations. In practice, runway failure is a spectrum. Damage creates delay and friction, but rarely leads to a permanent shutdown. The reality is a balance between the pace of attacks and the speed of recovery.
After more than four years of sustained Russian strikes on Ukrainian air bases — with hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, sabotage, and other means — Russia has failed to permanently disable Ukraine’s air base network. Individual runways, taxiways, radars, and aircraft have been hit, and some bases have been temporarily inoperable, but Ukraine has kept its air force operational through distraction, deception, mobility, rapid repair, and alternative bases.
During the Cold War, Sweden designed its air force around dispersed bases and rapid recovery, using fighters from highways and improvised runways. Aircraft such as the "Gripen" were specifically designed to operate from short and unprepared airfields with minimal ground infrastructure, demonstrating that a damaged runway does not automatically mean paralysis.
Modern American doctrine follows a similar logic. The US Air Force's engineering planning calls for rapid recovery of airport infrastructure. Standards developed in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers call for repairing about 120 runway craters in approximately 6.5 hours with multiple crews. The goal is not perfect recovery, but minimal operational capability.
From a campaign perspective, this creates a resource-sharing problem. To sustain a runway failure, an attacker must strike with sufficient frequency to outpace the repair. With dispersion and accelerated repair, the cost of each subsequent effect increases.
This does not minimize the problem. Repair capacity is limited, and men and equipment are vulnerable. But the result is usually a gradual deterioration, not an instant shutdown. Air operations become more difficult, but they do not stop - and new technologies are being developed to repair runways even faster.
Therefore, runways affect the pace, but do not determine the outcome. Treating them as "on/off" obscures the logic of the campaign and exaggerates the effect of the first strikes. For the defenders, this also means protecting other critical systems, such as fuel and power, through dispersion and reinforcement.
Air tankers, concentration, dispersion: the real Achilles heel
Air tankers allow fighters to operate beyond their short autonomous radius. If they are pushed back, fighters become significantly less effective. During the Iran war, waves of Shahed missiles and missiles damaged key systems at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia — including an E-3 airborne early warning aircraft and several KC-135 tankers. This is the vulnerability that American planners must deal with in the Indo-Pacific: an adversary need not destroy fighters if he can disrupt the command, control, and refueling systems that make air power effective.
The post-Cold War model of concentrating aircraft on a few large bases is effective but not sustainable against an adversary like China. It is suitable for civil aviation, but problematic in a high-stakes military conflict. If runways are repeatedly damaged, tankers may be forced to operate from distant bases. China is also developing hypersonic anti-aircraft missiles with a range of about 1,200 miles to hit key aircraft such as AWACS and tankers. This makes maintaining air power in a theater of operations much more difficult.
Flexible combat deployment is one way to change the missile "math". Dispersion increases the number of targets for the enemy and complicates targeting them, diluting their missile resources. But China could also adapt this model and use it against the United States.
Dispersion also comes at a cost. Without adequate support, highly dispersed forces can reduce the ability to generate sorties. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution because it involves a trade-off between cost, risk, sustainability, and effectiveness. The question is not whether to disperse, but to what extent it optimizes combat power.
Offensive air operations as load reduction, not escalation
The survivability of air power in the Indo-Pacific region is improved by fortified bases, dispersal, rapid repair, and interception of missile salvos. But that is not enough. Defense alone treats adversary capabilities as fixed, not variable. The most effective way to reduce pressure on defense is to weaken the adversary’s ability to launch the attacks themselves.
The war with Iran makes this clear: while American and Israeli systems were intercepting missiles and drones, they were also attacking the launch systems. Coalition operations hit over 13,000 targets, and after four days of intense strikes, Iranian attacks had dropped by over 80%. This means reducing the load — fewer launchers, weaker sensors, broken command structures, and a slower rate of strikes.
This is the essence of offensive air operations. They are not simply a quest for air superiority, but a pressure on the entire chain of defeating the enemy. They were key in Operation "Desert Storm". By defeating these systems, they reduce the volume and effectiveness of strikes and change the "missile math" itself. They also enhance deterrence.
China’s long-range strikes depend on a complex system of launchers, mobile platforms, infrastructure, intelligence, surveillance, targeting, data processing, and command structures. Mobile launchers must move, hide, and reload. Sensors must survive and relay information. Command must be reliable. Each destroyed or compromised element increases the cost of maintaining a sustained missile pressure. This forces the enemy to devote more resources to defense, deception, mobility, and recovery rather than to conducting strikes.
This directly affects the basing and vulnerability of tanker aircraft. If the enemy’s strike capability is weakened, the need for perfect base defense is reduced, repairs become more efficient, and tankers can move closer, increasing the duration of the fighter mission. Offensive operations create "breathing space" by reducing the density of strikes.
Importantly, they do not require complete success to work. Even partial deterioration accumulates. Historical campaigns show that it is the cumulative effect that is decisive. Not all strikes can be stopped, but the enemy must not be able to maintain the maximum pace.
Considering these operations as escalation is a mistake. When long-range strikes already exist, counterstrikes are a necessity. Defense alone leaves the enemy in safe zones, while an integrated approach attacks its very ability to strike.
At the same time, against China, this requires careful management of escalation. Strikes on launchers and command centers on Chinese territory would be a qualitatively different step, because China is a nuclear state and some of its systems are dual-purpose. Such strikes could be misinterpreted as a threat to nuclear deterrence. After all, Ukrainian strikes against Russia have already targeted nuclear-capable bombers and have not led to a nuclear escalation. The logic of pressure remains valid, but it must be combined with careful targeting and signaling.
Offensive air operations are best understood as a reduction in workload. They reduce the need for interceptions, the frequency of repairs, and the reliance on distant bases for tanker aircraft. They transform missile "math" from a static comparison to a dynamic system of attrition, disruption, and adaptation.
Conclusion: Challenge Does Not Mean Defeat
Complacency is not an option. Air superiority is not a given. The United States and its allies can no longer count on unhindered access to forward bases in a major conflict. Runways will be hit. Fuel systems will be attacked. Air tanker operations will be disrupted. Aircraft carriers will be threatened by long-range missiles. Early disruption is not a hypothesis but a reality of modern Indo-Pacific warfare.
But disruption is not defeat.
"Missile math" shows where pressure will be applied and why early salvos matter. It emphasizes the vulnerability of concentrated infrastructure and the key role of refueling. But it does not determine the final outcome. That is decided by battlefield interaction.
Air power is not decided in one blow — it is developed through cycles of action and counteraction. Runway repairs shorten disruption time. Distraction complicates targeting. Defense creates uncertainty and costs. Offensive operations reduce pressure by weakening the enemy's ability to strike. Over time, these processes shape the pace and accumulate effects that simplistic models fail to capture.
This has strategic implications. If planners accept an inevitable early paralysis, they will be driven by passive survival rather than initiative and adaptation. A more correct approach combines two truths: that the threat is real and requires reinforcement, and that air power must be able to challenge the adversary’s strike system itself.
In the Indo-Pacific, air power will be competitive. Success depends on sustaining operations under pressure, securing range through contested resupply, and integrating offensive actions that reduce the adversary’s ability to sustain a rate of attack.
Missiles are a powerful tool of modern warfare, but they are no substitute for strategy.
Strategy arises from combining defense and offense, persistence and disruption, and survival with offensive operations that reduce the adversary’s capability rather than simply taking the hit. Shaping the military posture, logistics, and campaign concepts around this reality is the difference between capability-based deterrence and deterrence weakened by fatalism.