US Air Force logistics officer talks basing, drones in the Pacific

After decades of relying on major military hubs from Hawaii to South Korea, the Pentagon is laying the groundwork for more dispersed operations across the Pacific region .

Brig. Gen. Mike Zuhlsdorf is a key player in those discussions. He serves as the deputy director for resource integration under the Air Force’s logistics, engineering and force protection branch.

As other defense officials negotiate with foreign leaders for access to bare-bones airfields and more established bases overseas, it’s Zuhlsdorf’s team that is figuring out how to turn those sites into valuable Air Force lily pads in a maritime-dominant region for the decades ahead.

Zuhlsdorf spoke to Air Force Times at the Pentagon on Dec. 15. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Is the Air Force talking to other countries about using foreign bases that already exist, or are you considering building new sites?

We are not putting in new bases. These are bases and airfields that we’ve had since World War II, where we were able to hopscotch across the Pacific to ultimately get close enough to Japan. There are a lot of airfields like that, whether it’s in the first island chain — Japan down through the Philippines — or the second island chain, near Guam and Tinian.

We’re talking about renovating, rejuvenating and rehabilitating. We will make sure the pavement is still viable, trim back the vegetation where the jungle has encroached on the runway, and set up the basic essentials that we need in the event that we need to flush aircraft from a hub into these spokes, keep them safe and then turn them.

Brig. Gen. Michael Zuhlsdorf is the deputy director of resource integration for the U.S. Air Force. (Staff Sgt. Chad Trujillo/U.S. Air Force)

What do we need? Things like fuel; major aircraft parts that six to 12 airmen might be able to fix there; maybe some munitions [and airfield repair resources]; the essential lighting or navigational systems for nighttime operations. A little bit of base air defense might be part of that, or camouflage, concealment and deception. Almost all the hubs will have a command, control and communication system that will fly in with them so that we can maintain connectivity to the mothership at all times.

We are working with allies and partners. Pacific Air Forces has identified airfields that we want to invest in, and they’re going to work with the Philippines and Australia to do that. We are teaming with them on some projects that will allow us to get fuel out there, some munitions capability and other long-range transport aircraft that would come in and be able to resupply.

Which existing airfields are currently on the list?

There are more in the second island chain that we are identifying. There are additional airfields that are in Guam and a few in the first island chain that we’ll eventually get to.

What we’re trying to do is nail down access and overflight stuff before a formal announcement would come out. Those that have been in the press are the ones where we’ve already teamed with those countries. We are working with other allies and partners in the area to secure that very critical access, overflight and basing.

[Editor’s note: A spokesperson for the Air Force’s international affairs branch declined to provide specifics about which countries the U.S. is in talks with to host air operations abroad.]

Will the Air Force expand Andersen Air Force Base on Guam or other areas on the island?

We have projects for some hangars that are going in at Andersen, and at some of the chosen hubs we want to operate out of, maybe a spoke or two — wherever we decide is optimal. We’re looking to maybe throw up a shelter system that allows us to safeguard critical equipment. We need to take into account the sustainment of all that equipment we pre-position, and so we will want to put those into a controlled-environment facility so that when we need it, it’ll operate as advertised.

U.S. Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force aeromedical evacuation personnel transport manikins to a static Super Hercules aircraft during the exercise Mobility Guardian at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on July 10, 2023. (Staff Sgt. Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force)

We’re also thinking about protecting those hubs and spokes so that the airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines and guardians that we’re going to send out there will be as safe as possible. There’s a big threat from ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles. We’re trying to make sure those airmen can turn those aircraft as advertised.

None of us who wear this uniform are looking for war. Our job is to be prudent with taxpayer dollars, and what the American people want from us is to plan.

What’s the timeline to open these sites? How are you phasing them in?

Two to three future years defense programs (FYDP). We are working through [which sites should be prioritized].

Is 10-15 years too long?

We’re going to see concrete stuff within a [five-year] FYDP and it will continue to manifest through that time period. We’ve got some weapon systems in the queue — Next Generation Air Dominance, collaborative combat aircraft. It’ll happen in that window.

What are you learning from Air Force spokes across Europe that you’ve used in partner countries since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022? How are you applying those lessons to the Pacific?

This is a unique opportunity for us. We’ve been in U.S. Central Command, and being able to move pieces, parts, munitions, aircraft, personnel and everything like that has been relatively uncontested. Yes, the Army has had some challenges there when you talk about the main supply routes, but generally it was not a contested environment. Ukraine is a contested environment, and logistics lessons that we learn are invaluable.

What are the critical pieces and parts that they need? How did they get these parts from location X to location Y? Did they use this system or that system? How did they pull the data? We are rapidly getting to a data analytics framework that’s going to allow us to visibly see what supplies and equipment we need. We’re going to be able to throw that up into a basing and logistics data analytics environment that’s going to allow us to, as logisticians, figure out where we need to put the next aircraft part or the next load of fuel.

Russia and Ukraine have a lot of small unmanned aerial systems that are impeding each other’s progress. How are they tracking those systems? How are they taking those systems down? How are they doing air defense for air bases? Those lessons are being gathered up.

What is the proposed cost for Pacific basing projects in fiscal 2025?

We’re working through FY25. That’s part of the resourcing our senior leaders are churning through right now.

There hasn’t been a profound change in counter-drone technology over the past several years. Where does that capability stand and what would you like to see?

We are probably still nascent. We literally just had conversations about this — within the last four or five months — about expanding and investing more in that very important battlespace. There’s a lot of research and a lot of dollars that are being applied to that problem set. You see that coming into play not only in the Ukrainian-Russian war, but also now with Hamas and Israel.

A U.S. Navy Martin PBM Mariner bomber and a Consolidated PB2Y Coronado amphibious aircraft undergo maintenance around August 1945 at a base in the Mariana Islands of the Pacific Ocean. (Keystone/Hulton Archive via Getty Images)

Are small drones a threat in the Pacific, despite the region’s significant size?

These are all islands, and they all have an indigenous population. You can rest assured that there’s probably people who don’t like the United States on those islands. Some of these smaller systems could absolutely impact an air tasking order. To protect the integrity of that air tasking order, we need to think through how we can get at that small threat, while other people are thinking through those ballistic missiles and those hypersonic missiles.

It is a full-spectrum air defense platform for an air base that we’re looking at, along with the camouflage, concealment and deception program, electronic warfare, and all these bits and pieces.

What are the main hurdles to achieving this vision?

One of the big problems is not having a budget. When you think about procurement lines that we need to stand up and invest in, we absolutely need Congress’ help in getting a budget passed so we can get the capabilities that we know we need.

There’s always the joint interoperability piece that we are yearning for, and the ability to share information with our allies and partners. We’re trying to work a little bit more aggressively on what information we can share with them, and what tactics, techniques and procedures we might be able to share. We’ve had success in Australia recently on some refueling efforts with the F-35 fighter jet. That’s a big success.

We’re breaking down barriers where we can to make sure that we’ve got the necessary capability and that everybody understands what that is. We’re sending people over to Japan right now to work with them even closer on exercises and on different weapons systems. Those are big barriers, but we’re overcoming them.

The threat that’s been posed to us over the last three or four years from the People’s Republic of China has galvanized a lot of allies and partners of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. There’s an impetus for us to work even closer together moving forward.

What near-term spending is on the horizon?

We’re investing in pre-positioned assets. That includes the kits with the tools and equipment that are necessary to do the maintenance on those aircraft. We’re investing in fuel bladders, in the renovation of the airfields, and in the airfield damage and repair equipment.

Think about heavy equipment — mobile aircraft arresting systems. Some of that stuff we have not put on a production line in a long time. We are investing in production lines to get that built and put in place within this Future Years Defense Program. We’re investing in communication equipment that will allow us to do command and control.

We’re investing in our airmen with multi-capable airman training. The Air Force Expeditionary Center at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, is putting together the curriculum that’s necessary for us to train our airmen and get them ready to have a civil engineer do not just civil engineering work, but maybe change a tire or load a bomb or refuel a jet or protect the base. It’s about investing in all those things that are necessary for us to get at a threat that, frankly, we just haven’t had to think about as much in the last 30 years.

When I came in, it was the Soviet Union, it was protecting the Fulda Gap in Germany. We learned a lot of skills that were multi-capable back in the late 1980s that we are now dusting off. We’re going to apply that to this near-peer fight.

Rachel Cohen is the editor of Air Force Times. She joined the publication as its senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), Air and Space Forces Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy and elsewhere.

在过去几十年里，五角大楼一直依赖从夏威夷到韩国的主要军事中心，现在，五角大楼正在为在整个太平洋地区开展更分散的军事行动奠定基础。

准将迈克·祖尔斯多夫是这些讨论中的关键人物。他担任空军后勤、工程和部队保护部门资源整合副主任。

当其他国防官员与外国领导人谈判，以获得使用海外简易机场和更成熟基地的权限时，祖尔斯多夫的团队正在思考如何将这些地点变成未来几十年在以海洋为主导的地区中宝贵的空军基地。

12月15日，祖尔斯多夫在五角大楼接受了《空军时报》的采访。为了篇幅和清晰度，本次采访内容经过编辑。

空军是否正在与其他国家商讨使用现有的外国基地，还是正在考虑建设新的基地？

我们不会新建基地。这些基地和机场自二战以来就一直存在，正是凭借这些基地和机场，我们才能跨越太平洋，最终逼近日本。像这样的机场有很多，无论是在第一岛链——从日本一直延伸到菲律宾——还是在第二岛链，靠近关岛和天宁岛的地方。

我们谈的是翻新、修复和重建。我们将确保跑道路面仍然可用，修剪丛林侵占跑道的植被，并配备必要的设施，以便在需要时将飞机从枢纽机场调入这些支线跑道，确保飞机安全并进行转向。

准将迈克尔·祖尔斯多夫是美国空军资源整合副主任。（美国空军参谋军士查德·特鲁希略摄）

我们需要什么？比如燃料；一些大型飞机零部件，六到十二名空军人员或许就能在那里修理；可能还需要一些弹药[和机场维修资源]；夜间作战所需的照明或导航系统。基地防空系统或许也包含在内，或者伪装、隐蔽和欺骗装备。几乎所有枢纽都会配备一套指挥、控制和通信系统，随机飞行，以便我们始终与母舰保持联系。

我们正与盟友和伙伴合作。太平洋空军已经确定了我们希望投资的机场，并将与菲律宾和澳大利亚合作开展这些项目。我们正在与他们合作开展一些项目，这些项目将使我们能够向那里运送燃料、弹药以及其他远程运输机，这些飞机可以前来补给。

目前有哪些现有机场在名单上？

我们正在识别第二岛链上的更多机场。关岛还有一些机场，第一岛链上也有一些机场，我们最终也会找到它们。

我们正在努力确保在正式宣布之前，先落实通行权和飞越权等事宜。媒体报道的那些项目，都是我们已经与相关国家达成合作的。我们正在与该地区的其他盟友和伙伴合作，以确保这些至关重要的通行权、飞越权和基地使用权。

【编者注：美国空军国际事务部门发言人拒绝透露美国正在与哪些国家洽谈在海外开展空中行动的具体事宜。】

美国空军是否会扩建关岛的安德森空军基地或其他地区？

我们在安德森空军基地以及一些选定的枢纽机场（可能还有一两个分支机构）都有一些机库建设项目——具体地点视情况而定。我们计划搭建一个防护罩系统，用于保护关键设备。我们需要考虑所有预先部署设备的维护保养，因此我们希望将它们放置在受控环境设施中，以便在需要时能够正常运行。

2023年7月10日，在关岛安德森空军基地举行的“机动卫士”演习中，美国空军和加拿大皇家空军的航空医疗后送人员将人体模型运送到一架静止的超级大力神运输机上。（美国空军参谋军士泰勒·克鲁尔摄）

我们也在考虑如何保护这些枢纽和辐射点，以确保我们即将派往那里的飞行员、士兵、水兵、海军陆战队员和安保人员的安全。弹道导弹和高超音速导弹构成了巨大的威胁。我们正在努力确保飞行员能够按照既定计划驾驶飞机。

我们这些身穿这身​​制服的人，没有一个是想打仗的。我们的职责是谨慎使用纳税人的每一分钱，而美国人民希望我们做的，是做好计划。

这些站点的开放时间表是什么？你们将如何分阶段实施？

未来两到三年的国防计划（FYDP）。我们正在研究[哪些地点应该优先考虑]。

10-15年是不是太长了？

我们将在五年发展规划（FYDP）内看到一些具体成果，并且这些成果将在这一时期持续显现。我们有一些武器系统正在研发中——下一代空中优势系统、协同作战飞机等等。这些都将在这一时期内实现。

自2022年2月俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰以来，您从欧洲各地的空军发言人那里学到了哪些经验，并将其运用到伙伴国家？您如何将这些经验应用到太平洋地区？

这对我们来说是一个千载难逢的机会。我们之前驻扎在美国中央司令部，在那里调动物资、零部件、弹药、飞机、人员等等，相对来说都比较顺利。没错，陆军在主要补给路线方面确实遇到了一些挑战，但总体而言，那里的环境并不复杂。而乌克兰则是一个充满争议的环境，我们从中汲取的后勤经验弥足珍贵。

他们需要哪些关键部件？他们是如何将这些部件从X地运送到Y地的？他们使用了哪个系统？他们是如何获取数据的？我们正在快速构建一个数据分析框架，这将使我们能够清晰地了解所需的物资和设备。我们将把这些信息导入基地和后勤数据分析环境，从而帮助我们这些后勤人员确定下一个飞机部件或下一批燃料的存放地点。

俄罗斯和乌克兰都拥有大量小型无人机系统，这些系统相互干扰，阻碍了对方的行动。他们是如何追踪这些系统的？是如何将其击落的？又是如何保护空军基地的防空？这些问题的经验教训正在被总结和总结。

2025财年太平洋基地项目的拟议成本是多少？

我们正在推进2025财年的工作。这是我们高层领导目前正在进行资源调配工作的一部分。

过去几年，反无人机技术并没有发生根本性的变化。目前这项技术的发展现状如何？您希望看到哪些方面的进步？

我们可能还处于起步阶段。事实上，就在过去四五个月里，我们才刚刚讨论过这个问题——扩大规模，加大对这个至关重要的领域的投入。目前，大量的研究和资金正投入到解决这个问题上。这一点不仅体现在乌克兰-俄罗斯战争中，也体现在如今哈马斯和以色列的冲突中。

1945年8月左右，一架美国海军马丁PBM“水手”轰炸机和一架康索利德PB2Y“科罗纳多”水陆两用飞机在太平洋马里亚纳群岛的一个基地进行维护。（图片来源：Keystone/Hulton Archive via Getty Images）

尽管太平洋地区面积辽阔，但小型无人机是否构成威胁？

这些都是岛屿，而且岛上都有原住民。可以肯定的是，这些岛上很可能有人不喜欢美国。其中一些小型系统绝对有可能影响空中任务指令。为了保障空中任务指令的完整性，我们需要仔细考虑如何应对这种小型威胁，而其他人则在研究弹道导弹和高超音速导弹。

我们正在研究的是一个适用于空军基地的全方位防空平台，以及伪装、隐蔽和欺骗计划、电子战和所有这些零零碎碎的东西。

实现这一愿景的主要障碍是什么？

一大难题是缺乏预算。想想我们需要建立和投资的采购项目，我们绝对需要国会的帮助，通过预算，这样我们才能获得我们所需的能力。

我们一直渴望实现联合互操作性，并与盟友和伙伴共享信息。我们正努力更积极地探索可以与他们共享哪些信息，以及可以共享哪些战术、技术和程序。最近，我们在澳大利亚使用F-35战斗机进行空中加油方面取得了一些成功，这是一项重大成就。

我们正在尽一切可能打破壁垒，确保我们拥有必要的能力，并让每个人都明白这些能力是什么。我们现在正派人前往日本，与他们就演习和不同的武器系统进行更紧密的合作。这些都是巨大的障碍，但我们正在克服它们。

过去三四年来，中华人民共和国对我们构成的威胁激发了美国印太司令部众多盟友和伙伴的行动。这促使我们今后更加紧密地合作。

近期有哪些支出计划？

我们正在投资预先部署的资产，包括维护这些飞机所需的工具和设备套件。我们还在投资燃油囊、机场翻新以及机场损坏和维修设备。

想想那些重型装备——比如移动式飞机阻拦系统。有些东西我们已经很久没有投入生产线了。我们正在投资建设生产线，以便在未来几年国防计划框架内完成这些装备的制造和部署。我们也在投资通信设备，以便进行指挥和控制。

我们正在加大对空军人员的投入，开展多技能飞行员培训。位于新泽西州麦圭尔-迪克斯-莱克赫斯特联合基地的空军远征中心正在制定必要的课程，以训练我们的空军人员，使他们不仅能从事土木工程工作，还能更换轮胎、装载炸弹、为喷气式飞机加油或保卫基地。这关乎对所有这些必要技能的投入，以便我们应对过去30年来我们几乎从未认真考虑过的威胁。

我刚来的时候，苏联正在保卫德国的富尔达山口。我们在上世纪80年代末学到了很多多用途技能，现在我们正在重新拾起这些技能。我们将把这些技能运用到这场与势均力敌的对手的战斗中。

瑞秋·科恩是《空军时报》的编辑。她于2021年3月加入该刊物，担任高级记者。她的作品曾发表在《华盛顿邮报》、《弗雷德里克新闻邮报》（马里兰州）、《空军与太空部队杂志》、《国防内幕》、《卫生政策内幕》等刊物上。