Guam is at the centerpiece of the Department of Defense's strategy in the Indo-Pacific region to combat the increasing threat against China to the United States. The strategy is part of DOD's $4.7 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative or PDI.


During a Senate Armed Services hearing in the nation's capitol today U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Chief Admiral Philip Davidson testified that as a result of China's buildup of military and cyber capabilities that the U.S. has to step up its game in the region.


"I say to people all the time missile defense is the hardest thing we do and if I'm a manager for a baseball team I could have the best defenses in the world but if I can't score some runs I can't win the game," he said. 

And a major part of winning the game according to Davidson is to increase the military's lethality by introducing the Guam Defense System of GDS which is a 360-degree, persistent, air and missile defense capability.


"The structure that's out there right now the THAAD radar is not capable of meeting the current trajectory of threats from China," Davidson said.

The admiral told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the 360-degree air and missile defense system would be capable of meeting cruise missile threats and ballistic missile threats from the land, sea and air in the region. It must be delivered in a fashion to protect from the activities they are seeing China can conduct which is a circumnavigation of Guam and the CNMI.


"Most importantly we all have to understand Guam is U.S. territory we have 170,000 U.S. citizens living there on Guam their defense is homeland defense we have 21,000 U.S. servicemen and women and DOD employees as well plus their families," he said. "It's a deep-water strategic port, major fuel stores, munitions store, command and control. It is a major power projection airfield for U.S. in the region."

Davidson said China was sending a message with a recent propaganda video of Chinese bomber forces attacking Andersen Air Force Base.


"Guam is a target today," he said. "It needs to be defended and it needs to be prepared for the threats that will come in the future because it is clear to me that Guam is not just a place we believe we can fight from one as we have for many decades we are going to have to fight for it." 


The admiral added Guam is where America's day begins and we must fight for it given the threats we face in the near term and the foreseeable future.


"We have to demonstrate that any ambition that China might have and any threat that it might put forth toward Guam would come at cost," Davidson said. 

Two weeks ago the military announced the award of a $42 million contract to build a Standoff Weapons Complex on Andersen Air Force Base. According to a media release the complex would provide an undeniable capability for the 36th Wing and the vested interests of the US Air Force in the Indo-Pacific theater. The work includes the construction of a missile maintenance and assembly complex for loading, unloading, transferring, storing, testing and preparing missiles for operational use.