In September the Chinese military launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew 7,400 miles before splashing down in the Pacific south of Hawaii. The Sept. 25 launch — the first known of its kind by China in more than 40 years — sent diplomatic ripples in its wake.
Launched amid ongoing Pacific tensions, the nuclear-capable missile wasn’t armed — it was equipped with a dummy warhead. But regional governments still are grappling with the implications of the launch, as are island residents concerned about how a real strike could affect their communities.
Officials from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Fiji quickly expressed concern after it landed in the ocean. New Zealand’s 1News reported that the warhead landed less than 200 nautical miles from Caroline Island, a small atoll in the southeastern part of the island nation of Kiribati and just north of French Tahiti.
Soon after the launch, the Chinese military released photos of the missile along with a statement saying that it had notified “relevant countries” of the launch beforehand. The U.S. and France acknowledged getting prior notice, with Pentagon officials calling the notification a “step in the right direction” but also calling for more regular discussions about missile launches.
But in statement released Oct. 7 on social media, Kiribati’s presidential office said that “Kiribati did not receive notice from China regarding the ICBM launch” and that the Chinese Embassy is Kiribati later told officials “the test is a routine activity and there was no need to alert Kiribati.”
“Kiribati does not welcome China’s recent ICBM test, including other countries that had tested similar weapons in the recent past,” the statement continued. “The high seas in the Pacific are not isolated pockets of oceans, they are part of our Blue Pacific Continent and are parts of Kiribati and therefore we appeal to all countries involved in weapon testing to stop these acts to maintain world peace and stability.”
China has made significant investments in Kiribati in recent years, and in 2019 the country dropped its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to pursue closer ties with China. Its current government has continued to favor close ties with Beijing, but in 2022 the U.S. announced it would open a new embassy in the country and has sought to reenergize ties.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case said, “It should come as no surprise that the (People’s Republic of China) now follows its attempted seizure of sovereign territory of the Philippines in the South China Sea, incursion into Japan’s airspace, corruption of Pacific Islands governments, intellectual property theft and other actions around the world with its first ICBM test into international waters since 1980.”
“And it should come as no surprise that it did so in violation of international treaties and norms in terms of test location and advance notice to the countries of the Pacific, explaining that the test was ‘routine.’” Case continued. “There is no indication the launch was directed at Hawaii nor that it was armed, although it was clearly intended to demonstrate the PRC’s ability to reach deep into the Pacific.”
Rob York, director of regional affairs for Honolulu think tank Pacific Forum, said the launch “can be interpreted as a warning of the PRC ability to reach U.S. territories should disagreements over Taiwan or South China Sea claims escalate to kinetic conflict at some point in the future. A war between the U.S. and China would be terrible for both countries and their neighbors even without such capabilities, but this raises the immediate stakes for territories within missile range should conflict escalate.”
Hawaii is the nerve center of U.S. military operations in the Pacific. It hosts headquarters of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, and is home to several other critical U.S. military facilities.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda said the test “underscores the importance of continued efforts by our Hawaii congressional delegation to ensure that our Department of Defense has a credible plan to protect Hawaii against potential missile threats.”
“Hawaii was already within the range of Chinese missiles before this launch. The missile test does not significantly heighten the existing threat,” said Lami Kim, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki. “However, it does demonstrate China’s ambitions to enhance its nuclear capabilities, which is a growing concern for Washington and its regional allies, including South Korea and Japan. Additionally, Beijing’s decision not to inform its Pacific island neighbors of the missile launch reflects a lack of respect for those countries.”
Leland Bettis, director of the Pacific Center for Island Security in Guam, said, “The message that you might see depends on where you sit,” noting that the missile’s path seems to have flown over Guam in the atmosphere before it landed in the South Pacific.
“They don’t need an intercontinental ballistic missile to have an effect in Guam. They have a missile that’s an intermediate-range ballistic that is called the ‘Guam Killer,’” Bettis said. “None of this is new in terms of the threat to Guam, but when missiles are launched, it’s a signaling thing, right? I think that’s the significant issue.”
Missile defense
The U.S. regularly conducts missile tests of its own in the Pacific, practicing both launching missiles and shooting them down, with ranges in Hawaii and the Marshall Islands. This year the U.S. military deployed the midrange Typhoon missile system to the Philippines as part of the annual multinational training exercise Balikatan. Ultimately, the weapons stayed beyond the exercise, over China’s objections.
The U.S. military now plans to also conduct up to two live-fire missile defense tests each year over the next decade from Guam as it develops a new defense system for the island. U.S. military planners have discussed scenarios in which thousands of missiles could be launched at island territories at once.
“U.S. officials and lawmakers appear to be waking up to the fact that missile defense in the Pacific is not sufficient,” York said. “Assuming U.S. leaders in the White House, Congress and the relevant commands are responsive to this need, we may ultimately thank the PRC for sending this message well in advance of a conflict.”
But Bettis said he has doubts about the overall effectiveness of missile defense systems, arguing that even at top capacity many modern systems can reliably shoot down only about 70% of incoming missiles. He added, “How long it can operate at that level is another story altogether.”
This year Iran has launched two large volleys of ballistic missiles against Israel. Though Israeli and U.S. missile defense systems shot down most of the incoming projectiles, Bettis notes that Iran mostly used older models in its attacks and that shooting them down proved costly for Israel. He explained that “building the missiles for missile defense … is very expensive, and it takes a very long time. Part of the Iranian strategy may have been for Israel to sort of have them start using up a lot of their inventory.”
In recent years the U.S. military has begun a strategy of spreading out its forces across the Pacific region from consolidated bases to make them harder to hit for long-range missiles. The Air Force, in particular, has adopted a strategy called Agile Combat Employment — or ACE — in which it shuffles its aircraft across different airfields.
The U.S. military has begun reopening mothballed facilities in the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands, including an airfield in Tinian. It also has reached agreements with Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia for new facilities.
Bettis said, “Broadly, it makes military sense to spread your assets and make the adversary have to target more of your assets and spend more of his missiles and his assets on trying to take you out. You’re basically spreading the risk. (But) from the island perspective, what the military sees as security in fact increases insecurity.”
Some island residents are wary of this strategy, concerned that communities living near U.S. military positions across the Pacific will face new threats from missiles and other weapon systems targeting them.
“This is a significant issue as the U.S. is clearly working on this distributed, dispersed strategy throughout Micronesia and I think is obviously looking in the Philippines and in other places,” Bettis said. “If you’re going to spread the risk to civilian populations, if you’re going to increase insecurity for civilian populations, then there’s a whole bunch of other things you should be thinking about.”
Bettis argued that there should be plans for bomb shelters — and resources to recover after an attack — in island communities like Guam and Hawaii, but said that “none of those things appear to be accompanying any of the U.S. plans for distributed and dispersed operations … and this is going on with a backdrop of people at the Missile Defense Agency talking about hundreds if not thousands of (missiles) incoming to Guam at one time.”
Pacific competition
Missile threats became a mainstream issue in Hawaii on Jan. 13, 2018, when a false-alarm missile alert went out to cellphones across the state. The alert came during tensions as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-President Donald Trump traded threats and insults, with Trump boasting he would unleash “fire and fury” on the Korean Peninsula.
The Hawaii congressional delegation pushed to fund the controversial Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii, a project announced in 2019. The Pentagon quickly began trying to defund the project as it faced challenges finding a suitable location, rapidly rising costs and fierce pushback from local critics who charged the project would needlessly threaten local wildlife and ancient Hawaiian cultural sites. Critics also charged that it would be rendered obsolete by space-based sensors before its completion.
The delegation agreed to stop pushing for funding it in 2022, pending a review of missile defense options.
Bettis said, “I think it’s going to become clearer and clearer that missile defense is really about protecting these military assets. … You’re starting to hear people in the Air Force talk about the need for air defenses from these locations, but they’re talking about it to protect the airfields. They’re not talking about civilian populations being protected.”
Beijing also has pursued its own access to airfields and ports across the Pacific through its Belt and Road Initiative, a series of infrastructure projects funded by the Chinese government aimed at supporting Chinese trade. It has several ambitious projects in Kiribati, including the renovation of a former U.S. military airfield on the island of Kanton 1,864 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Officials from the governments of China and Kiribati have said the projects are strictly for commercial use, but some analysts see them as potential “dual use” facilities that could easily covertly support intelligence agencies and could quickly be converted to support military forces.
York said that “the Pacific is a crucial theater for the PRC and the U.S., where access will do much to determine whether the U.S. can credibly project the power necessary to impede the PRC’s objectives. … (China) invested a great amount in getting Pacific island states to view them as a benevolent partner interested in meeting their needs in a way that the U.S. cannot or will not. However, for them to outrage Kiribati with this missile test fits another pattern — one in which the PRC’s flexes its capabilities in a way that alienates crucial partners.”
The Pacific launch occurred just days after Gen. Wu Yanan, the Chinese military commander responsible for operations in the South China Sea, attended a meeting of top military leaders held in Hawaii at the invitation of Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, in an effort to cool tensions.
“We need to keep channels of communications open and establish guardrails to prevent miscalculations that could lead to conflict,” Tokuda said. “That’s what responsible powers do, and the PRC consistently fails to act like one.”
Bettis said pushback by Pacific island nations against both American and Chinese posturing is significant.
“This is the predicament of the pawn,” Bettis said. “You’re always taken for granted, whether it’s nuclear strategy or it’s missile defense. It’s sort of assumed that this is your role and you’ll play it. … But what’s really interesting, and I think we’re seeing this across the Pacific and across the geopolitical spectrum, you’re seeing that some islands are demonstrating a level of agency which is really healthy.”
