{"id":238847,"date":"2021-07-18T08:18:21","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T08:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=238847"},"modified":"2021-07-19T07:36:26","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T07:36:26","slug":"u-s-air-force-sends-f-22s-to-western-pacific-as-message-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=238847","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Air Force sends F-22s to Western Pacific as message to China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Adamcyzk \u2013 UPI July 16, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The largest assemblage of U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter planes is in the Pacific region for exercises analysts say is a strong message to China.<\/p>\n

About 25 F-22s were deployed to three air bases on Guam and one in the Northern Mariana Islands from the Hawaii Air National Guard and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, for “Operation Pacific Iron 2021.”<\/p>\n

About 10 F-15E Strike Eagles and two C-130J Hercules cargo planes, deployed from Japan and western U.S. bases, are also involved in the exercise, Pacific Air Forces said in a statement<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

The event, which involves about 800 Air Force personnel, is a “dynamic force employment operation to project forces into the USINDOPACOM’s [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s] area of responsibility in support of the 2018 National Defense Strategy which called on the military to be a more lethal, adaptive, and resilient force,” the statement added.<\/p>\n

Typical F-22 deployments include six to 12 planes, and the exercise is the largest show of force of F-22s in the Pacific area.<\/p>\n

The fifth-generation aircraft, with stealth technology and numerous on-board sensor systems, is regarded as among the most advanced in the world. The exercise can be seen as a demonstration to China of U.S. capability to quickly mass fighter planes.<\/p>\n

“The Pacific Air Force is demonstrating that it can deploy as many or more fifth-generation aircraft into the theater on short notice than [China] currently has in its entire inventory,” Carl Shuster, former operations director at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, told CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Demonstrating the U.S. Air Force’s Agile Combat capability sends a strong deterrent signal to China and reassuring one to U.S. allies and partners. China will try to follow it closely.”<\/p>\n

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Leaf noted that the exercise<\/a> demonstrates the U.S. military’s capability.<\/p>\n

“If I’m China, I’d pay attention to the message, whether it’s intended for them or not, because this is capability both in the aircraft, the F-22, and the flexibility and expeditionary nature of the U.S. Air Force that goes back to World War I, that they [China] can’t duplicate,” Leaf said.<\/p>\n

“I’d take it as a demonstration of the legitimacy of the American commitment to the region, because messaging is one thing when it’s just words,” he added.<\/p>\n

“But this is not just a statement, It’s an investment in capability because it’s not cheap to deploy 25 F-22s from two different bases to the Western Pacific.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a clear message to Beijing, more than two-dozen F-22s are being deployed to take part in drills in the Western Pacific<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238848,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238847\/revisions\/238848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}