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As part of a broader project of land reclamation, beginning in November China started efforts to develop Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands. As of late November the reef had been built up to 3,000 meters long and between two and three hundred wide. This makes it large enough, in the assessment of analysts with IHS Jane’s and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, to argue that China’s first airstrip in the Spratly Islands might be under development. China already has a growing airfield on Woody Island in the Paracels a several hundred miles north, and this would not be the first airstrip in the Spratly Islands; Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysia all have airstrips of their own. If a runway is truly planned for Fiery Cross Reef, what does this mean for the region’s security environment?

via Another Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier.

The addition of fixed wing aviation facilities in the Spratley Islands would indeed greatly increase China’s influence in the region, though with some powerful caveats.

As an ISR and logistical outpost, it would have great value in peacetime, and in times of heightened tensions.

But in time of actual conflict, it would likely quickly become a liability. As the Japanese learned time and again in the Pacific, the great disadvantage of any island airfield is that the attacker gets to chose the time and place of his strike. For instance, in World War II, carrier raids on fixed Japanese installations were a viable tactic as early as February 1942, when the US Navy in the Pacific was at its ebb.

Today, such a raid wouldn’t even come from a carrier. Instead, submarine launched Tomahawk missiles would be used to suppress Fiery Cross Reef. One strike might not render the field unusable, but repeated strikes would quickly render the costs of maintaining it untenable.

Airfields ashore on the mainland suffer some of the same issues, but generally benefit from greater defensive depth, mutual support from other airfields, greater radar coverage and other sensor depth, and greater ability to disperse critical assets.

A lonely strip within range of any naval forces, however, is incredibly vulnerable.