Pentagon weighs force posture, costs of rebuilding Middle East bases
WASHINGTON — As Pentagon leaders remain relatively tightlipped about the extent of damage to US bases in the Middle East, a senior US defense official said the administration is weighing possible force posture changes against costs as it decides which installations to rebuild.
“We’re meeting with CENTCOM [US Central Command] and doing the assessments right now from an installation perspective,” the senior defense official told reporters today at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “Part of this is what will the global posture be in the future, and what does that require us to have?”
The official added that the department is taking a strategic approach to investments, prioritizing where its presence is needed most.
After the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, Tehran and its proxies began targeting US bases in the region — including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where strikes reportedly rendered the Pentagon’s Combined Air Operations Center (COAC) inoperable, as well as other installations in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet was previously headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain. But in an interview with The Epoch Times, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao acknowledged that “they blew the hell out of Bahrain.” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle separately said the Navy would not be using Naval Support Activity Bahrain “anytime soon.”
Pentagon leaders have provided lawmakers with cost estimates for the war with Iran, but those figures have not included a complete account of the costs associated with repairing US bases in the region. Earlier this week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee called on the department to publicly disclose the total cost of the war in Iran, including damage to those US installations.
The senior defense official said they did not have a cost estimate readily available but that the department was taking a strategic approach to repairs.
“It’s part of the reason we want to build a new base differently … nothing’s a sanctuary anymore,” the official said.
“The idea that we still have two oceans that keep any bad things from happening to us, that’s no longer a thing, so we’ve got to think differently. … The installation is the weapon system, and I have to have a mindset that I treat it like it’s a weapon system, not just a piece of real estate,” the official later added.
The proliferation of drones and cruise missiles presents another challenge, forcing the Pentagon to consider not only how to harden bases overseas but also how to protect installations on the US mainland, including through a diverse array of defense systems.
“I can’t pour four [feet] of concrete over everything, so I have to have a different approach, investments and strategies that we want to have in terms of how we make bases resilient, how I make them defensible, how I protect our people — all of that are things that we’re working on right now to come up with a different strategy,” the senior defense official said.
Part of that effort involves strengthening protection at individual bases, as well as working with the Golden Dome team to prioritize which locations to protect first and keep “risk as low as possible.”