Guam, a tiny but strategic U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, is most vulnerable to “the pacing threat of China,” and defending it is critical to the joint force operating in the Indo-Pacific theater, senior Army leaders said.

“The [People’s Republic of China] has the ability to mass a number of different threats against a lot of places in the Pacific,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Costello, commander of the Honolulu-based 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said July 30 during an event in the Strategic Landpower Dialogue series co-hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Noting that “there is no sanctuary any longer in the Pacific,” Costello touted the benefits of a new composite battalion that, when it becomes operational, will comprise several weapon systems to provide a layered defense capability against enemy missiles.

“We need to be able to defend this important, … one of the most important combat power projection hubs and spokes that we have within the Pacific,” Costello said, adding that “if deterrence should fail, the theater Army requires capabilities, posture, signaling and will, and this composite battalion that the Army is providing for the defense of Guam meets all of those requirements.”

Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, director of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and executive officer of the Joint Program Office for the Guam Defense System, said China is a “complex threat” from both an operational and materiel perspective.

“We’re looking at the pacing threat of China, which has offensive capabilities unlike anything we've been seeing in [Central Command], unlike anything that we're seeing in Europe, and it requires us to think differently,” Rasch said.

Rasch warned that the defense of Guam, a 210-square-mile island whose biggest land owners are the U.S. Navy and Air Force, cannot be left to chance.

“We're looking at a small space, we're looking at a potential adversary that has a lot of capability and capacity, so we have to be very efficient with how we utilize the capabilities we have,” Rasch said. “It's causing us to think differently.”

The integration of air and missile defense capabilities “makes the whole of the capability much greater than the sum of its parts,” Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for Missiles and Space, said, explaining that individual systems may operate “suboptimally” in a contested environment against the “massive threats” presented in the Indo-Pacific theater.

“The sum of the components is typically how we would fight, but we've realized that that's not adequate nor sufficient for fighting against the PRC in the future,” Lozano said.