OPINION:
In this fall’s defense budget deliberations, Congress must fully fund the F-35B Lightning II aircraft. America simply cannot afford disruption or delay in procuring this fighter.
This specific variant of the F-35 — one with vertical takeoff-and landing-capability — plays an outsized role in the U.S. Marine Corps’ strategy to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression by China.
Picture the opening days of a conflict with Beijing: a full-scale missile assault lands on American and allied airfields and bases across the First Island Chain, devastating U.S. Air Force end strength.
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Guam, the hub the Pentagon relies on to project forces and logistics westward, also comes under heavy assault. The U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers are forced to stay well to the east to avoid the kill zone, their effectiveness limited by the vast ranges involved.
This is not mere worst-case thinking; it reflects Chinese military doctrine.
Airfields are uniquely vulnerable. A January 2025 Hudson Institute study found that China has more than doubled its number of hardened and unhardened aircraft shelters since the early 2010s — to more than 3,000 — while, in the same period, the United States has added just two hardened shelters and 41 unhardened shelters near the Taiwan Strait.
Much of our forward-deployed airpower sits exposed on the ramp, and incipient efforts to harden it are nowhere near complete.
Ukraine has shown what such vulnerability can cost. In June 2025, Kyiv’s Operation Spiderweb used drones smuggled deep into Russian territory to strike strategic bombers on the ground at multiple air bases. The U.S. has not fielded the defenses to counter a similar strike, as we have seen from the extensive damage that aircraft have suffered on the ground in the Middle East during the ongoing conflict with Iran.
China’s opening salvo against Western Pacific bases would dwarf anything seen from Ukraine or Iran.
The force that can disperse and still fly
Part of the answer to this quandary is disaggregation: spreading forces, including aircraft, across many austere locations.
A Rand Corp. study warned that although dispersal can protect aircraft from this kind of attack, it can degrade sortie generation by spreading forces too thin. To be effective, a force must be able to arm, fuel and launch aircraft from those scattered sites.
A Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis of a war-gamed Taiwan conflict reached the same conclusion: Survivability without sustained sortie generation will end in defeat.
The force that can disperse and still fly has a chance to prevail, and that is exactly what the F-35B was built to do.
In a disaggregated posture, the F-35B is uniquely survivable among fixed-wing aircraft. Unlike aircraft that depend on permanent runways, the F-35B can still generate sorties from austere, unimproved sites. It can hide on a strip too short or too rough for any conventional fighter; small teams of Marines can rearm and refuel it there.
It then flies back into the fight with its industry-leading stealth and sensor-fusion capabilities.
Spread across the littorals in small, mobile units, these F-35B fighters also provide critical air cover for Marines carrying anti-ship weaponry, which is central to the Marine Corps’ Pacific concept of operations.
This is not theoretical. Marine units have trained for years at forward arming and refueling points, landing F-35Bs on remote islands and short strips, rearming and refueling them with mobile teams and getting them back into the fight.
The concept has been validated in a real shooting war. During operations this year against Iran, Marines used austere refueling points to turn F-35Bs around and reduce reliance on vulnerable tanker orbits.
The F-35B is survivable in combat, but whether it is a match for Beltway budget machinations is an open question. Let us hope wisdom prevails and that procuring more F-35B fighters is high on the congressional and Pentagon priority lists.
The outcome of this fall’s budget battle could be pivotal in determining whether we prevail in a war in the Pacific.
• Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Karsten “Hazel” Heckl served as deputy commandant for combat development and integration and commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command from 2021 to 2024, where he was the Marine Corps’ top requirements officer. As a naval aviator, he previously served as assistant deputy commandant for aviation and commanded the I Marine Expeditionary Force, the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, the Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One, and the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 162.
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