US military bases unprepared for rising threats from communist China

FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Security Agency Director Gen. Timothy Haugh have stated that the recent Chinese cyber assault on America’s critical infrastructure is preparation for conflict with the United States.

In the face of these indicators and warnings, a wartime posture of dispersing forces across new and different sites, hardening facilities (with more guards and missile defenses), and actively camouflaging the dispersed and hardened locations would be prudent. By operating Department of Defense (DOD) facilities in a wartime manner, a strong message of readiness and deterrence would be communicated.

However, the spirit of Army Lt. Gen. Walter Short and Navy Adm. Husband E. Kimmel seems to have prevailed so far.

In February 1941, Short and Kimmel arrived in Hawaii to take over the Army and Navy forces. In what has been characterized in hindsight as a major strategic error of judgment, in the face of rising tensions with Japan, they dismissed a wartime posture of dispersing, hardening, and camouflaging military sites. Instead, they both chose to guard their forces by administratively grouping the ships and planes to guard them. This deadly mistake ensured the aircraft and ships of the Army and Navy were much easier to attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

History seems to be repeating itself. Dealing with rising tensions with the Chinese regime, little if any DOD wartime posture actions have been communicated or detected that should have been triggered by Chinese spy balloons, suspicious foreign land purchases, a pervasive cyber assault on U.S. critical infrastructure, and military facilities experiencing a surge of active penetration attempts by foreign nationals, often from China—including a recent revelation of a Chinese national flying a drone to spy on U.S. submarine construction.

Ominous ‘Dry Run’ Attempt to Enter a DOD Facility

Two Jordanians made the most recent attempt to enter a DOD site, gaining entry into Quantico Marine Corps Base. The pair said they were “Amazon subcontractors” attempting to make a delivery. The two Jordanians were stopped after Marine gate guards deployed a vehicle denial barrier to block their path. The Jordanians were arrested and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They have been determined to be non-U.S. citizens, and one of them is reported to be on the terrorist watch list.

Local reporter Kelly Sienkowski, who broke the original story, followed up with a story on May 16 titled “ICE confirms attack on Quantico; Ignores questions on terrorist threat.” Quantico has Marine training facilities, but it is also the home base to the Presidential Helicopter Squadron, Drug Enforcement Agency offices, the Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy, and the very important FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), which the agency refers to as “federal law enforcement’s only full-time counterterrorism unit.”

The HRT is a very important asset in responding to domestic terrorist events, such as Chinese special operators carrying out attacks within the United States. One former Quantico staffer reportedly characterized the attempted breach at Quantico as a “dry run.”

An Intent to Disrupt Space Launches, US Readiness?

A focus of the Chinese efforts has been in Florida, where Chinese nationals have attempted to enter Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Key West Naval facilities.

Cape Canaveral has two parts: the well-known Kennedy Space Center, which focuses on civil space activities, and the not-as-well-known Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which focuses on classified military and intelligence space activities. The Chinese were found scuba diving right off the launch pads on the facilities. From where they were caught, the scuba divers could have used sniper rifles or rockets to damage or destroy space launch activities.

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