US Air Force supersizes cargo training as it seeks to spread risk in the Pacific

Two Super Galaxy giant airlifters touched down at a base in western Tokyo for a week of training, US military reports

Exercise comes as more complex stealth fighters are dispersed across the region

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The C5-M Super Galaxy has a payload-carrying capacity of nearly 130 tonnes. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 10:00pm, 23 Sep 2021Updated: 10:47pm, 23 Sep 2021

The US Air Force sent two supersized airlifters to a base in western Tokyo for a week of maintenance training as the American military seeks to spread risk from a possible conflict over Taiwan, according to a defence analyst.

US military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported on Wednesday that a pair of C-5M Super Galaxies were parked at Yokota Air Base for about a week of joint operation training with local aircrews.

Lu Li-shih, a former instructor at Taiwan’s Naval Academy in Kaohsiung, said the presence of the C-5Ms at Yokota could be seen as an extension of training related to the American air force’s large-scale Operation Pacific Iron military exercises in Guam and Tinian island in July.

Pacific Iron is an operation by the US Air Force to project forces into the Indo-Pacific region and train them to be “more lethal, adaptive and resilient”.

As part of the strategy – known as agile combat employment, or ACE – the US is spreading combat planes and other war-fighting assets among airfields across the region to increase their prospects of surviving enemy missile strikes.

In July, 25 F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets were sent to the region, an unusually large deployment that defence experts said had targeted the People’s Liberation Army.