Wake Island in Indo-Pacific Strategy

In mid-December 2024, U. S. Marines of the 12^th Marine Littoral (meaning ashore) Anti-Air Battalion (12^th LAAB) trained on Wake Island for a long-distance tactical air surveillance raid. In this first field training of the recently activated battalion, the Marines deployed a state-of-the-art AN/TPS-80 radar complex (Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar), which is an air surveillance system that can detect, identify, and track multiple types of missiles, aircraft, and weapons fire. The objectives of the training included both speed and proficiency in setting up and activating operations in a “contested environment” such as a future peer enemy attack.

During their stay on the island Marines visited the Wake Island USMC memorial to pay their respects to those who defended the island in World War II. As dozens of military visitors have done before, they placed rank insignia on the narrow shelf below the obelisk. Members of the Eleventh Air Force Detachment 1 stationed on Wake joined the Marines in a solemn memorial ceremony to honor the Marines, sailors, and civilians who died in the siege and battle of Wake Island, December 8-23, 1941. A battery commander presented the Wake command with a commemorative plaque that will find a home in the Wake Island museum.

The battalion was activated in a well-attended ceremony in Okinawa in the week prior to the active training on Wake. Reporting on the ceremony, Stars and Stripes military reporter Brian McElniney described the 12^th LAAB as a “seaborne quick-reaction force” that lands ready to fight to defend contested islands from air attacks. It is one of three units (see below) within the Okinawa-based 12^th Marine Littoral Regiment. The regiment traces its roots back to the WWII USMC 1^st Defense Battalion, a detachment of which heroically defended Wake Island in 1941.

Last month in January 2025 the 3^rd Marine Littoral Regiment, based in Hawaii, field-tested a new weapons system at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Oahu. The live-fire test of the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) was the culmination of years of development and months of testing and evaluation. This news from the Indo-Pacific Command clarified what the other two units of a Marine Littoral Regiment are: in addition to an anti-air battalion, there is a combat team and a combat logistics battalion. A full training exercise would coordinate all three units with the LAAB radar-based detection system identifying the aerial threat and the MADIS system engaging its “highly mobile, short-range, surface-to-air defense weapon.”

The U.S. Pacific Command expanded into the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in 2018 as regional tensions rose, particularly with China’s first major moves into the Indian Ocean to secure distant harbors. China’s rising economic and military strength heightens the threat of an attack on democratic Taiwan, the U.S.-friendly island off mainland China. The Command is coordinating defensive strategies to reinforce existing Pacific bases and establish new ones in the event of hostility in the region. Priorities include runway expansion, deepened channels and harbors, enhanced infrastructure, and air defenses against potential enemy missile launches.

I do not follow military news closely, but the Indo-Pacific defensive strategy is evolving rapidly, and anything with Wake Island in the news catches my attention. Guam, given its strategic proximity to Asia, is central to U.S. military development in the western Pacific. It now hosts a U.S. naval base including nuclear-armed submarines, an air force base with long-range bombers, and is slated to bring in thousands of Marines from Okinawa. As Guam and Wake Island both learned in 1941, new runways, dredging, infrastructure, and military defenses can quickly turn a sleepy island into a target for an enemy to neutralize and capture. We can only hope that the new military strategies and technological advancements of recent years will have the full support of the federal government going forward and that carefully considered U.S. diplomacy will hold the threats of war at bay.

Sources:

DVIDS – News – U.S. Marines with 12th LAAB Execute a Tactical Air Surveillance Raid on Wake Island

3d LAAB’s Inaugural MADIS Live-Fire > U.S. Indo-Pacific Command > News Article View