In The Times today.
America sends stealth fighters to China’s prized territory
The US is sending its largest-ever formation of stealth fighters to the Indo-Pacific region to demonstrate America’s ability to operate in China’s self-declared area of military domination.
Twenty-five of the US air force’s fifth-generation F-22A Raptor stealth fighters, as well as ten F-15E Strike Eagles, will take part in the Operation Pacific Iron exercise this month.
They will operate from a remote airstrip on the US island territory of Guam and from Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana islands from where the US launched the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Guam would be vulnerable to attack by China’s onshore ballistic missiles in the event of a conflict.
Prized territory? Journalistic hyperbole presumably.