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The U.S. Air Force’s largest historical airfield in the Pacific is scheduled to restart operations later this month after four years of construction and vegetation clearing on the remote island of Tinian in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), according to new documents published by the Department of Defense last week.
The construction, part of a multi-million-dollar contract, is returning Tinian’s historic North Field to service after it was abandoned almost 80 years ago — a major step forward for the United States’ ambition to beef up its air operations infrastructure in the Pacific in anticipation of a future conflict with China.
Initial operations at the rehabilitated North Field are now scheduled for May 31. A detachment of 250 personnel will support Army operations from North Field during Exercise Valiant Shield 2026, a joint-force field training exercise dedicated to testing interoperability between services in a simulated high-intensity conflict against China. The exercise comes amid continued discussions in the Pentagon over Air Force basing strategies in the Pacific — where 75% of the surface area in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility is open ocean.
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