Pacific island home of US military bases in Pyongyang’s cross-hairs

WITH its white beaches and crystal blue waters, the Pacific island of Guam is not only a holidaymaker’s paradise; it has become known as the “tip of the spear” of US defence.

The remote 210-square mile US territory, about 4,000 miles west of Hawaii in the western Pacific Ocean, is a vital US military outpost and host to strategic bombers and at least 6,000 US service members.

Its combined navy and air force installation, Joint Region Marianas, is the home port for nuclear submarines, Special Operations Forces, and the launching point for bombers on training exercises over Japanese airspace and the Korean Peninsula.

American military bases, including the sprawling Andersen Air Force Base and the Naval Base Guam, occupy nearly 30 per cent of the island.

Guam’s importance to the US’S Pacific defence capabilities, and its location as the closest point of American soil to North Korea, just 2,200 miles southeast, have left it vulnerable to being caught in the crossfire of dictator Kim Jong-un’s bellicose missile threats.

The island has long been at the forefront of what Kim Jong-un views as American provocation. The US has often dispatched B-1B and other strategic bombers from Guam to South Korea in a show of force after Pyongyang conducts ballistic missile or nuclear tests.

A 10 hour sortie on Monday, where two US B-1 bombers flew from Guam over the Korean peninsula, joining the South Korean and Japanese air forces for joint exercises is likely to have riled the North Korean leader.

The training operation may be one reason why North Korea specifically threatened the island with “enveloping fire” shortly after President Donald Trump vowed his own “fire and fury like the world has never seen” in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.