Roscongress Foundation experts: the US and its allies are building infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific for a military confrontation with China

In preparation for a potential military clash with the PRC, the United States and its allies are creating a distributed and protected infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region. This is stated in the analytical report prepared by experts of the Roscongress Foundation entitled “U.S. vs PRC: Geography, Scale of Construction, and Strategic Consequences”.

The updated U.S. National Security Strategy has established a new form of American hegemony, more advantageous for the United States and more dangerous for the rest of the world. The United States openly declares that it will not strengthen deterrence of China without the help of allies. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and other regional states are expected to sharply increase defence spending, invest in advanced military capabilities, and grant the U.S. broader access to ports, airfields, and logistics infrastructure. As a result, the United States minimizes its direct risks and costs by shifting them onto its allies while retaining control over them. By expanding their armed forces, regional countries at their own expense are effectively building a costly deterrence system serving U.S. interests, becoming ever more deeply dependent on Washington technologically and operationally.

For China, this creates a fundamentally new situation. The PRC now faces not a distant American army, but militarized neighbours backed by U.S. forces. This changes the balance of power in the region.

Washington is implementing a large-scale strategy to relocate maintenance and repair of its naval fleet to allied countries in Asia. The shipbuilding capacities of these states are intended to ensure the full-time operational readiness of the U.S. Navy in the Indo-Pacific. In particular, in India, following the signing of framework agreements in 2023 with Larsen & Toubro and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, the state-owned Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in Kochi received the right in 2024 to repair U.S. Navy vessels.

In August 2025, South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries received a contract for technical servicing and major overhauls of U.S. Navy ships. In Japan, a special ship-repair council was established at U.S. initiative in 2024. Although, formally, major overhauls of combat ships still require their return to the United States, that same year saw the successful replacement of a drive shaft on the destroyer USS Milius. On 28 October 2025, Donald Trump stated that Washington intends to develop large-scale shipbuilding projects jointly with Japan.

In the Philippines, the region’s largest naval base Subic Bay is being restored, with modern infrastructure created for the repair and servicing of U.S. Navy ships. Australia will allocate USD 16 billion over ten years to upgrade shipyards; this investment is aimed, among other things, at creating a maintenance centre for nuclear submarines under the AUKUS partnership.

In addition, the Pentagon is forming a layered rear-area support system by engaging contractors to operate fuel-supply facilities. Plans to enhance the combat capabilities of forces within the area of responsibility of the 7th Fleet include leasing fuel-supply facilities in countries such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, as well as on U.S. territory: the island of Guam.

In these same countries, as well as in Taiwan, airfields are being expanded, ammunition storage facilities are being built, and naval bases are undergoing deep modernization. This increases the capacity and throughput of the Pacific theatre of operations, enabling the United States to simultaneously deploy, supply, and manoeuvre significantly larger forces in close proximity to a potential adversary, primarily the PRC.

This entire protected and distributed combat-support system is designed to sustain prolonged, high-intensity operations by the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Washington could use it in the event of escalation in the Taiwan Strait, the Philippine Sea, or on the Korean Peninsula.

The full text of the analytical report is published on the Roscongress Foundation’s website and on the Foundation’s Dzen channel.