N. Korea tensions put Americans on Guam in crosshairs

On a tiny island in the western Pacific, about 7,000 U.S. military personnel and their families are in the middle of the tense confrontation with North Korea.

Guam, an unincorporated U.S. territory, is a strategic outpost about 2,100 miles southeast of Pyongyang. That puts its total population of 170,000 in range of the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles that Kim Jong Un’s regime has threatened to fire as a counter-punch to President Donald Trump’s warning that the U.S. would respond with “fire and fury” to provocative actions by North Korea.

Such threats are why the Americans are on Guam to begin with. Since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the largest and southernmost island in the Mariana Islands has been an essential part of U.S. power projection. An air base with long-range bombers and a naval base that’s home port for fast-attack submarines are among the most “strategically important” the U.S. has in the Pacific, according to the CIA World Factbook.

“We always maintain a high state of readiness and have the capabilities to counter any threat, to include those from North Korea,” Marine Lt. Col. Christopher B. Logan said of the military’s posture on Guam.

The Defense Department owns about one-quarter of Guam’s 212 square miles. At the northern end of the island, Andersen Air Force Base houses B-1 bombers as well as the Navy’s Helicopter Combat Support Squadron Twenty-five. At the southern end, Naval Base Guam hosts the Submarine Squadron Fifteen and the USS Frank Cable. The Navy and Air Force fall under Joint Region Marianas command.

Along with the U.S. personnel on the island, there are about 7,100 of their family members, and 6,700 civilian Defense Department workers and their dependents, according to Logan.