HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFPN) -- The Air Force will become more active in the Pacific theater in the future in response to emerging hot spots, said the Air Force chief of staff after a recent tour of the Pacific Air Operations Center here.

Gen. John P. Jumper discussed the importance of the Pacific area.

“As we’ve seen over the past 14 years since [operations] Desert Shield and Desert Storm, we don’t know what’s going to happen next; we don’t know where it’s going to happen,” he said. “We’ve got to be ahead of events. We’ve got to anticipate what’s going to happen next and then start learning about it so we can react to it.”

General Jumper explained that air operations centers help us in the endeavor to foresee the future.

By standing up a center here near U.S. Pacific Command officials, it places the air component commander next to the joint task force commanders and the combatant commanders. These are the people who are going to have to “deal with whatever emerges in the theater and have their head in that day in and day out, and that’s the important thing,” he said.

Hot spots and where they can emerge are things that leaders are always paying attention to, the general said.

“We’re always very focused on Korea,” he said. “But around the rest of the Pacific, we have to keep our eye on those who might harbor terrorists and how that might affect our operations, and make sure that we have ourselves positioned correctly.”

General Jumper said as a process of constant vigilance, forces may be repositioned around the theater in the next few years to make sure that Airmen are in the right place and can be there at the right time should something emerge.

“The plan is that there will be more at Guam in the form of bombers, tankers and fighters, (which will give us) the ability to respond rapidly,” he said.

Developing operating locations throughout the Pacific theater and increasing contact with other countries will lead to improved, closer relationships between the Air Force and militaries and air forces of countries around the region, General Jumper said.

“We can count on the fact that the Air Force will stay active here,” the general said. “I think that is exactly what the combatant commander wants from the Air Force. He has asked for more air assets to deploy in an attempt to compensate for the reductions in ground forces [in South Korea]. It’s not that airplanes are going to substitute for ground forces but we can be a deterrent when the nation needs those ground forces to go do something else and vice versa.

“I think that Air Force presence actually increased here a little bit; (but) as the world changes, we’ve got to be expecting those kinds of ebbs and flows in forces,” he said. “During the normal (air and space expeditionary force) rotation cycle, we’re taking significant numbers of Airmen out of this theater and putting them over into Southwest Asia. Again [this is] another example of the ebbing and flowing of forces to deal with (what is) out there in the world.”

Repositioning forces and establishing operating locations are adaptations Air Force leaders have made in the last 14 years, General Jumper said.

“I think we have done pretty darn well,” he said. “The people of America are depending on us to deal with this global war on terrorism. We are indeed a symbol of pride and the strength of this nation. People look to us to uphold that, and I can tell you that the U.S. Air Force is doing its part. I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of it.” (Courtesy of Pacific Air Forces News Service)