By Kirk Spitzer
TIME

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON -- The next time Chinese fighter planes intercept American aircraft in a newly declared air defense zone in the East China Sea, they may find something they've never seen before: a sleek, long-range patrol plane that can fly faster, farther and longer than any other aircraft of its kind.

The new P-8 patrol planes are designed to hunt submarines and surface warships and provide surveillance over vast swaths of ocean. They will enter service from U.S. bases in Japan as early as this week and will replace older model P-3Cs.

The new aircraft are part of a dramatic but low-key modernization of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region, designed largely to counter China’s growing military power and assertiveness. While the overall number of ships, planes and manpower remains basically unchanged, for now, U.S. commanders now have a far newer and more technologically advanced war-fighting machine than just two or three years ago.

“We are getting brand-new, latest-and-greatest (equipment) out here in the Asia-Pacific, and we are getting it first. We have a significantly more capable force,” said Vice Adm. Robert Thomas, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, during a break in a U.S.-Japan training exercise last week.

The Obama administration plans to shift some 60 percent of the Navy to the Asia-Pacific by 2020 as part of a “rebalance” of U.S. military and diplomatic strategy. That shift has already begun, with newer and more sophisticated ships and planes replacing older models.

The Antietam’s improvements include an advanced combat system that allows the ship to take command of anti-air operations for an entire battle group. That’s an important capability given China’s rapidly improving missiles and airplanes – and a capability that its predecessor lacked. The other new ships have similar improvements.

To speed the changeovers, crews already based in Japan were assigned to the new ships, while the original crews sailed home with the castoffs. At least one more such “hull swap” is expected next year.

In addition to exchanging older planes for the new P-8s, the Pentagon also sent two squadrons of MV-22 Ospreys to replace the Marines’ CH-46 helicopters. The hybrid Ospreys take off and land like helicopters but fly like fixed-wing airplanes. That gives the Marines more than twice the speed, three times the payload and four times the range of the 1960s-vintage helicopters they replaced.

The Ospreys demonstrated their value by flying unassisted from Okinawa to the Philippines and ferrying troops and supplies to remote locations during the Typhoon Haiyan relief effort last month. The new aircraft would play a key role in any contest over remote islands in Japan’s vast southwest island chain – and are high on the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force’s (JMSDF) shopping list, as well.

The USS George Washington, the cornerstone of the 7th Fleet, is more than 20 years old, but its capabilities are not. Its air wing now includes new F/A-18F Super Hornets, which have half-again the range and flying time of their predecessors. That’s handy, since China’s improving defenses are designed to force U.S. carriers to operate further from shore.

“The ‘GW’ carrier air wing is the most technologically capable air wing in the Navy,” said Thomas, who commands U.S. naval forces from Hawaii to India. Last week’s exercise was designed to prevent the naval forces of an unnamed third country from seizing a Japanese-held island.

“As we add the P-8s, that will give us more range, more time on station, more situational awareness. The MV-22 has the ability now to operate off not only our ships, but off the JMSDF ships, as well. That gives us tremendous flexibility in conducting amphibious warfare that we didn’t have before,” Thomas said.

Given China’s double digit increases in defense spending and increasingly assertive behavior, the modernization effort makes sense, said Jeffrey Hornung, a Japan and East Asia Security specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

“The challenges of this century will be in the Asia-Pacific region, so you are going to want to put your newest and best equipment there,” said Hornung.

Those challenges were on clear display last month when China’s Ministry of National Defense unilaterally declared an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea. The zone includes a group of uninhabited islands administered by Japan but claimed by China.

Within days of the declaration, the United States sent two B-52 bombers into the zone – ostensibly as part of the same exercise in which the GW was a participant – and maintained routine patrols in the area, along with the Japanese. China initially did not react, but a few days later sent two fighter planes to shadow U.S. and Japanese aircraft in the zone.

No word on whether they were searching for P-8s.