Defense planning — at least for now — points to additional troops, families and firepower arriving on Hawaii’s shores, with the state viewed as an important mid-Pacific beachhead for the United States as the balance of world economic power continues to shift from the West to the East.

How those plans will change with looming budget cuts remains to be seen. Among the examples of Hawaii’s continued military growth is the plan by Naval Special Warfare to move its mainland “undersea enterprise” units to Pearl Harbor, which has been home to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 since 1994. The consolidation over the next five years would more than double the undersea component at Pearl from 374 to 900 personnel, with 700 added dependents, the Navy said.

List: Navy officials said there are already more than 100 SEAL commandos based here.

“The U.S. military is shifting towards the Pacific” consistent with the global shift in trade — which already resulted in the Navy moving 60 percent of its attack submarine force to the Pacific and keeping six aircraft carriers in the region, a Navy planning document for the move states.

A variety of projects — which would provide millions annually in economic impact — are in planning by the military for Hawaii or under way. Up to 18 percent of Hawaii’s economy is linked to defense spending, the RAND Corp. said in June.

The Army wants to modernize pre-World War II facilities at Wheeler Army Airfield for its helicopter brigade over the next five years. The projects at Wheeler could total $1 billion — if they come to fruition, officials said.

The Defense Department has been ordered to make $350 billion in cuts over 10 years. If a congressional “supercommittee” doesn’t find $1.2 trillion in federal savings by Thanksgiving, another $600 billion in defense cuts could be made over the next decade.

“There’s all kinds of speculation going on and you also have congressional delegations from all the states that have a military presence fighting to preserve their turf,” said Charlie Ota, vice president for military affairs with the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii.

A PROPOSAL was inserted in the House version of the Defense Department budget seeking a Navy study of high overhead costs at the Navy’s four shipyards — including Pearl Harbor, Ota said.

Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard is the state’s largest industrial employer, with about 4,500 civilian workers.

Defense contractors — of which there are many in Hawaii — also are facing the budget knife.

“There’s a lot of focus on the Pacific, don’t get me wrong, because the people, I think both in Congress and the Pentagon, realize that threats exist in the Asia-Pacific region,” Ota said. “But what that translates into (when it comes to budget reductions), who knows? You just can’t cut that much money out of the defense budget without causing an awful lot of actions that will affect a lot of folks, a lot of states, a lot of jobs.”

Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu, said it’s important to note “the rising significance of Asia in U.S. strategic thinking and the notion that the United States has increasing equities in the region.”

A U.S. State Department official recently said that the economies of the 21 member nations of the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation represent more than half of the global economy.

At the same time, there are flashpoints along China’s periphery and the Pacific is one of the most earthquake-and disasterprone regions in the world, Glosserman said.

“As far as I’m concerned, the military is in Hawaii because of its strategic placement on this planet, and it’s now being, I think, widely concluded that the area of major concern is no longer Europe and the Atlantic — it’s Asia and the Pacific,” said U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.

Inouye said he believes that due to Hawaii’s strategic importance, the military here “will either increase or it will stay as it is for maybe a decade or so.”

“It’s real estate that we can depend on,” Inouye said. “It’s part of the United States. We can’t insist that the Philippines do our bidding or the Japanese or the Koreans. The closest we have is Guam and Hawaii.”