The U.S. Missile Launcher That Is Enraging China
Land-based Typhon Weapons System is capable of targeting major military-command and industrial centers in mainland China
A new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines puts key Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance and hands President Trump an early test of his commitment to deterring Chinese aggression against American allies in Asia.
Last year, the U.S. Army moved the Typhon Missile System, which can fire missiles as far as 1,200 miles, to a base on Luzon Island in the northern Philippines. It is the first time since the Cold War that the U.S. military has deployed a land-based launching system with such a long range outside its borders.
The Typhon, military experts say, is part of a broader strategic repositioning by the American military as it seeks to counter Beijing’s huge buildup of intermediate- and long-range missiles in the Pacific.
In the event of a conflict with China, land-based missile systems such as the Typhon could be central to defending key U.S. allies such as the Philippines, which has clashed with China over Beijing’s claims to nearly all of the South China Sea, and Taiwan, which Beijing has threatened to take, by force if necessary.
The Chinese government has responded to the Typhon’s deployment with alarm, rebuking the U.S. and the Philippines for fueling what it called an arms race.
Now, the Typhon, which was moved to the Philippines during the Biden administration, has emerged as an important litmus test amid concerns among American allies over the Trump administration’s willingness to come to their defense in a conflict with China. A visit to the Philippines and Japan by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week could provide more clarity on the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
The Typhon can fire two types of missiles. Tomahawk missiles bearing conventional warheads have a range of around 1,200 miles, putting into reach much of southeastern China along with the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. In the case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, such missiles could target air-defense and radar systems on the Chinese coast as well as the Chinese military’s control-and-command centers in Guangzhou and Nanjing.
The shorter-range Standard Missile 6, or SM-6, could target Chinese or other enemy ships and aircraft, and intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles fired at U.S. interests. Army officials have said that it is the only missile in the U.S. arsenal capable of intercepting, at least in late flight, the hypersonic missiles that both China and Russia have been testing.
Flashpoint with China
The U.S. Army first moved two Typhon launchers, an operations center and support vehicles to Luzon Island for joint military exercises between the two countries a year ago. The Army, which first took delivery of the system in late 2022, said it wanted to test it in the hot and humid climate of the Indo-Pacific region.
The Army later agreed to extend the deployment indefinitely. Since then, Philippine commanders have said they would like to buy the Typhon for their own military and the country’s troops are now being trained on using the system.
Despite the limited immediate military value of the deployment—a full Typhon battery has four launchers and it didn’t come with any missiles—Beijing’s reaction was forceful.
China’s Foreign Ministry demanded the Typhon’s removal and threatened retaliatory action. “China will not sit idly by when its security interests are harmed or threatened,” the ministry said in February.
Russia, a close ally of China, also denounced the move. Russian President Vladimir Putin likened the deployment to that of Pershing II missile launchers in West Germany in 1983, a step that Soviet leaders at the time interpreted as a preparation for a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union by the West.
The Pershing II deployment prompted large protests in Europe and the U.S. and eventually led to the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union. That treaty banned the possession, production and flight testing of ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 miles and 3,400 miles.
But the INF treaty didn’t include China, allowing Beijing to assemble an enormous arsenal of such missiles. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, the U.S. pulled out of the treaty and the Army began preparations for a new intermediate-range missile system.
Mounted in trailers on the back of trucks, the Typhon is relatively easy to move, including on military transport planes. Compared with ship-based missile launchers, land-based missile systems are harder to spot and take out early on in a conflict. In the future, the U.S. could deploy the Typhon in locations across the Indo-Pacific region or sell it to allies there. That would leave adversaries guessing from where they could be hit.
“The U.S. is shifting away from a reliance on big centralized bases, towards a more dispersed resilient force posture,” said Shawn Rostker, a research analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
A potential bargaining chip
The Typhon’s deployment in the Philippines was a recognition of the increasingly strategic importance of the Philippines under the Biden administration. The country’s president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has expanded access to military bases for U.S. forces, and Philippine vessels and airplanes have pushed back against Chinese forces in the South China Sea, a thoroughfare for nearly one-third of global maritime trade.
Other American allies in Asia, including Japan, have so far balked at hosting U.S. missiles capable of striking China, but are developing their own comparable capabilities.
There have been some signs that the Trump administration also sees the Typhon as key to its strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
“We proved the MRC’s deterrent effect via a dynamic deployment in the Philippines and look forward to all future power projection opportunities!” Dan Driscoll, the new Army secretary, said in a post on X earlier this month, using the abbreviation for the army’s technical name for the Typhon, Mid-Range Capability.
Others, however, have warned that moving such powerful U.S. missile systems close to China risks a spiral of escalation and, perhaps by accident, a war between two nuclear superpowers.
“Just the presence of the system causes those escalation risks, and that’s before you even consider what happens if you use the system in a conflict,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a libertarian-leaning Washington-based think tank that backs a more restrained U.S. foreign policy.
Similar views have been espoused by some senior Trump appointees, including Andrew Byers, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, who has favored a less contentious relationship with Beijing. Before taking office, Byers suggested pulling U.S. assets out of the Philippines in return for China’s coast guard running fewer patrols in disputed areas of the South China Sea.
Marcos himself has said he would remove the Typhon system if China ceased its aggressions in the South China Sea.
But in the wake of Trump’s talks with Putin over Ukraine, there are also concerns in the Philippines that Typhon could become part of a deal between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Such a deal might sacrifice the interests of the smaller American ally, said Richard Heydarian, a lecturer in international studies at the University of the Philippines’s Asian Center.
“What the Philippines does with [the Typhon] and what the Trump administration will do about it,” he said, “determines how the game of deterrence will play out in the coming months and years.”
