The U.S. Army’s Typhon ground-based missile system has, for the first time, been deployed in Japan, in what’s being seen as a clear message to China. The system, which can fire Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 multi-purpose missiles, is a growing feature of U.S. military activities in the Indo-Pacific region, with a first live-fire exercise having taken place in Australia in July, as you can read about here.

The Typhon system is in Japan as part of the annual Resolute Dragon exercise, with an example of the system being shown to the media at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi prefecture, on the southwest side of Honshu Island. Involving around 14,000 Japanese and 5,200 U.S. troops, this year’s Resolute Dragon is the largest ever and will run for two weeks.

Col. Wade Germann, commander of the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force (3MDTF) operating the Typhon, described the capabilities of the system at Iwakuni.

“Employing multiple systems and different types of munitions, it is able to create dilemmas for the enemy,” Germann said. “The speed with which it can be deployed enables us to forward position it when required expeditiously,” he added.

Typhon will leave Japan after Resolute Dragon, although where it will go after that is unclear. It was a 3MDTF Typhon battery that was used to successfully sink a maritime target during Exercise Talisman Sabre 25 in Australia earlier this summer. The system has previously also been deployed to the Philippines, as we have discussed in the past.

A Typhon battery, alternatively known as the Mid-Range Capability (MRC), comprises four launchers, a trailer-based mobile command post, and other ancillary vehicles and equipment.

A key facet of Typhon is its ability to be rapidly deployed to forward areas in response to a crisis or contingency. The systems can be airlifted in U.S. Air Force C-17s, which have significant short- and rough-field capabilities, meaning they can be flown into more remote and austere locations. For the future, the Army is looking at making the system easier to move around, with interest having been shown in a scaled-down version, although details of how this would be achieved remain scarce.

The current generation of Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles that the system can fire offers land attack and anti-ship capabilities. Tomahawk allows the to hold targets at risk anywhere within a roughly 1,000-mile radius, making it especially useful across the huge expanses of the Pacific theater. Tomahawk also has particular relevance to Japan, which has ordered the missile, and which is meanwhile embarking on developing its own conventional long-strike capabilities, as part of a major military expansion effort.

Typhon also uses the SM-6, which is primarily an air defense weapon, but as integrated on Typhon, is intended to be employed mainly against targets ashore and at sea, essentially as a short-range ballistic missile. The SM-6 is therefore a notably flexible surface-to-surface weapon, and its ballistic-missile-like capability makes it tricky to intercept.

As an anti-ship weapon, Typhon brings a capability that is especially critical in the Indo-Pacific context. In any future major conflict with China, the U.S. would have to launch anti-ship strikes across large swathes of the Indo-Pacific. In the meantime, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) continues to add larger and otherwise more modern surface warships to its already substantial combat fleets.

However, the Army also envisages Typhon as a “strategic” weapon system that can also be used against higher-value targets like air defense assets and command and control nodes.

It is this capability, in particular, that has made Typhon something of a bogey weapon for Beijing.

From Iwakuni, Typhon can use Tomahawk missiles to strike targets on China’s eastern seaboard or even in parts of Russia.

For the U.S. military, Iwakuni is a part of the so-called First Island Chain, a boundary defined by archipelagos opposite mainland East Asia, extending from the southern end of the Japanese home islands all the way to the South China Sea. The U.S. military and its allies could exploit this chain to close down Chinese sea and air power and complicate its military planning.

Extending further out into the western Pacific is the Second Island Chain, which links Japan to New Guinea and includes Guam and other U.S. island territories in the Marianas.

As well as its significant range and destructive power, Typhon is highly flexible and responsive. It can be quickly deployed and, once there, it is road-mobile, making it more survivable. The presence of Typhon in the Indo-Pacific region would provide Chinese forces with a notable challenge, since it would pose a threat to a wide range of targets throughout the region in the opening phases of a conflict.

Officials from both China and Russia have already spoken out against the deployment, responding when this was announced last month.

In late August, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said that “China always opposes the United States deploying the Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile system in Asian countries,” arguing that the deployment poses a threat to regional strategic security.

“[We] see how official Tokyo is consistently pursuing a course of accelerated militarization, including increasing training activities and military-technical cooperation with Washington,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, while spokesperson Maria Zakharova urged Japan to reconsider its decision to allow Typhon on its territory.

In the past, such a deployment might have been seen as too provocative by officials in both Washington and Tokyo. However, based on the scale at which Typhon has been deployed so far, it is far from a major strategic threat to China.

Ultimately, however, whether or not Beijing responds to Typhon being in Japan won’t change the Army’s plans to expand the system’s presence in the region, including its permanent basing there.

More generally, the Army is looking to be better able to challenge the Chinese military in the region through its Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) initiative. As well as Typhon, this also encompasses future conventional long-strike capabilities, such as the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile and the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) short-range ballistic missiles.

While Resolute Dragon will see the Army’s Typhon in Japan only on a temporary basis, its appearance there is a potent signal of the service’s growing focus on strike capabilities in the region, which can be directed against both land and maritime targets. As such, it reinforces the growing importance of this flexible system in an Indo-Pacific context.

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