The US wants to deploy a previously banned missile system to Japan for military drills, Nikkei Asia has reported. The Typhon missile launcher is a ground-based system that can fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles.
Ground-based missiles with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles were banned by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019. The Typhon also fires SM-6 missiles, which can hit targets up to 290 miles away.
The US deployed a Typhon system to the Philippines for military drills, a move that China viewed as a major provocation. The missile system was sent to the Philippines for several months. It was first deployed for the drills that started in April, and Manila said it would be pulled out in September, meaning it could still be there.
The Philippines said China expressed "very dramatic" alarm over the deployment of the Typhon system. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said the deployment "put the entire region under the fire of the United States (and) brought huge risks of war into the region."
US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said on Wednesday that she told Japanese officials the US wanted to deploy the Typhon to Japan next. "We’ve made our interest in this clear with the Japanese Self-Defense Forces," she said at a Defense News conference in Virginia.
Wormuth said the US would also look to keep it in Japan for several months. "Our goal…in the Army has been to really try to have as much combat-credible capability forward” in the Indo-Pacific west of the international dateline," she said, according to Nikkei.
Wormuth claimed the deployment "strengthens deterrence" in the region and said the missile system has "gotten the attention of China." She said there is "a lot of potential" for moving US troops and equipment around Japan’s southwestern islands, which are near Taiwan.
US officials say the US is building up its military presence near China in the name of deterrence, but the steps have only escalated tensions in the region, making a conflict more likely. Wormuth and other US officials are also openly planning for a direct confrontation with China despite the obvious risk of nuclear war.
Wormuth said last year that the US was preparing to fight and win a war with China. "I personally am not of the view that an amphibious invasion of Taiwan is imminent," she said. "But we obviously have to prepare, to be prepared to fight and win that war."
