During a military exercise with the Philippines that began last month, the U.S. Army deployed a new type of covert weapon designed to remain hidden in plain sight.
Called Typhon, it consists of a modified 40-foot shipping container that conceals up to four missiles that rotate upward to fire. It can be loaded with weapons, including the Tomahawk – a cruise missile that can hit targets on land and ships at sea at a distance of more than 1,850 kilometers.
The weapon and similar small mobile launchers would have been illegal just five years ago under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned U.S. and Russian forces from using land-based cruise missiles or ballistic missiles with a range of about 300 miles and 3,400 miles.
In 2019, President Donald J. Trump terminated the treaty, in part because the United States believed Russia had violated the pact’s terms for years. But U.S. officials said China, with its growing arsenal of long-range missiles, was also a reason the Trump administration chose to withdraw.
The decision freed the Pentagon to build the weapons now ready to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. It also coincided with a rethinking of modern war by U.S. Marine Corps leaders. They recommended phasing out certain heavy and cumbersome weapons such as 155-millimeter howitzers and tanks – which they believed would be of little use against Chinese forces in the Pacific – and replacing them with lighter and more flexible weapons such as to replace truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.
At that time, the Pentagon had no land-based anti-ship weapons. However, other military officials were already doing this. Then in April 2022, Ukrainian ground forces used a similar weapon, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles, fired from trucks to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea.
Despite the success of the Moskva River attack, a group of retired Marine generals publicly criticized the Corps’ plans to prioritize similar weapons over more traditional weapons. They said the service was focusing on China to the detriment of other potential threats, and eliminating tanks and heavy artillery would leave the Marines unprepared for a major conflict elsewhere in the world.
At a Defense Writers Group meeting in December 2022, Gen. David H. Berger, then the Marines’ top general, acknowledged that he had been criticized by former colleagues but said his decisions were based on intelligence reports that the retirees could not obtain .
U.S. military and civilian leaders believed that Chinese President Xi Jinping planned to keep his many promises and reunite Taiwan with Beijing through diplomatic channels or by force if necessary. And the Moskva’s hull rusting on the seabed suggested a way to dissuade Beijing from military action.
Pentagon officials were convinced that deterring China would require neither a missile like the latest Tomahawk, which can attack ships with the equivalent of about half a ton of TNT, nor a missile like Ukraine’s Neptune, which has a warhead of about a third wears this size.
Instead, positioning even smaller missiles might be enough to knock out Chinese frigates, destroyers and amphibious vehicles, U.S. officials thought, confident that Mr. Xi would only attempt an invasion if he believed him a relatively bloodless operation would succeed before the American troops responded.
The targeting officers chose a Navy missile called the SM-6 (Standard Missile 6) that seemed suitable for the job.
With a warhead about half the size of the Neptune’s, the SM-6 could evade the defenses of a Chinese warship and, upon impact, switch the crew’s mission from invasion to survival.
Pentagon officials believed that firing squadrons of Chinese amphibious ships full of troops in the Taiwan Strait would not only protect the de facto independent island but could also make Mr. Xi’s own claim to power within the Communist Party untenable.
Without the legal constraints of the INF Treaty, the Pentagon began experimenting with existing assets.
Sealed canisters containing Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles were mounted on small trucks and hidden in shipping containers.
The Navy publicly claims the missile has a maximum range of about 115 miles. But the SM-6 can actually reach targets 290 miles away, officials confirmed to The New York Times, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive weapons capabilities.
In the event of hostilities with China, the Philippines could invoke its longstanding mutual defense pact with Washington and ask U.S. forces to station mobile missile launchers at one of nine Philippine military bases to which the Pentagon has secured access over the last decade.
Some of these partner bases are on the island of Luzon, where SM-6 missiles could threaten Chinese ships in the waterway between the northernmost reaches of the Philippines and Taiwan.
Last year, the Pentagon gained access to a base on Balabac Island in the southwestern Philippines. From there, the same weapon could reach China’s collection of militarized reefs in the Spratly Islands, which have become a key base of operations for Beijing’s efforts to control the South China Sea.
A new security agreement signed in August between Washington and Tokyo could provide a third strategic location for Taiwan’s defense in the event of war – military bases in Japan’s far western Ryukyu Range. From such a facility on Yonaguni Island, where U.S. forces train with their Japanese counterparts, an SM-6 could strike any target around Taiwan and threaten bases in mainland China across the Strait.
The longer-range Tomahawk, truck-based launchers and Typhons stationed on small islands within a thousand miles of mainland China could largely circumvent one of Beijing’s perceived strengths: Chinese-developed missiles that military leaders say they can sent to sink an American aircraft carrier in defense of Taiwan.
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2024-05-03 14:07:10
www.nytimes.com
