The U.S. has conveyed to Japan that Washington would like to deploy midrange missiles there as part of its military exercises, bolstering deterrence against China, according to a senior American defense official.
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth told the Defense News Conference event in Virginia on Wednesday that the issue was brought up on her visit to Tokyo in early August, a trip that included a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara.
“We’d be very interested, obviously, in seeing” the Multi-Domain Task Force operate out of Japan through exercises, Wormuth said, referring to the Army’s new unit that hosts the Mid-Range Capability missile system, also known as the Typhon.
“We’ve made our interest in this clear with the Japanese Self-Defense Forces,” she said, and noted that the U.S. sees “a lot of potential” in being able to move equipment and soldiers to Japan’s Southwest Islands. The islands are a stone’s throw away from Taiwan, a democratically self-governed island that China views as its own.
Any deployment would be done at a pace that Japan is comfortable with, Wormuth said. Midrange missiles have not been previously been sent to Japan before.
In April, the U.S. Army’s 1st Multi-Domain Task Force in Washington state sent a Typhon missile launcher to the Philippines as part of Exercise Salaknib 24.
This was the first time that the U.S. deployed ground-based missiles to a foreign country since withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019.
The INF Treaty, as it was known, was signed in 1987 and had long barred the U.S. from possessing, producing or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 kilometers to 5,500 km. But the development of midrange missiles by China, which was never a party to the INF, spurred the Trump administration to leave the treaty and start rebuilding the American arsenal.
While deployed this April, the Typhon stayed in the Philippines for months, causing unease in Beijing. The Philippines had said the missile launcher would leave in September.
Wormuth said at Wednesday’s event that the monthslong deployment would be a model for the future.
“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 Date Line, for “six months a year or more,” she said.
“Demonstrating those kinds of combat capabilities strengthens deterrence in the region,” she said.
“I do think it’s gotten the attention of China. … It’s an impressive capability,” Wormuth said.
The Typhon launches two types of missiles: the Tomahawk cruise missile, with an estimated range of more than 1,600 km, and the Standard Missile-6 multipurpose interceptor, with a range of up to 370 km.
For the Philippines drill, the rocket launcher was airlifted from the 1st Multidomain Task Force at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.
In early August, Lt. Gen. Kazuo Sakai, chief of staff of the Japan Ground SDF’s Ground Component Command, led a team to visit Lewis-McChord, in what was seen as laying the groundwork for a similar deployment to Japan.
