The US Army announced on Friday that it will be deploying the controversial Typhon missile system to Japan for drills in September, a move strongly condemned by Russia and China.
The Typhon, also known as Mid-Range Capability, is a land-based missile launcher that can fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range exceeding 1,000 miles, and SM-6 missiles, which can hit targets up to 290 miles away. The missile system would have been banned under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty with Russia that the US withdrew from in 2019.
According to Stars and Stripes, the Typhon is being deployed to a US Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, about 25 miles southeast of Hiroshima, which puts mainland China and parts of eastern Russia in range if the system is armed with Typhons.
The drills for which the Typhon is being deployed will be held from September 11 to September 25, but that doesn’t mean the missile system will return to the US at the conclusion of the exercises. A Typhon that the US deployed to the Philippines for drills in April 2024 remains in the country to this day, and there is talk of the US potentially sending another one.
“China always opposes the United States deploying the Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile system in Asian countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Friday in response to the news about the Typhon deployment to Japan.
“We urge Japan to take a hard look at its history of aggression, follow the path of peaceful development, act prudently in military and security areas, and refrain from further losing the trust of its Asian neighbours and the international community,” Guo added.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow viewed the deployment as “another destabilising step as part of Washington’s course toward ramping up the potential of ground-based shorter and intermediate-range missiles.” She added that deploying Typhons “in regions near Russia poses a direct strategic threat to Russia” and noted Japan’s “accelerated militarization” in cooperation with the US.
Russia recently announced that it is no longer bound by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of missile systems that were previously banned by the INF Treaty. The US has previously deployed a Typhon system to Denmark for drills and plans a long-term deployment of a Typhon or another system with a similar range in Germany by 2026.
