U.S. is keeping its mid-range Typhon mobile missile batteries in the Philippines

 

  The U.S. says it’s keeping its mid-range Typhon mobile missile batteries in the Philippines, despite protests from China and Russia, Reuters reported Thursday from Manila.

Location: The island of Luzon, which is about 160 miles from the southern tip of Taiwan. The island also faces the South China Sea.

 About the Typhon: It can “launch missiles including SM-6 missiles and Tomahawks with a range exceeding 1,600 km (994 miles),” Reuters writes.

 Said one Philippine official: “We want to give [China] sleepless nights” with the system’s location.

  “A new naval pier at a Philippine naval base in Subic Bay,” and the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command is helping build it, USNI News reported this week.

 Background: “In 2022, Manilla activated the base…to berth its larger warships at a strategic location in Western Luzon for sorties into the South China Sea.” But with the Philippines expected to acquire several ships over the next four years, including two frigates and six corvettes, its navy will need more space for those additional vessels, and Subic could be just the place.

Developing: The U.S. military is working to amass anti-ship weapons to help counter China, Reuters reported separately this week. That includes the classified QUICKSINK weapon from Boeing and BAE Systems, “an inexpensive and potentially plentiful bomb equipped with a low-cost GPS guidance kit and a seeker that can track moving objects,” according to the wire service.

According to one possible conflict scenario, “the U.S. military would use Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) or SM-6 missiles to damage a Chinese warship and its radars, then bombard the vessel with lower-cost weapons such as QUICKSINK,” one industry executive told Reuters.

About those stockpiles: “More than 800 SM-6 missiles are due to be bought in the next five years,” and “Several thousand Tomahawks and hundreds of thousands of JDAMs are already in U.S. inventories,” according to government documents outlining military purchases. 

ICYMI: CNO Franchetti is hoping naval lessons from Yemen can improve U.S. odds in a future conflict with China, the Associated Press reported Wednesday as the she unpacked her new “2024 Navigation Plan and America's Warfighting Navy,” which was published this week.

Some of those lessons involve the ability to adapt old weapons to new threats (using a “fully automatic artillery gun” to shoot down aerial drones, e.g.) as well as newer weapons to old threats (like Ukraine’s use of naval drones against the Russian navy).