The U.S. military hopes to create a network of longer-range, land-based missiles in the Western Pacific — including possibly on far-flung Japanese islands — as a means of deterring China from military action against Taiwan and over the Senkaku islets, the top commander for the Indo-Pacific region suggested Tuesday.
“A wider base of long-range precision fires, which are enabled by all our terrestrial forces — not just sea and air but by land forces as well — is critically important to stabilize what is becoming a more unstable environment in the Western Pacific,” Indo-Pacific commander Adm. Phil Davidson told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
According to an unclassified Indo-Pacific Command budget document submitted to Congress late last month, deploying ground-based weapons along the so-called first island chain, which stretches from Okinawa through Taiwan and the Philippines and includes the Japanese-administered Senkakus, is crucial “to deter and deny” U.S. adversaries’ “acts of aggression or coercion against our allies” in the area.