Army Looking To Shrink Typhon Missile System After Lessons Learned From First Deployment

The U.S. Army is already interested in scaling down its new Typhon ground-based missile system, if possible, to help make it easier to deploy and operate. The service only sent Typhon, which currently uses large tractor-trailer launchers to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 multi-purpose missiles, overseas for the first time to the Philippines earlier this year.

Typhon, also known as the Mid-Range Capability (MRC), was among the topics of discussion at a panel talk centered on the Army’s new Multi-Domain Task Forces (MTDF) at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference earlier today. Typhon is a key component of the current approved force structure for the service’s three MDTFs. In addition to Typhon, each of the task forces is set to eventually incorporate units armed with the Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles and the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) short-range ballistic missiles, as well as a variety of air and missile defense, counter-drone, electronic warfare, and other advanced capabilities.

“So, the Mid-Range Capability, we fielded it, we have put it into the theater, but we’re learning lessons on how we can improve the next evolutions of that,” Army Col. Michael Rose, commander of the 3rd MDTF headquartered at Fort Shafter in Hawaii, said today at AUSA. “How do we make it more mobile? How do we make it smaller? How do we make it more agile? How do we employ it most effectively and how do we sustain it? A lot of those lessons are feeding back into our RDT&E [research, development, test, and evaluations] and acquisitions professionals to improve and enhance that new operational capability.”

Rose did not elaborate further, but it is not hard to see how Typhon’s current configuration, which is technically road-mobile and air-transportable, might present certain operational limitations. At the core of a typical Typhon battery at present are four trailer-based launchers, each towed by an 8×8 tractor from the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) family. A fifth trailer, also towed by a HEMTT tractor, provides a mobile battery operations center (BOC). There are other supporting vehicles and equipment in the unit’s inventory, as well.

It’s also worth noting that each Typhon launcher, which is derived from the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) used on various U.S. and foreign warships, can only hold up to four missiles at a time. As such, the entire battery can fire 16 missiles before needing to reload, which requires additional vehicles and equipment. The system does offer a wide breadth of capabilities given the abilities of the Tomahawk and the SM-6 to strike targets on land and at sea. The Army has also been eying the very versatile SM-6 for potential ground-based use in its surface-to-air mode.

The picture seen below of a Typhon launcher rolling off a U.S. Air Force C-17 during 1st MDTF’s first overseas deployment of elements of the system to the Philippines in April underscores the large size of the trailer-based components and their HEMTT prime movers.

Air Force cargo aircraft are in high demand even in peacetime and there are concerns already about the capacity of existing fleets to meet operational needs during future conflicts, especially in a potential high-end fight in the Pacific against China. There is a also growing focus within the U.S. military on concepts of operations involving dispersing forces across a wide network of operating locations to reduce their vulnerability, and many of those sites could well be completely inaccessible to larger airlifters like the C-17. There is also the matter of increasingly more capable and longer-range air defense threats.

Typhon’s size and weight could limit the ability to deploy the system by sea, especially in the absence of available established port facilities, or even over land depending on the environment. Insufficiently wide and/or strong bridges are already a well-known impediment to the movement of tanks and other heavy armored vehicles.

Deployment limitations, along with other factors, also impact how and where the Typhon can be employed and create potential vulnerabilities.

Col. Rose and the others on the MDTF panel at AUSA today did not offer any examples of potential or notional options for how Typhon might be scaled down or otherwise improved upon.

The U.S. Marine Corps, which has been completely reorganizing itself to align with new expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations, is in the process of fielding a ground-based Tomahawk cruise missile launcher mounted on an uncrewed derivative of the 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. The Marines’ Long Range Fires (LRF) launcher is substantially smaller and lighter than the Typhon launcher, but also can only be loaded with a single Tomahawk at a time.

The Army has also been experimenting with an uncrewed derivative of the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) called the Autonomous Multi-domain Launcher (AML) with a particular eye toward future dispersed operations. AML and HIMARS can both fire 227mm guided artillery rockets, as well as Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and PRSM ballistic missiles, but, at least in their current forms, the launchers are not long enough to accommodate Tomahawk. AML might still be a starting place for a more truncated launcher for use with Typhon. HIMARS itself was originally developed as a way to fit at least some of the capabilities of the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) into a package that could squeeze inside a C-130 cargo plane.

It’s also worth noting here that the U.S. Navy has been experimenting with containerized Mk 70 launchers, which are very similar in form and function to the Typhon launchers and are also based on the Mk 41 VLS, in ship and ground-based configurations. However, the ground-based arrangement that has been demonstrated to date is also a relatively large tractor-trailer setup.

New, smaller missiles might be another option for scaling down Typhon. As a tangential example, the new PRSMs are notably smaller than the ATACMSs they are replacing, but offer longer range and other important capability boosts. At the same time, this would be a major shift for Typhon, especially given the investments the Army has made already in Tomahawk and SM-6. Developing something entirely new would be costly, as well.

In the meantime, Typhon has already made a significant mark in the Pacific region, being lauded by the U.S. military’s counterparts in the Philippines and drawing the ire of China. The Philippine armed forces have even expressed an interest in acquiring their own Typhons. This has certainly presented a counter-example to questions raised in the past about where Typhon systems, as well as Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles, might be deployed, especially in the Pacific, at all due in part to potential resistance from allies and partners to host them.

From where elements of the system are currently deployed in Northern Luzon, Typhon holds targets at risk in the southeastern end of mainland China, as well as on Hanan Island in the northern end of the South China Sea. Several Chinese man-made outposts elsewhere in the South China Sea, as well as targets at sea in the surrounding areas, would also be in range. Hainan, in particular, is home to several highly strategic naval and other bases. In September, the People’s Liberation Army also conducted an extremely rare intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch out over the Pacific from the island.

All of this is a reminder of the importance of Typhon, and being able to deploy and employ it effectively, as well as the possible vulnerabilities that might come along with the system in its current form. Typhon, as well as Dark Eagle, which could face many of the same deployability issues with its trailer-based launchers, are presently set to be low-density, high-value assets that would be prime targets for an opponent, especially in a large-scale conflict.

With all this in mind, it will be interesting to see how Typhon does or doesn’t evolve, size-wise in or in any other regard, based on what the Army is still learning from its early fielding of the system.

Contact the author: [email protected]