US-Japan HIMARS missile plan for island near Taiwan alarms China

China is now alarmed that the US and Japan are planning to put HIMARS in the Nansei (Ryukyu) islands close to Taiwan. My colleagues and I proposed that deployment two years ago in newspaper articles, on videos and in a book, edited by Lieutenant General Earl Hailston (USMC, retired) and myself, called Stopping a Taiwan Invasion.

In the latest news, published first by the Kyodo News Service, Japan has now agreed to the deployment on Yonaguni and the Biden administration has acquiesced to proposals made by the US Marines.

How to defend Taiwan from a threatened Taiwan invasion is a non-trivial military problem. Taiwan is close to the Chinese mainland and China has overwhelming force. But China, too, has a couple of problems. On the tactical level, China would have to send troops to invade Taiwan. It can do so with paratroopers, but that tactic can be stopped by Taiwan’s military. Or it can send an invasion force by sea, something it has been practicing to do.

HIMARS with ATACMS can be used to strike invasion ships. The range of ATACMS (190 miles) is more than double the distance of Yonaguni from Taiwan, and covers the main routes the Chinese can use to launch an operation.

The US decided to send ATACMS to Ukraine, authorizing strikes on Russian territory. This will have almost no real military impact in a land war because the Russians have learned how to intercept ATACMS strikes fairly efficiently. In the first dozen or so ATACMS launches in Kursk and elsewhere on Russia’s territory, not much has been achieved other than to anger the Russians. The Ukrainian result therefore is quite poor, and it wastes ATACMS missiles.

The missiles are in short supply. For example, Taiwan ordered both HIMARS and ATACMS and has only now been