U.S. missile moves in Japan send China clear message: A new era has arrived

The U.S.-Japan alliance is entering a new phase in its effort to deter China, one that increasingly relies on dispersed, land-based missiles positioned along the “first island chain” — the string of islands stretching from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines toward Borneo. The planned longer-term presence of a U.S. Typhon midrange missile system in Japan, combined with the fielding of the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) anti-ship missile and Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) air-defense systems by Okinawa-based units, is creating a distributed network of strike, air-defense and targeting capabilities that complicates Chinese military operations around Taiwan…