- The Philippines has expressed interest in keeping a new US missile system deployed indefinitely.
- China has urged the US to remove the weapon and denounced potential plans to deploy it in Japan.
A top Philippine general wants a new US missile system to remain in the country "forever" to boost its defenses and deterrence capabilities.
The American weapon, the Mid-Range Capability missile system, has drawn China's ire. Beijing has repeatedly demanded the MRC be removed from the Pacific and has denounced any future plans by the US to deploy the system to other regional allies.
Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, told reporters Wednesday that he'd expressed interest in keeping the MRC system in the country "forever" because "we need it for our defense," local media reported.
The MRC, also known as Typhon, is the US Army's new ground-based missile system capable of firing both the Standard Missile 6 and Tomahawk Land Attack missile. The Typhon system fills a gap in the US arsenal, offering a particularly versatile new land-based intermediate-range missile option as US rivals develop and field similar capabilities.
The weapon's emergence and overseas deployment come amid what is looking like a new arms race after the collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
Brawner's comments come as two Philippine officials told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that Washington and Manila have agreed to keep the missile system deployed indefinitely in order to deter further aggression from China, which has been in near-constant conflict with the Philippines for months in the contested South China Sea.
The US deployed the weapon overseas for the first time in a landmark deployment to the Philippines in April for a joint military exercise, and it has remained there since. Its ongoing deployment has angered China, which has repeatedly demanded the missile system be removed and accused the US of fueling an arms race.
The foreign secretary of the Philippines, Enrique Manalo, said in August that his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, had expressed concern over Typhon during talks at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Laos a month earlier. Manalo said China made the situation "very dramatic" despite reassurances.
US officials have also expressed interest in placing a Typhon system in Japan, Christine Wormuth, secretary of the US Army, said earlier this month, and that has only further agitated Beijing.
Last week, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry urged the US to abandon its plans, saying that putting Typhon in Japan would ultimately "heighten arms race, exacerbate regional tensions, threaten peace and security in this region, and disrupt global strategic balance and stability."
China's Rocket Force, the missile arm of its military, boasts a substantial arsenal of medium- and intermediate-range systems that put US assets and bases, as well as those of allies and partners, in the Indo-Pacific at risk.