The US is manufacturing the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) for deployment of on the island of Taiwan, the place they are going to serve within the Republic of China Army (RoCA) to strengthen its strike capabilities towards the Chinese language mainland. The switch of brief vary ballistic missiles will permit the RoCA to threaten targets on the mainland together with each vital infrastructure and main army amenities, and marks a big escalation in American arms provides to the service. The ATACMS may be hearth from each M270 tracked launch automobiles and M142 wheeled automobiles, with 84 launch automobiles having been ordered by the RoCA. The primary batch of 11 launchers was delivered in November 2024, whereas the primary M142 models was fashioned in early July 2025.
The ATACMS has been extensively fight examined within the Ukrainain theatre, and gained notable success when utilised for strikes each towards key infrastructure and towards Russian air defence techniques. The sheer portions delivered has meant that though the ballistic missiles are intercepted at a excessive fee, their occasional successes may cause tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in injury from a single strike, making their use extremely price efficient. Successes have included the destruction of two launchers from S-400 air defence techniques in November 2024, destruction of one of many system’s lengthy vary radars in January, and the destruction of additional radars in June, in addition to profitable neutralisation of Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile launchers earlier that month. The depth with which they’ve been used, nonetheless, has resulted in a critical depletion of shares.
Using the ATACMS by Ukraine has been closely facilitated by assist each from Western satellites, and from personnel on the bottom, which is vital because of its complexity. This has prolonged to assist with inputting focusing on coordinates earlier than firing. Though deliveries to the RoCA have been broadly in comparison with parallel efforts to equip the Ukrainain Army with the ballistic missiles for strikes on Russia, they’ve raised larger controversy as a result of standing of the Republic of China, which isn’t recognised as a state by the US, the United Nations or the overwhelming majority of UN member states. The Republic based mostly in Taipei claims to be the only respectable authorities of the Chinese language nation, inserting it a state of civil battle with the Individuals’s Republic of China authorities based mostly in Beijing.
Excessive geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington have been a major issue main the latter to extend arms provides to the Republic of China Armed Forces, regardless of its standing as an efficient non-state actor. The techniques are anticipated to have a lot decrease utility than in Ukraine as a result of mainland’s considerably larger digital warfare and air defence capabilities than Russia, in addition to as a result of a lot smaller numbers being delivered and the smaller dimension of the entrance which the mainland’s Chinese language Individuals’s Liberation Army might want to defend from assaults, which is only a fraction of the dimensions of the frontier that Russia must defend.
