During a military exercise with the Philippines that began last month, the U.S. Army deployed a new type of covert weapon that is designed to be hidden in plain sight.

在上个月开始的与菲律宾的联合军事演习中，美国陆军部署了一种可以藏在明处的新型隐蔽式武器。

Called Typhon, it consists of a modified 40-foot shipping container that conceals up to four missiles that rotate upward to fire. It can be loaded with weapons including the Tomahawk — a cruise missile that can hit targets on land and ships at sea more than 1,150 miles away.

它被称为“台风”(Typhon)，由一个经改装的40英尺（约合12米）集装箱组成，其中可以隐藏多达四枚向上旋转发射的导弹。它可以装载包括“战斧”在内的武器，“战斧”是一种巡航导弹，可以打击约1850公里以外的陆地目标和海上船只。

The weapon, and other small mobile launchers like it, would have been illegal just five years ago under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibited U.S. and Russian forces from having land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with ranges between about 300 miles and 3,400 miles.

根据1987年的《中程导弹条约》，这种武器以及其他类似的小型移动发射器在五年前还是非法的。该条约禁止美国和俄罗斯军队拥有射程在约482公里至5470公里之间的陆基巡航导弹或弹道导弹。

In 2019, President Donald J. Trump abandoned the treaty, in part because the United States believed Russia had violated the terms of the pact for years. But U.S. officials said that China, with its growing long-range missile arsenal, was also a reason the Trump administration decided to withdraw.

2019年，特朗普总统退出该条约，部分原因是美国认为俄罗斯多年来一直违反其条款。但美国官员表示，中国的远程导弹武器库不断扩大也是特朗普政府决定退出的原因之一。

The decision freed the Pentagon to build the weapons that are now poised to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. It also coincided with a rethinking of modern war by U.S. Marine Corps leaders. They recommended retiring certain heavyweight and cumbersome weapons like 155-millimeter howitzers and tanks — which they thought would be of little use against Chinese forces in the Pacific — and replacing them with lighter and more flexible arms like truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.

这一决定使五角大楼能够建造现在准备用来保护台湾免遭中国入侵的武器。与此同时，美国海军陆战队领导人也在反思现代战争。他们建议淘汰某些重型和笨重的武器——比如155毫米榴弹炮和坦克，他们认为在太平洋地区，这些武器在对抗中国军队时几乎排不上用场——用车载反舰导弹等更轻、更灵活的武器取而代之。

At the time, the Pentagon had no land-based anti-ship weapons. Other militaries, however, already did. Then in April 2022, Ukrainian ground troops used a similar weapon, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles launched from trucks, to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea.

当时，五角大楼还没有陆基反舰武器。然而，其他国家的军队已经有了。然后，2022年4月，乌克兰地面部队使用了类似的武器——从卡车上发射的“海王星”反舰巡航导弹，击沉了黑海的俄罗斯“莫斯科”号巡洋舰。

Despite the success of the Moskva attack, a group of retired Marine generals publicly criticized the Corps’ plans to prioritize similar weapons at the expense of more traditional arms. They said the service was focusing on China to the detriment of other potential threats, and that getting rid of tanks and some heavy artillery would leave Marines unprepared for a major conflict in other parts of the world.

尽管对“莫斯科”号的袭击取得了成功，但一群退役海军陆战队将军公开批评了海军陆战队以牺牲更传统的武器为代价优先发展类似武器的计划。他们说，海军陆战队把注意力集中在中国，忽视了其他潜在威胁，而且，放弃坦克和一些重型火炮，会让海军陆战队在世界其他地区发生重大冲突时措手不及。

At a meeting of the Defense Writers Group in December 2022, Gen. David H. Berger, then the Marines’ top general, acknowledged that he had been criticized by former colleagues but said his decisions were informed by intelligence reports the retirees could not obtain.

在2022年12月的国防作者小组会议上，时任海军陆战队最高将领的戴维·伯杰上将承认，自己受到了前同事的批评，但他表示，他的决定是根据退休人员无法获得的情报报告做出的。

U.S. military and civilian leaders believed that President Xi Jinping of China planned to follow through on his many pledges to reunite Taiwan with Beijing by diplomatic means, or by force if necessary. And the Moskva’s hull rusting on the seafloor pointed to a possible way to dissuade Beijing from military action.

美国军方和文职领导人认为，中国国家主席习近平计划通过外交手段——或在必要时使用武力——兑现其统一台湾的承诺。让“莫斯科”号航母在海底生锈，可能是劝阻北京不要采取军事行动的一种方式。

Pentagon officials believed that deterring China would not require a missile like the newest Tomahawk, which can attack ships with the equivalent of about a half-ton of TNT, nor even one like Ukraine’s Neptune, which carries a warhead about a third of that size.

五角大楼官员认为，威慑中国不需要最新的“战斧”那样的导弹，它可以用相当于半吨TNT炸药的威力攻击舰船；甚至也不需要像乌克兰的“海王星”那样的导弹，它携带的弹头只有“战斧”导弹所携的三分之一大小。

Instead, positioning even smaller missiles to disable Chinese frigates, destroyers and amphibious craft could be enough, U.S. officials came to think, given their belief that Mr. Xi would try to invade only if he believed he would succeed in a relatively bloodless operation before American troops responded.

美国官员认为，部署更小的导弹来破坏中国的护卫舰、驱逐舰和两栖登陆艇可能就足够了，因为他们认为，只有当习近平相信自己能在美军做出反应之前，在一场相对不流血的行动中取得成功时，他才会尝试入侵。

Targeting officers selected a Navy missile called SM-6, for Standard Missile 6, that seemed right for the job.

负责确定目标的官员选择了一种叫做SM-6的海军导弹，即标准导弹6，似乎很适合这项工作。

With a warhead about half the size as the one carried by the Neptune, the SM-6 could evade a Chinese warship’s defenses and, on impact, change the crew’s mission from invasion to survival.

SM-6携带的弹头只有“海王星”所携弹头的一半大小，可以避开中国军舰的防御系统，并在撞击时将船员的任务从入侵转变为生存。

Setting squadrons of Chinese amphibious ships packed with troops ablaze in the Taiwan Strait, Pentagon officials believed, would not only protect the de facto independent island but may also make Mr. Xi’s own grip on power within the Communist Party untenable.

五角大楼官员认为，让满载军队的中国两栖舰艇中队在台湾海峡燃烧起来，不仅可以保护事实上独立的台湾岛，还可能打击习近平在共产党内对权力的控制。

Without the legal restrictions of the I.N.F. Treaty, the Pentagon began experimenting with existing assets.

没有了《中导条约》的法律限制，五角大楼开始利用现有资产进行试验。

Sealed canisters containing Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles were mounted onto small trucks and hidden in shipping containers.

装有战斧和SM-6导弹的密封罐被装在小型卡车上，隐藏在货运集装箱里。

Publicly, the Navy says the missile has a maximum range of about 115 miles. But the SM-6 can in fact reach targets at ranges of 290 miles, officials confirmed to The New York Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive weapons capabilities.

海军公开表示，该导弹的最大射程约为185公里。但官员们向《纽约时报》证实，SM-6实际上可以打击约466公里范围内的目标。由于讨论敏感的武器能力，这些官员要求匿名。

In the event of hostilities with China, the Philippines could invoke its longstanding mutual defense pact with Washington, inviting U.S. forces to deploy mobile missile launchers to any of the nine Philippine military bases that the Pentagon has secured access to in the past decade.

在与中国发生敌对行动的情况下，菲律宾可以援引与华盛顿的长期共同防御协议，邀请美军在菲律宾的九个军事基地中的任何一个部署移动导弹发射器，过去十年中，五角大楼获得了这些基地的使用权。

Some of those partner bases are clustered on Luzon Island, where SM-6 missiles could threaten Chinese ships in the waterway between the northernmost reaches of the Philippines and Taiwan.

其中一些合作基地位于吕宋岛，那里的SM-6导弹可以威胁到菲律宾最北端和台湾之间航道上的中国船只。

Last year the Pentagon gained access to a base on Balabac Island in southwestern Philippines. From there, the same weapon could reach China’s collection of militarized reefs in the Spratly Islands, which have become a major base of operations for Beijing’s efforts to control the South China Sea.

去年，五角大楼获准进入菲律宾西南部巴拉巴克岛的一个基地。从那里，同样的武器可以到达中国在南沙群岛的一系列军事化岛礁，这些岛礁已成为北京控制南海的主要行动基地。

A new security agreement signed in August between Washington and Tokyo could offer a third strategic location for Taiwan’s defense in case of war — military bases in Japan’s far western Ryukyu chain. From one such facility on Yonaguni Island, where U.S. forces train with their Japanese counterparts, an SM-6 could hit any target surrounding Taiwan and threaten bases on the Chinese mainland right across the strait.

今年8月，华盛顿和东京签署了一项新的安全协议，可能为台湾在发生战争时提供第三个战略防御地点——位于日本遥远西部的琉球群岛的军事基地。从位于那国岛（美军在此与日本军队进行训练）的设施出发，SM-6可以打击台湾周边的任何目标，并威胁海峡对岸的中国大陆基地。

With the longer-range Tomahawk, truck-based launchers and Typhons secreted on small islands within a thousand miles of the Chinese mainland could largely obviate one of Beijing’s greatest perceived strengths: missiles developed in China that its military leaders claim could sink an American aircraft carrier sent to defend Taiwan.

有了射程更远的“战斧”导弹、卡车发射装置和隐藏在距离中国大陆约1600公里以内的小岛上的“台风”导弹，可以在很大程度上消除中国最大的优势之一：中国自行研制的导弹，中国的军事领导人声称它可以击沉美国派去保卫台湾的航空母舰。