U.S. Army’s Europe Typhon battery fires its first Tomahawk

A newly fielded U.S. Army Typhon missile battery assigned to Europe has fired its first Tomahawk cruise missile, launching it during a live-fire at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, on Sept. 28, 2026, in what the service said was the third Typhon launch within the continental United States.

The Mid-Range Capability Battery of 3rd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment, a long-range fires battalion under Multi-Domain Command Europe, carried out the launch. Typhon, built by Lockheed Martin, is a truck-mounted launcher that fires the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile and the SM-6, missiles originally developed for U.S. Navy warships, and it fills the gap between the U.S. Army’s shorter-range rocket and missile launchers and its long-range hypersonic weapon, letting ground commanders hit targets more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) away with Tomahawk.

“We get that range for that combatant commander to give them options and capabilities where they really haven’t had it before from the land force,” said Lt. Col. Derek Bartlett, commander of 3-12 Field Artillery.

Bartlett said strikes at that range would previously have been requested from the joint force, typically from the U.S. Navy, and that “the Army now has that capability.” Before the launch, soldiers in the battery went through a five-week training program run by the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin field service representatives to learn how to operate and maintain the system.

“They’re incredibly good at what they do now,” said Bartlett. “I’m very comfortable deploying them forward after these five weeks.”

The 3-12 battery is one of four Mid-Range Capability batteries the U.S. Army has created and falls under Multi-Domain Command Europe, which brings together the service’s land, air, sea, space and cyber capabilities to strike targets. According to the U.S. Army, the first battery was activated in January 2024, while the 3-12 battery was activated in November 2025.

“It requires all domains to work in unison for a kinetic strike to happen,” said Command Sgt. Maj. John Hespe, the battalion’s senior enlisted advisor.

“Rockets in the field artillery community are going to continue to evolve,” said Hespe. “It’s going to provide better options for commanders to choose to fire from land based emplacement in any country at any time.”

Typhon has already deployed outside the United States: a battery went to the Philippines in April 2024 for exercises, and the system was shown in Japan in 2025, moves that drew protests from China. In Europe, Washington and Berlin announced in July 2024 that the United States would begin episodic deployments of long-range fires to Germany in 2026, including Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles, which puts a Europe-based Typhon unit in line with those plans.