US containerized missiles: steathy firepower, high strategic cost

AllAfrica

11-07-2025

The US military's turn to containerized missile launchers reflects a push for stealthy, mobile firepower that complicates targeting and enables rapid deployment but comes with operational, legal, and political concerns – especially regarding their use on allied soil and civilian cargo vessels.
This month, The War Zone identified a prototype launcher known as the palletized field artillery launcher (PFAL) at Fort Bragg, after it appeared unannounced in footage from US President Donald Trump's June visit.
Currently owned by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), PFAL can fire most munitions in the multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) family – such as 227 millimeter guided rockets and Army tactical missile system (ATACMS) – from two pods housed in a standard container, though it cannot launch the precision strike missile (PrSM).
Concealable on trucks, railcars, or ships, PFAL supports the Army's strategy to complicate adversary targeting. Originating from the US Department of Defense's Strike X program, it also informed designs for future uncrewed systems like the autonomous multi-domain launcher (AML). Although no longer funded after FY2021, PFAL remains strategically relevant for distributed, expeditionary operations, especially in the Indo-Pacific.
Containerized launchers like PFAL offer operational benefits– concealability, rapid mobility and modular integration across partner platforms. Yet their covert nature also introduces tactical weaknesses, legal risks and political complications. While these systems enhance deterrence through ambiguity and dispersion, they risk civilian targeting, escalation and backlash from host nations wary of entanglement.
At the tactical level, containerized launchers complicate detection and response.
In remarks delivered at a June 2025 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), US Army Pacific Commander General Ronald Clark stated that such systems 'literally operationalize deterrence,' likening them to 'a needle in a stack of needles' due to their ambiguous electromagnetic signatures and visual resemblance to civilian containers.
He emphasized that their dispersed posture enables US forces to hold Chinese targets at risk across the Indo-Pacific, while avoiding traditional launcher vulnerabilities.
In a June 2025 Proceedings article, Rear Admiral Bill Daly and Captain Lawrence Heyworth IV emphasized advantages of modular, containerized payloads: low cost, ease of production and quick scalability. They noted that mounting them on unmanned or optionally manned vessels increases survivability and complicates targeting. A standardized interface allows for rapid reconfiguration, while adaptability enables distributed maritime operations with flexible firepower suited to near-peer conflicts.
However, Ajay Kumar Das noted in a July 2023 piece for the United Service Institution of India (USI) that these systems are tactically vulnerable due to their deliberate lack of radar and active defenses. Das explained that containerized launchers are designed to blend with civilian traffic, leaving them unable to detect or repel threats. He said that while concealment aids deception, it undermines survivability. He warned that such launchers, often aboard civilian-manned vessels, become 'soft targets' in high-threat environments, exposing both cargo and crew to disproportionate risk in legally ambiguous zones.
Gabriele Steinhauser highlighted in a March 2025 Wall Street Journal article the operational advantages of containerized platforms such as the US Army's Typhon system. She reported that the Typhon – mounted on trucks and deployable via transport aircraft – is 'relatively easy to move,' unlike shipborne systems that are more visible and vulnerable in the early stages of a conflict. Steinhauser stressed that such mobility enables pre-positioning across the Indo-Pacific and opens avenues for allied use, injecting unpredictability into adversary calculations.
R. Robinson Harris and Colonel T.X. Hammes argued in a January 2025 article for the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) that containerized launchers support rapid, cost-effective fleet expansion. They estimated that converting surplus merchant ships into missile platforms with modular payloads can be done in under two years for $130 to $140 million each, dramatically faster and cheaper than building destroyers or frigates, which take seven to nine years and billions to construct.
They advocated shifting force metrics from ship numbers to missile capacity, arguing that distributed firepower across many modest platforms complicates enemy targeting and boosts resilience.
At the strategic level, US missiles on allied territory in peacetime can be politically fraught due to sovereignty sensitivities and domestic opposition. According to Jeffrey Hornung and other authors in a September 2024 RAND report, the Philippine government is especially cautious, given legal and political constraints alongside historical baggage, requiring that any US deployment serve Philippine interests and be framed as a joint effort.
Hornung and others also point out that, in Japan, hosting offensive US systems raises concerns about escalating regional tensions and inviting preemptive strikes. They note that Japan has avoided hosting US ground-based missiles and prefers deployments on US territory or with regional partners, reflecting fears that such basing could entangle Japan in US-China conflict dynamics.
Further, Raul Pedrozo writes in a 2021 report for the Stockton Center for International Law that using merchant ships to launch precision strikes without formally converting them into warships may violate Hague Convention VII, which requires overt identification, military command and crew discipline.
According to Pedrozo, failure to meet these criteria could strip such vessels of protected status and make their use a violation of the law of armed conflict. Moreover, he adds that disguising launchers as civilian cargo risks being deemed perfidious – guilty of a treacherous act under the law of armed conflict – thereby endangering civilian mariners and undermining legal protections for commercial shipping.
Containerized missile systems may be stealthy and scalable, but the ambiguity that makes them operationally effective also renders them legally and politically contentious. Their fusion of warehouse and warship invites hard questions about survivability, legality, and escalation, especially when deployed on allied soil in a region primed for great power confrontation.