HF-2E launcher sighting exposes Taiwans mainland strike intent

As Chinese live-fire drills tighten around Taiwan, a rare sighting of a mobile launcher for Taipei’s long-secret cruise missile offers a glimpse into how it plans to hold the Chinese mainland at risk—and how dangerously high the stakes of that gamble may be.

This month, The War Zone (TWZ) reported that Taiwan has moved a transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) associated with its secretive Hsiung Feng IIE (HF-2E) land-attack cruise missile amidst large-scale Chinese live-fire drills surrounding the self-governing island.

The launcher was recently seen traveling from Hualien to Taitung along Taiwan’s southeast coast, marking one of the few public sightings of the system since its development began in the early 2000s and its reported entry into service more than a decade ago.

The HF‑2E, broadly comparable in role to the US Tomahawk, is believed to use a booster‑assisted launch followed by a small jet engine and GPS‑aided inertial navigation with terrain‑matching guidance, giving it the ability to fly low and strike targets between 300 and 600 kilometers away, with an extended‑range variant reportedly reaching up to 1,500 kilometers.

The HF-2E’s range potentially allows strikes on People’s Liberation Army (PLA) airfields, missile sites, radar nodes and command infrastructure, underpinning Taiwan’s ability to retaliate against invasion.

Taiwan’s decision to redeploy the missile now likely reflects efforts to complicate Chinese targeting and maintain mobile counterstrike options as China conducts its sixth and most extensive set of drills around the island since 2022.

Taiwan views long‑range strike systems as essential to deterring a potential Chinese intervention by holding critical mainland targets at risk, even as China fields a far larger arsenal of ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles.

That development may be the latest step in Taiwan’s multi-layered missile buildup as cross-strait tensions deepen. In September 2025, Taiwan unveiled the low-cost, US-co-produced Barracuda-500 land-mobile cruise missile, which officials say can be mass-produced locally within 18 months to strike sea and land targets, underscoring closer defense ties with the US as China warns against “external interference.”

Weeks earlier, reports said Taiwan was developing a stealthy, long-range subsonic anti-ship “carrier killer” with a projected 600–1,000 kilometer reach to push Chinese carrier groups farther from the First Island Chain, reflecting a shift toward survivable, standoff sea denial.

That effort builds on January 2025 disclosures that Taiwan had begun fielding Ching Tien hypersonic cruise missiles exceeding 2,000 kilometers in range, enabling mobile counterstrike deterrence deep into the mainland and reinforcing an emerging “pit viper” strategy – an approach entailing limited offensive strikes over a purely defensive stance.

But what does Taiwan aim to achieve by building up its long-range strike capabilities against the Chinese mainland? Drew Thompson argues in the 2022 book Crossing the Strait: China’s Military Prepares for War with Taiwan that the latter’s war planning envisions limited, retaliatory strikes on the Chinese mainland designed to delay, disrupt, and degrade PLA invasion operations, not to seize territory or fight for decisive battlefield victory.

Thompson points out that within Taiwan’s Overall Defense Concept (ODC), mainland strikes are framed as an operational tool of denial, after China initiates hostilities. He emphasizes that the primary value of these counterstrikes is psychological and strategic, noting that even small-scale attacks “need not be large to be powerful” if they bolster Taiwanese morale, sustain resistance, and impose escalation and governance dilemmas on China.

Also, Taiwan may be developing such capabilities in view of the US’s reluctance to supply such weapons. As Eric Gomez points out in a November 2023 Cato Institute report, the US is reluctant to supply Taiwan with long-range land-attack weapons, as they could undermine longstanding strategic ambiguity and increase escalation risks.

With that situation, Gomez says the US limits its arms sales to defensive, asymmetric capabilities and imposes range restrictions. Still, he notes that Taiwan is nonetheless permitted to develop its own long-range missiles. However, he treats them as secondary to defeating an invasion in the Taiwan Strait rather than as essential.

But even without providing such weapons, Gomez says the US could enhance Taiwanese strike effectiveness through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), targeting support, training and over-the-horizon operations against Chinese air and naval forces.

China may already expect strikes on its mainland and has taken steps to blunt them. The US Department of Defense’s 2025 China Military Power Report (CMPR) says China is strengthening air and missile defenses to shield key political, military and economic nodes from long-range conventional attacks.

The report notes expanded deployments of integrated surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, long-range and over-the-horizon (OTH) radars, airborne early-warning aircraft, and space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) that improve detection, tracking, and, in some cases, interception of aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, and ballistic missiles.

Furthermore, mainland strikes carry significant escalation risks. Brian MacLean writes in a February 2021 Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs article that attacks on Chinese territory could be interpreted as threats to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) survival or China’s nuclear deterrent.

He adds even limited conventional strikes might damage assets China deems critical, such as command-and-control nodes or dual-use missile forces, stoking fears of a prelude to a US nuclear first strike.

As losses mount or a Taiwan campaign appears to be failing, MacLean warns that Chinese leaders could feel increasing pressure to escalate, potentially including limited nuclear use, amid the fog of war, misperception, and domestic political pressures.

Moreover, Korey Lantes notes in a December 2024 Proceedings article that US-enabled strikes on the Chinese mainland would likely prompt retaliatory strikes on US territory. Lantes adds that strikes on Chinese strategic assets, such as aircraft carriers and nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), could also escalate a US-China conflict over Taiwan.

In view of those risks, he stresses that the US should limit its targeting support to operational assets such as roll-on/roll-off (RO/RO) ferries and amphibious bridges to inflict operational disruption to a landing attempt, while preserving strategic avenues for negotiation.

Taiwan’s quiet dispersal of the HF-2E signals a calculated shift from symbolic defense to credible counterstrike denial, aimed less at winning battles than at complicating PLA invasion timelines and forcing China into costly operational and political trade-offs.

But by holding the Chinese mainland at risk, Taiwan is also tightening the escalation ladder, where even limited strikes could blur deterrence lines, test US restraint, and pull a localized fight into a far more dangerous great-power confrontation.