The Japanese Ministry of Defense is seeking a record-high budget to add missile interceptors and other equipment to defend the nation from more North Korean weapons launches.
The ¥5.26 trillion (US$48 billion) request for the fiscal year beginning in April next year is a 2.5 percent increase from this year.
A big chunk of the request announced yesterday is to cover purchases of upgraded missile interceptors with expanded range, altitude and accuracy.
They include the ship-to-air SM-3 Block IIA jointly developed by Japan and the US and the surface-to-air PAC-3 MSE.
On Tuesday, Pyongyang fired a missile that flew over Japan and landed in the northern Pacific Ocean. It flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) in July and has threatened to send missiles near the US territory of Guam, where Washington has military bases.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called Tuesday’s missile firing an “unprecedented, grave and serious threat.”
On Wednesday, Japanese Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera, an advocate of bolstering Japan’s missile and strike-back capability, said Tokyo must quickly upgrade its missile arsenal.
North Korea’s ICBM tests demonstrate its ability to strike at the US mainland, but it does not mean Japan is off the hook, experts say.
“North Korea has demonstrated its capability to hit targets anywhere in Japan, including Tokyo and Okinawa,” said Narushige Michishita, a national security expert at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
Japan has a two-step missile defense system — interceptors on destroyers, and if they fail, surface-to-air PAC-3s.
Technically, the current setup can deal with falling debris or missiles fired at Japan, experts say, but it is not good enough for high-attitude missiles or multiple attacks.
The requested SM-3 Block IIA has double the range of its earlier model used on Japanese destroyers.
The budget request related to missile defense comes to about ¥180 billion.
To diversify and multiply its missile interceptors, the ministry is also seeking to add the land-based fixed Aegis Ashore missile-defense system, while considering an option for the mobile and more costly Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense.
Ministry officials said they would decide later this year.
Experts say a pair of Aegis Ashore could cover Japan at ¥80 billion each, but the cost could be driven up by the price of land, construction, installation and security.
Shooting down a high-altitude ICBM while it flies over Japan is impossible technically and difficult legally for now due to Japan’s self-defense-only principle under its war-renouncing constitution.
Elsewhere in the budget, the ministry is to keep the costly US-made uncrewed reconnaissance aircraft Global Hawk and is asking for ¥14.4 billion in assembly cost.
A steep 23 percent price increase prompted some officials to suggest scrapping the Global Hawk, but the ministry settled on continuing with the plan with careful price control.
The budget request also includes ¥96 billion for two compact destroyers as part of Japan’s ongoing plan to increase its fleet size from 48 to 54; ¥70 billion for a new lithium battery-powered submarine that can operate longer with upgraded detection capability.
It also has a request for ¥88 billion for six F-35 stealth jets to be deployed in Misawa in northern Japan.
The defense ministry’s budget request is to go to the Japanese Ministry of Finance for further scrutiny before it is submitted to the Diet for approval.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema