Japan is Developing A Hard-ToIntercept Supersonic Bomb To Stop A Chinese Island Invasion
Officials of the Defence Ministry in Tokyo told Jiji Press news agency that it intends to develop an early prototype and then deploy a fully functional weapon by 2025.
Japan is to develop a new generation of supersonic gliding bombs designed to give its military the ability to deliver a warhead from a safe distance if outlying islands it controls come under attack or are occupied by an enemy force.
Officials of the Defence Ministry in Tokyo told Jiji Press news agency that it intends to develop an early prototype and then deploy a fully functional weapon by 2025.
Funding for the initial research has already been set aside under the ministry’s budget for this year, while an additional 13.8 billion yen (US$122 million, FJ$0.26bn) has been requested under next year’s budget.
Garren Mulloy, an associate professor of international relations at Japan’s Daito Bunkyo University and an authority on defence issues, said the new weapon would be designed to complement the cruise missiles that the Japanese military has already deployed. “Up until now, the Japanese have been very short of these precision guided munitions, especially in comparison to the US, NATO or the Russians, so it comes as no surprise that they want to look into these sorts of weapons,” he said.
The weapons are expected to be deployed aboard mobile, landbased launchers. Given Tokyo’s concern over the possibility of China occupying the Diaoyu Islands — the archipelago in the East China Sea that Tokyo controls but Beijing claims — it is possible that the first units would be deployed on islands within range of that potential flashpoint. Those islands include Miyako and Ishigaki, part of Okinawa Prefecture.
The system would launch a missile to reach an altitude of more than 20km before the glide bomb separates and is guided at high speed to its target.