Japan minister seeks missile interceptors in budget

TOKYO: Japan’s Defence Ministry is seeking a record-high budget to add missile interceptors and other equipment to defend the country from more North Korean weapons launches.

The 5.26 trillion yen (RM203bil) request for the fiscal year beginning next April is a 2.5% increase from the current year.

A big chunk of the request announced yesterday will 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 the US and Japan and the surface-to-air PAC-3 MSE.

The request comes amid growing fear about North Korea’s missile threat and rising tensions between the US and North Korea.

On Tuesday, Pyongyang fired a missile that flew over Japan and landed in the northern Pacific Ocean.

It flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and has threatened to send missiles near the US territory of Guam, where the US has military bases.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called Tuesday’s missile firing an “unprecedented, grave and serious threat”.

On Wednesday, Defence Minister 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 demon- strate its ability to strike at the US mainland, but it doesn’t mean Japan is off the hook, experts say.

“North Korea has demonstrated its capability to hit targets any- where in Japan including Tokyo and Okinawa,” says Narushige Michishita, a national security expert at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

Japan currently has a two-step missile defence system – interceptors on destroyers in the Sea of Japan, 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’s 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 defence comes to about 180 billion yen (RM6.96bil). To diversify and multiply its missile interceptors, the ministry is also seeking to add the land-based fixed Aegis Ashore missile-defence system, while considering an option of the mobile and more costly Terminal High- Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD.

Ministry officials said they will decide later this year.

A pair of Aegis Ashore could cover Japan at 80 billion yen (RM3.09bil) 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-defence-only principle under its war-renouncing constitution.

North Korea has demonstrated its capability to hit targets anywhere in Japan including Tokyo and Okinawa.

Narushige Michishita