Japan decides to boost missile defense with Aegis Ashore

December 19, 2017

Tokyo- The Japanese government decided at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday to introduce the Aegis Ashore ground-based missile defense system in a bid to better prepare for ballistic missiles from North Korea.

The government plans to acquire two Aegis Ashore batteries for deployment at Self-Defense Forces facilities in Akita Prefecture, northeastern Japan, and Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan, in fiscal 2023.

With the Aegis Ashore, "we will be able to defend our country on a sustainable basis and our ballistic missile defense capability will improve drastically," Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said a news conference. He suggested that his ministry aims for an early deployment of the system.

The government believes that the deployment of the ground-based missile interceptor system will enable Japan to deal with attacks from North Korea at any time.

Support from local governments is indispensable for the operations of the Aegis Ashore system as its radars emit strong radio waves, possibly causing radio disturbance, sources familiar with the situations said.

The Aegis Ashore costs almost 100 billion yen per unit. It uses the Standard Missile-3 Block 2A interceptor missiles being developed jointly by Japan and the United States.

The two Aegis Ashore batteries together can cover the whole of Japan, the sources said.

The government plans to establish a new Ground SDF unit to operate the Aegis Ashore, according to the sources.

For the deployment, the Defense Ministry sought some 2.8 billion yen in costs for technical assistance from the United States under a supplementary budget for fiscal 2017, which ends in March, and about 730 million yen in basic design costs under the fiscal 2018 initial budget. The funding requests are expected to be mostly approved. Jiji Press