Tokyo: China’s show of strength against Taiwan has been taken very seriously by Japan. As China is using fighter jets, warships, and missiles to pressurize Taiwan, Japan is swiftly planning to deploy thousands of long-range missiles on its islands close to China and Taiwan. The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri has reported this. This is also a part of the Taiwan Contingency Initiative of the Japanese Defence Forces.
China and North Korea have been carrying out aggressive military activities in the last year. Japan has quickly adopted an aggressive policy to counter these activities. Last year, Japan announced increasing its defence expenditure to over USD 50 billion. Subsequently, in April, the ruling LDP party presented a proposal related to acquiring capabilities of attacking enemy bases. In July, Japan published the Defence White Paper, which covered the deployment of long-range missiles to enhance defence preparedness.
Based on government sources, the report published in Yomiuri daily claims that Japan has started the deployment of long-range missiles. The range of the current arsenal of type 12 standoff missiles will also be increased. The surface-to-surface missiles with a current range of 100 to 200 kilometres will be enhanced with a strike capability of more than 1000 kilometres.
Along with increasing the range, air-launched and ship-launched versions of these missiles will also be developed. It is claimed that nearly a thousand missiles of all three versions will be deployed on the archipelago known as the Nansei Islands. This archipelago consists of 200 small islands. Amongst them, missile deployment will likely happen on Amami-Oshima, Ishigaki and Miyako.
In the next few days, the Japanese defence ministry will propose provision in the defence fund for the following year. Government sources indicated that the proposal would include requirements for long-range missiles. In the past few days, the issue of long-range missiles has been in focus due to the ongoing Chinese exercises in the Taiwan region and the Chinese missile landing in the Japanese territory during the exercises.
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