Expediting Missile Purchase

The defense chief of Japan and United States shared the necessity of closer and stronger security relationship of both governments. Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara announced that Japan would buy Tomahawk cruise missiles from US a year earlier than planned, after the meeting with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at Pentagon on Thursday. Both governments are accelerating their effort to beef up their security posture in Northeastern Asia, taking the activities of China, North Korea or Russia serious.

 

It was Kihara’s first visit to US as Defense Minister. According to Kyodo News, Austin said he wanted to work closely with Kihara to make the alliance even stronger in response to China’s “coercive behavior, North Korea’s dangerous provocations and Russia’s war of choice against Ukraine.” Kihara told Austin that Japan and US needed to “strengthen the alliance’s capabilities to deter and respond” to any attempts to change the status quo by force as that cannot be tolerated anywhere in the World.”

 

Japan had a plan to purchase 400 latest Block-5 Tomahawks from US between FY 2026 and FY 2027. Kihara told Austin that Japan hoped to expedite the plan and buy 200 of Block-4 Tomahawks, previous version of Block-4, between FY 2025 and FY 2027. The purchase will start a year earlier than the original plan. The rest of the missiles will be newer ones. Tokyo seems to have thought that procurement of the new type of missiles would take certain time for achieving the approval of Congress, which is in a mess over the leadership of Republicans.

 

Japan has made a major policy change last December, in which it renewed three major documents on defense and decided ¥43 trillion of defense spendings for coming five years. It earmarked ¥211.3 billion for the purchase of Tomahawk in FY 2023. Procurement of tomahawk is the first attempt for Japanese government to implement the policy for security enhancement.

 

Kishida administration has left the discussion over the constitutionality of the policy behind. There is an argument in the opposition parties that deploying Tomahawk missile will violate the principle of exclusively defense-oriented policy of the constitution. This point will be focused in the extraordinary session of the Diet starting later this month.

 

The fiscal resource for ¥43 trillion of defense budget has not found yet. Although the government indicated some of the resource should be appropriated by tax increase, Kishida is suffering from public criticisms against possible tax increase. Having dubbed as “Tax increase wearing glasses,” Kishida is getting nervous at the public opinions against him.

 

Even if Japan is successful in receiving approval from US Congress, it is still unclear whether Japanese Self-defense Force can prepare for the deployment soon. It takes time for the Aegis destroyers to be reformed for installation of Tomahawk missiles. Exercises will be needed for US Force and Japanese SDF for integrated operations. Cost performance of the purchase of Tomahawk is still obscure.

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