Japan and the U.S. will agree this week to jointly develop an interceptor missile to counter hypersonic warheads being developed by China, Russia and North Korea, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper said on Sunday.
The agreement on interceptors to target weapons designed to evade existing ballistic missile defenses is expected when President Joe Biden meets Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the U.S. on Friday, the report said, without giving any source for the information.
Officials at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs could not be reached for comment outside business hours.
Unlike typical ballistic warheads, which fly on predictable trajectories as they fall from space to their targets, hypersonic projectiles can change course, making them more difficult to target.
Biden and Kishida are to meet the sidelines of a trilateral summit with South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, the Yomiuri said.
The U.S. and Japan agreed in January to consider developing the interceptor at a meeting of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin with their Japanese counterparts, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada.
An agreement would be the second such collaboration in missile defense technology.
Washington and Tokyo developed a longer-range missile designed to hit warheads in space, which Japan is deploying on warships in the sea between Japan and the Korean peninsula to guard against North Korean missiles strikes.
© Thomson Reuters 2023.
35 Comments
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Chabbawanga
Ye, well China are working on a missile that avoids missile interceptor missiles, so there.
Alan Bogglesworth
We live in 1984, the eternal wars.
Yubaru
Shisa come in pairs!
winston
More weapons aren't the solution to peace in the region
Christopher Mas Osan
With the US and Japan jointly working on an intercept system. I would expect precision unlike anything ever seen or developed to date. Its good to have partners and allies that share the same vision.
Maybe one day the world will not need such systems in place to establish peace.
koiwaicoffee
U.S., Japan to waste money in war toys.
Jandworld
Rather than do it yourself including the friendly Korea, how about?
Mark
The military–industrial complex is well and alive.
Alongfortheride
Why does this kind of thing become public news? Why not just do it in secret and hold it until its needed. Making news out of it just gives the other side info to develop something else
Tony W.
Dammed good idea, hopefully they can sell them to Taiwan too!
Christopher Mas Osan
@Mark,
Ah, very true, Low tech indeed.
However, I am sure a meaningful contribution and a consolation would be beneficiary at the end of the day.
After all it is just talk of development or plans of. An effective Iron dome over Japan. Imagine that.
Would you feel safer? Its a fair question. I wonder if it would extend to Okinawa right up to Hokkaido?
Purely speculation on my part.
Wesley
EXACTLY !!
I never understood why MSM has absolutely NO SENSE of national security.
Wesley
A bigger waste of money is china which keep making their war toys and bullying its neighbors.
EFD
One wonders if directed energy weapons (lasers) wouldn't be a better solution.
Agent_Neo
What is deterrence?
Japan, aside from the United States, does not want war, so it is necessary to discourage aggression by providing information to China.
That's what it means to disclose information.
If China cuts its military spending, it could save its poor flooded population, but the Communist government will never do that.
Chabbawanga
You could say the same about the US and all of their social problems. There is no "good" side in this stupid arms race to infinity.
Western Paradox
This is how the game is played. Move, counter move, counter counter move and so on.
konjo4u
How much money does Russia want spend? It was the same thing at the end of the cold war.
Marc Lowe
I will reserve judgement on this until we hear from missile expert and fellow genius musician Skunk Baxter. On paper, Japan and the US working together to make interceptors looks good. However, how much do we as regular citizens know about missile technology? Perhaps, only what the mass media tells us and wants us to believe. Kishida visiting the US is a good thing as it sends a message to the world that the US and Japan are allies and will do what is necessary to step up to the communist nations and their supposed new weaponry. Hopefully, Joe and Fumio will have some time to relax after their tiring conversations thru interpreters. U-S-A Banzai!
theFu
Missile interceptors are defensive. These already exist with some really impressive methods to get very close and spray metal to destroy the offensive missile. I think the key here is that Japan gets to work on defensive military projects.
Raytheon already has hypersonic missile interceptors, so I see little upside for their involvement. Successful tests happened against ICBM re-entry years ago. Improvements have been happening by Raytheon all this time. The newer, lower flying hypersonic missiles just have a different trajectory that could be harder to predict, but it isn't THAT hard if the offensive missile ignores complex countermeasures like they have historically.
LTV isn't in business, bought by Loral in the early 1990s. LTV created the ASAT launched by F-15s to take out satellites in orbit. LTV used fast spinning charges to control trajectory of their missiles in the late 1980s. They'd solved the "which way is this radial charge pointing" problem and were able to turn direction very quickly until all the radial charges on the nose and tail were fired.
Loral was bought by Lockheed-Martin in the mid-1990s, just after they gave-away/allowed-to-be-stolen some satellite tech to the CCP-Chinese (thanks for approving that Prez Clinton). Gotta wonder what else the CCP stolen when the Loral satellite was destroyed at launch?
quercetum
What about hypersonic missiles? How about developing these?
Kumagaijin
Israel's missile defence system is called the "Iron Dome". Japan's will be called the Kin Kabuto (Gold Samurai Helmet).
Abe234
winstonAug. 13 05:54 pm JST
If it is not the solution, then what is the solution? I think it is the solution. The idea that we wait, and allow other countries to develop weapons that can defeat us, most certainly isn't the solution. The way to maintain peace is to ensure the enemy doesn't feel confident enough to start a war and win a war. I think we saw that when Russia invaded Crimea, we saw that when Russia invaded the Donbas region, we saw that when Russia invaded Ukraine. I propose that if Ukraine had more weapons and effective weapons, then Putin would not have felt confident to invade another sovereign country. It seems there are some leaders, who want to build up their forces to attack another. It's our job to make sure they don't have that advantage. I think the 1930s also showed what happens when one country builds up its armed forces, and the rest stand by in appeasement. It is also one of the reasons there hasn't been another world war, since 1945.
Strangerland
There is no "the" solution. And you guys are talking two different things. The original quote was someone speaking an ideal, and the latter was someone speaking reality. If we accept things as-is with no hope for improvement, there is no hope. But if we drop reality to focus exclusively on the ideal, we'll find other groups of people will push their reality onto the rest of us.
"The" solution is a combination of both. Protect yourself now with the weapons you need, while working with your enemies and the rest of the world to move closer towards the idea. This is literally the purpose of society. When we were all independent tribes, we had to focus exclusively on reality, with no room for the ideal. Otherwise you died. With society, while we still have a long way to go, we are closer to the ideal, and should continue working towards it.
Neither the ideal nor the reality should be ignored, and any solution that only proposes one or the other is incomplete.
Desert Tortoise
Good question. Secrecy costs a lot of money to achieve so one has to ask what is gained by trying to hide the existence of a particular program. There is probably no way to adequately test such a system that won't reveal its presence. Even if the US and Japan do not admit to the program they will have to conduct rocket motor tests and eventually shoot some at targets. Pretty hard to keep a missile defense test event secret. Those have to be announced so air and maritime traffic stay out of the test area. Saying you have a program doesn't tell anyone what your technology is. That will certainly be a well kept secret.
Desert Tortoise
The US Army is fielding missiles topped with hypersonic glide vehicles now. The three Zumwalt class destroyers are all heading to the yards in the coming 12-18 months to have their Advanced Gun System removed and launchers for a the same missile installed. US Navy subs will also get that same missile. Japan has a separate hypersonic missile program. The US is close to finalizing the design of a weaponized air breathing hypersonic missile. This is not AGM-183 ARRW but something called HAWC for Hypersonic Air breathing Weapons Concept. Air breathing hypersonic missiles are the Holy Grail because they can fly at lower altitudes and for greater distances maneuvering on the way in ways that Hypersonic Glide Vehicles or HGVs cannot. HGVs can only descend and they have to trade speed and altitude in order to have energy to maneuver. Air breathers do not have these trade offs.
Desert Tortoise
Btw, the US had a hypersonic air breather as far back as the 1970s when a test of a proposed missile called ASALM exceeded Mach 5. Ultimately the US stuck with subsonic cruise missiles because they hit the target more reliably and cost a lot less. Salvo size matters. As for the ability to evade air defense, both have their advantages. A subsonic missile with a low RCS and low heat signature two meters off the deck is not easy to find and shoot down while the high diving screamer is highly visible, glowing like the Sun on infrared, but gives you very little time to engage it.
TaiwanIsNotChina
ICBMs can slam into the major cities of Russia and China today with 1950s technology. The US and Japan should focus on hypersonic missiles so they can claim parity, even if they already have it effectively.
1glenn
It is a shame that so much of our resources have to be spent on the military, but if we don't, then even a third rate country like Russia is a threat.
La vie douce
DT- interesting stuff to read about. Thanks.
winston
Well obviously not as photography is concerned
Two shisa are called shisa or when referring to one is also a shisa
Peter14
The US is developing them in partnership with Australia as both have decades of research and experience in scram jet technology.
Peter14
Neither is allowing authoritarian nations invade and rule you. Subjugation is not peace, it is slavery.
As long as China, Russia and North Korea build bigger arsenals and larger militaries the only viable response is to do likewise, or let them get so strong they cant lose a conflict at which point they invade you and rule you. It is much harder to build enough weapons to overthrow an entrenched ruler than to hold them off in the first place.
winston
More weapons aren't the solution to peace in the region
I was referring to everyone in the region having more weapons as not the solution to peace
In the Asia-Pacific which nations are most guilty of invading and slavery ?
Something to think about
And don't try to say China wants to invade everyone as that's baloney.
theFu
Ask India, Nepal, Tibet, Taiwan, and the Philippines about China's invasions. Bet they would disagree.
Some people here seem to have forgotten this is about defensive, intercepting missiles, not offensive missiles. I have no issue with any country having purely defensive weapons like these.