No Plans for Missile Defense Radar in Japan, U.S. Agency Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States currently has no plans for deploying an early warning missile defense radar in Japan as part of its national missile defense effort, U.S. officials said, appearing to contradict Japanese news reports this week that a request has been made to Tokyo.

In coming years, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is looking to field air-transportable “X-band” radars overseas for early warning and tracking of ICBM launches, agency spokesman Rick Lehner told Global Security Newswire. He said, however, that “no locations have been specified for any of those radars except that they would be forward based.”

“The forward-based radars we are looking at for Block 06 [2006-2007] and after are small air-transportable X-band radars similar to the THAAD TPS-X radar.  There are no plans now to place a TPS-X in Japan but with the mobility benefits of the radar it could be moved to just about anywhere,” he said by e-mail.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico said, “The U.S. and Japan are looking at lots of technical options,” but “there are no specific proposals.”

Japanese papers this week reported that U.S. officials privately asked to post a radar there for U.S. defense. The Asahi Shimbun, quoting unidentified sources, reported yesterday that Japanese defense officials plan to request more details and consider the merits of such a deployment.

Also citing an unidentified defense official, the English-language Japan Times reported on April 6 that U.S. officials this year asked for either full access to Japanese radar data or permission to build a radar station in Japan. It said providing the data could prove sensitive, possibly challenging Japan’s post-World War II constitutional restrictions limiting military cooperation.

For defense of its own territory, Japan last December agreed to buy Aegis theater missile defense and ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability 3 systems for fielding possibly by 2007. The United States also agreed this year to post an Aegis destroyer near Japan for protection from North Korea (see GSN, March 24).

Lisbeth Gronlund, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said she suspects the Missile Defense Agency may maintain there are no plans for a radar on Japan until Tokyo has approved the idea.

“There may not be plans, but there are apparently desires on the part of MDA,” she said.

The Missile Defense Agency has generally refused to disclose its plans for fielding the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system more than a few years in advance.

A budget document provided to Congress this year said the agency is working to “define a BMDS [ballistic missile defense system] architecture” and determine what radars to buy in the coming years.

The agency has indicated plans to begin operating elements of the system this year and next, using a Cobra Dane radar based in Alaska, Upgraded Early Warning Radars in Alaska and California, and existing early warning Defense Support Program satellites.

Aegis ship-based SPY-1 radars “can also provide some limited early warning coverage for missile detection and tracking,” Lehner said.

That mix of capabilities, though, is considered by experts to be less than ideal (see GSN, Jan. 8). To enhance the capability, the agency plans to field in 2006 and 2007 developmental Space Tracking and Surveillance Systems (STSS) satellites, sea-based X-band radars, and the smaller air-movable ground-based TPS-X radars.

The STSS systems, however, have faced program delays from technological challenges and the sea-based X-band concept is still being developed and is not yet proven in rough waters.

An X-band-type radar stationed in Japan could be important for tracking a North Korean missile headed for California, and Hawaii in particular, Gronlund said.

Second to improving the system’s interceptors to be able to defeat enemy countermeasures, “Their biggest problem right now is [defending] Hawaii and they’ve only got the SPY-1 radar there … and the capability of SPY-1 is quite limited compared to the X-band radar they plan to use,” she said.

The United States last year gained British permission to upgrade an early warning radar in the United Kingdom for defending the United States against prospective threats from the Middle East and is seeking to upgrade a radar in Greenland as well, with Danish permission (see GSN, Feb. 6, 2003). 

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