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US mulls new Asia
defense: report
MISSILE SYSTEMS: A ¡¥Wall Street Journal¡¦ report
says the Pentagon is discussing a new radar installation in Japan and
considering another facility in Southeast Asia
Bloomberg
The US is planning an expansion of missile defenses in Asia to address threats
from North Korea that could also serve to counter China¡¦s military build-up, the
Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
The Pentagon is discussing with Japan a new radar installation on a southern
Japanese island, the newspaper said, citing unidentified US defense officials.
Another facility is also being evaluated for Southeast Asia, linked to land and
sea missile-defense systems, the Journal said. Pentagon spokeswoman Wendy Snyder
in Washington said she couldn¡¦t immediately comment; Japan¡¦s top spokesman also
declined to comment.
US President Barack Obama is escalating foreign-policy focus on Asia as China
increases defense spending and contests jurisdiction over maritime territories
with countries including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Meanwhile, North
Korean leader Kim Jong-un has shown no willingness since assuming power in
December to abandon his regime¡¦s nuclear weapons program and oversaw an
attempted launch of a long-range rocket in April.
¡§If they are moving down to Southeast Asia, they are probably making an effort
to counter Chinese missile systems,¡¨ Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at
Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said of the reported missile
defense plan. ¡§The Chinese would probably think about how they would have to
counter these counters, and that would probably mean acquiring more systems or
perhaps targeting those radar sites.¡¨
Japan and the US have decided not to put the new radar facility on Okinawa,
given tensions over the US military presence there, the Journal said. The
Philippines is a possible site in Southeast Asia for the X-Band early-warning
radar manufactured by Raytheon Co, it said.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, speaking to reporters in Tokyo,
declined to comment on the article.
North Korea is building a new launch pad for firing larger long-range rockets at
its Musudan-ri site in the northeast, the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins
University in Washington said on its Web site in May. Japan is beefing up its
anti-ballistic missile defense system in concert with the US and ¡§most of that
is geared against North Korea,¡¨ Bitzinger said.
China last year continued ¡§sustained investments¡¨ in advanced cruise and
anti-ship missile technologies that ¡§appear designed¡¨ to blunt US military
access to the region, the Pentagon said in a May report. The missiles are
designed for launch to a general location, where the guidance systems take over
and spot carriers for attack, with warheads intended to destroy aircraft on
deck, airplane-launching gear and control towers.
The X-Band radar is used for tracking hostile ballistic missiles. It can be
positioned at sea aboard navy ships to support tests of US missile-defense
systems and to provide coverage against possible threats.
Placing the radar in Southeast Asia means ¡§the US would actually have to step up
patrols in the South China Sea and place these large destroyers in that region
on basically regular patrols,¡¨ Bitzinger said. ¡§That could be obviously taken by
the Chinese as provocative.¡¨
China called for the US to stop gathering intelligence in waters off its shores
after a 2009 incident in which its vessels harassed a US naval vessel 120km
south of Hainan Island. The US views the South China Sea as international waters
and has repeatedly called for littoral states to respect freedom of navigation.
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