Japanese ground attack missiles with a range of 1,600 km will soon be able to reach the entire North Korean territory, as well as the Chinese coasts, from Beijing in the north of the country to the strategic Taiwan Strait further south.
A new strategic situation is opening up for Tokyo after the announcement of the signing, on Thursday, of a contract for the purchase by Japan of 400 American Tomahawk cruise missiles, designed for firing from ships. towards land targets.
The news is not a surprise: in December, the Japanese Minister of Defense, Minoru Kihara, announced his wish to accelerate their deployment, now planned for 2025 and no longer in 2026.
A month earlier, in November, Washington had announced the authorization of this sale worth $2.35 billion, which will include 200 missiles in their "
Block IV
" version and 200 "
Block 5
", the evolution the most recent of the famous American BGM-109 deployed since 1983 on all US Navy destroyers and cruisers.
At the end of 2022, the Japanese government announced its intention to acquire 500 Tomahawks as part of its new “
national defense strategy
”, a real turning point in Tokyo's military doctrine, since it introduced the need for Japan to equip itself with a new “
counter-attack
” capacity to “
dissuade
” any adversary from striking the island country first.
The purchase of cruise missiles intended for strikes against land is a first illustration of this “
change of era
”, according to the expression used by the IFRI (French Institute of International Relations) in a December 2022 note.
“Japan renounces war forever”
To understand the spectacular nature of this shift, we must remember an astonishing paradox: Japan is one of the leading military powers in the world without having... an "
army
".
Since their defeat during the last world conflict in 1945, the Japanese have had to make do with simple “
self-defense forces
” (JSDF in English).
Their defensive use is strictly regulated by the Constitution, article 9 of which states that “
Japan forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation
”.
But, at the same time, Tokyo is actively preparing if ever, one day, the island country were to be attacked...
Over the years, with the all-out development of Chinese power and against a backdrop of growing tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Japanese began to firmly rearm.
To the point where the idea of a revision of the pacifist Constitution of the third economic power in the world began to stir up debates within conservative and nationalist elites.
It was the project, committed but remained a dead letter, of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2012-2020), very right-wing on the country's political spectrum.
The new 2022 strategy therefore still falls within the defensive constitutional framework unchanged for nearly 80 years, but the introduction of the principle of “
counter-attack
” is no less a break, since it directly affects the type of weapons with which the Japanese now equip themselves.
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In the use that they will make of them, we certainly cannot formally speak of Tomahawk missiles as "
offensive
" weapons - since they are always thought of in a "
defensive
" framework - but they nevertheless represent a first capability of long-range ground strikes against a putative opponent.
Moreover, Japanese strategic vocabulary has evolved rapidly in recent years.
In its doctrine, Japan no longer describes China as a “
friend
” but as an “
unprecedented strategic challenge
”.
Tokyo has not gone so far as to speak of a “
threat
”, a term it reserves for the moment for North Korea, this threat being even considered “
imminent
”.
Image released by the US Navy on January 18, 2024 of the Japanese destroyer
Kongo
, alongside American and South Korean ships during a trilateral exercise in the Pacific Ocean.
HANDOUT / AFP
This possibility of an imminent conflict in the region can already be guessed if we observe the state of the Japanese self-defense forces, in particular its maritime component.
The Japanese fleet has 36 destroyers and 4 frigates, or 40 first-rate surface ships.
For comparison, the format of the French Navy, unchanged for years, is limited to 15 frigates.
And that's not all: equipped with the American Aegis combat system, the eight
Kongo
,
Atago
and
Maya
class heavy destroyers are imposing 10,000-ton ships deploying 90 or even 96 missile silos.
This is double or even triple the capacities offered by almost all European frigates.
Until now, these eight ships were loaded with anti-aircraft missiles, but they will now also accommodate Tomahawk ground attack missiles.
In the second half of the 2020 decade, the number of platforms hosting these new weapons will increase to 10, Tokyo having announced the construction of two other so-called ASEV destroyers, even more imposing.
The number of missile silos will increase to 128, a near-record in the world, equaled by the South Korean destroyers
Sejong the Great
and only beaten by the two Russian cruisers
Kirov
, a survival of Soviet gigantism.
Threat of saturation
That these are South Korean and Japanese destroyers is no coincidence: these two Asian fleets are adapting to the progress of their main regional adversary, the PLAN, the Chinese navy.
To date, it fields 49 destroyers and 42 frigates, and the inventory increases each year, by five to ten additional units.
Long-range drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic gliders... China has an arsenal of several thousand weapons capable of striking a regional adversary several thousand kilometers away.
Not to mention the equally rapid development of North Korea's ballistic arsenal.
In this context, Japanese interception capabilities are expected to increase significantly in the coming years, with the planned purchase of new American SM-3 interceptors, capable of handling ballistic missiles and also used by the AEGIS destroyers of the Japanese fleet.
But this defensive approach cannot be enough.
“
China today has the means to saturate the Japanese anti-missile defense system put in place in the 2000s. Maintaining a deterrent capacity therefore justifies massive investments in counter-attack capabilities that are very expensive and complex to implement. .
They must make it possible (...) to strike enemy bases or installations which house military command and control units
,” explained the IFRI note, citing the Tomahawks as an illustration of this new counter-strategy. attack.
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Faced with naval threats, Japan also wishes to increase the range of its indigenous Type 12 anti-ship missiles from 200 to 1,200 km, deployed from land batteries and destroyers.
In 2018, Tokyo also announced the transformation of its two
Izumo
-class helicopter carriers into light aircraft carriers capable of deploying American F-35B fighters.
Here again, this small naval aviation revolution sparked a lively controversy in Japan, with part of the political class seeing it as a violation of the pacifist spirit of Article 9 of the Constitution.
As for the defense budget, it must double by 2027 to reach 2% of Japanese GDP, based on the model of the financial target set by NATO countries.
If this increase is confirmed, Tokyo will rise to third place among the military powers in the world, in terms of number of dollars spent.
In this context, the next deployment of Tomahawk is one more step in the transformation of this “self-defense force” which, without being formally, increasingly resembles a real army.