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A 2015 white paper from the Japanese Ministry of Defense shows the locations of radar sites in the country’s missile defense network

At 8:30 in the evening on Jan. 28, as Tokyo lay shrouded in darkness, a convoy of big drab-colored trucks was seen rolling into the Ichigaya base of Japan’s Ministry of Defense. The trucks were loaded with the launch apparatus for the Japan Self-Defense Force’s (JSDF) Patriot (PAC-3) interceptors, which are designed to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles in the final stage, between 15 and 40 km above the ground.

During the 9 o’clock news that night, Japanese TV station NHK broadcast to the nation footage of Japanese soldiers setting up the launch equipment on the sports field of the Ministry of Defense.

Japan’s missile defense capability is believed to be the second strongest in the world, after the US. Significantly, for the past two decades, the US has taken steps to strengthen Japan’s missile defense capability, based on the two countries’ shared interest in countering China.

At present, the two countries have reached the stage of what is effectively integrated operation of their missile defense - from collecting information in Japan to giving the orders to intercept.

Since South Korea and the US have arranged to connect their own separately operated missile defense systems through Link 16, the US army’s data exchange network, South Korea has also effectively agreed to participate in the US- and Japan-led missile defense system within the year.

Observing the integration of the American and Japanese missile defense systems offers quite a few implications for predicting the future of missile defense in South Korea.

Japan began to take a serious interest in the US missile defense system during joint ballistic missile defense research with the US in 1995, during the presidency of Bill Clinton. The thing fueling Japan’s internal review of the plan was North Korea’s launch of Taepodong-1 in Aug. 1998.

After this, in Dec. 2003, the Japanese cabinet, led by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, confirmed the basic framework of a Japanese missile defense program, which would use SM-3 missiles on Aegis destroyers for upper-tier defense and PAC-3 missiles for lower-tier defense.

Generally speaking, a missile defense system is composed of three elements. First, there is the radar, serving as the eyes of the system, which detects and tracks enemy ballistic missiles. Second, there is the control center, serving as its brain, which analyzes related data and issues the intercept order. Third, there are the interceptors themselves, which shoot down enemy incoming ballistic missiles.

Currently, Japan has seven of its domestically developed FPS-3 radars located at bases including Kyogamisaki in Kyoto and four of the enhanced FPS-5 radars at the city of Sado in Niigata Prefecture and other sites.

In addition, Japan has equipped its four Aegis-class guided-missile destroyers - the Kongo, Kirishima, Myoko, Chokai - with the SM-3 missile system, which can intercept targets high in the atmosphere more than 150 kilometers away, and it is currently building two more Aegis destroyers for use in ballistic missile defense.

For lower-tier defense, Japan has deployed 16 PAC-3 units (a total of 18 if two reserve units are included) around major cities such as Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka.

These systems for surveillance and interception are under the integrated control of JADGE (Japan Aerospace Defense Ground Environment), the automated alert and warnings system operated by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF).

The two country’s military defense assets are connected through Link 16. The first step that made this possible was the establishment of a body to facilitate communication between their respective military authorities.

In Oct. 2005, the US and Japan agreed during a meeting of their Security Consultative Committee (also called “two plus two,” bilateral meetings between the US Secretaries of State and Defense and their Japanese counterparts) to set up a bilateral joint operations coordination center (BJOCC) at the US Yokota Air Base near Tokyo. Then in May 2007, a meeting of the same committee resulted in a bilateral commitment to continuously share ballistic missile defense operational data and other related data directly, reciprocally, and in real time.

These efforts appear to have culminated in the move of JASDF’s air defense command, which manages JADGE, the brains of Japan’s missile defense, to the Yokota base in Mar. 2010.

If South Korea were brought into this system, information about North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles picked up by South Korea’s radars and Aegis destroyers would be provided in real time to the US and Japan. Since this represents the first step in the integration of the South Korean, American and Japanese missile defense systems, it increases the risk of provoking South Korea’s neighbors and worsening the regional arms race.

At present, South Korea is building its own missile defense system (known as KAMD, standing for Korean Air and Missile Defense), which will be composed of a “kill chain,” used to carry out a preemptive strike if signs are detected of a North Korean missile launch, along with PAC-2 interceptors, which are one stage below Japan’s PAC-3 interceptors.

If South Korea chooses to be incorporated into the US-Japan missile defense system, it will likely be asked to strengthen its armaments to a level comparable with Japan. Indeed, South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense has confirmed the purchase of PAC-3 interceptors from the US with the goal of deploying them by 2017.

If the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system of interceptors - which calls for a much higher level of integration in the areas of detection, tracking, and interception - is also deployed on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea’s integration into the US-Japan missile defense system is expected to accelerate.

Such a move would place a huge strain on the South Korean budget. In 2008, the Japanese government predicted that the cost of setting up a missile defense system would be between 800 billion yen and 1 trillion yen (US$6.62 billion to US$8.27 billion). And considering that South Korea has even less of the basic infrastructure in place for building missile defense than Japan did, the bill would likely be much bigger.

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

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