The government has announced it will halt the process to deploy the Aegis Ashore land-based missile interception system.
Senior government officials said deployment itself has essentially become difficult, as ultimately it could not be guaranteed that the rocket booster of an interceptor missile would fall outside the Self-Defense Force training area at the candidate site in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Aegis Ashore is a land-based Aegis system that tracks incoming missiles using a radar and intercepts them, utilizing radar, an interceptor missile launcher and other devices. At the end of 2017, the government decided to deploy the Aegis Ashore system to counter North Korea, which is developing ballistic missiles.
As candidate sites, it selected the Ground Self-Defense Force's Mutsumi training area straddling Hagi and Abu in Yamaguchi Prefecture and the Araya training area in Akita.
Concerning the Mutsumi training area, the government has told local residents that it would ensure the rocket booster would fall within the training area after an interceptor missile is launched, but that turned out to be impossible under existing conditions, Defense Minister Taro Kono told reporters in the Defense Ministry building on Monday evening.
The 200-kilogram rocket booster could fall outside the training area from an altitude of 2 or 3 kilometers, according to the defense minister.
Large-scale improvement of the SM3 Block IIA interceptor missile is required to fix the problem. "In view of the cost and time needed, we will halt the process to deploy Aegis Ashore," Kono said. The Japanese and U.S. governments have spent a total of more than 220 billion yen on developing the SM3 Block IIA missile, he said.
Believing that the issue of the rocket booster could be resolved by improving the software to control the missile, the Defense Ministry has reportedly held discussions with the U.S. side. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe received the report from Kono on Friday and accepted the suspension plan.
A meeting of the National Security Council will be held shortly to officially decide on the suspension of the Aegis Ashore deployment process and discuss future plans.
A series of missteps by the ministry have increased opposition among local residents to deploying Aegis Ashore. The government aimed to start operation of the system in fiscal 2025, but the plan was expected to be delayed. In the Araya training area, several errors were discovered in relevant survey data last year. For that reason, the ministry gave up on deploying the system in the training area this spring and decided to select an alternative site in Akita Prefecture. Choosing another location has become difficult, however, now that the deployment process has been suspended.
A senior government official said: "There is no prospect of resolving the booster problem, and the candidate sites have been canceled. It's no longer possible to deploy the Aegis Ashore system."
The government plans to continue missile defense operations using Aegis ships for surveillance.
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