Tomahawks part of Japan’s record defense spending next year
Associated PressTOKYO — Japan’s defense spending will jump 20% to a record 6.8 trillion yen next year as the country prepares to deploy U.S.-made Tomahawks and other long-range cruise missiles that can hit targets in China or North Korea under a more offensive security strategy. The budget plan comes a week after Kishida’s government announced Japan’s new National Security Strategy, stating its determination to possess controversial “counterstrike capability” to preempt enemy attacks and nearly double its spending within the next five years to protect itself from growing risks from China, North Korea and Russia and escalating fear of a Taiwan emergency. Japan will spend 94 billion yen next year to work on upgrading and mass production of Type-12 land-to-ship guided missiles develped by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for deployment within the next few years. Japan will also spend 220 billion yen to build two compact destroyers to be equipped with Aegis radars to strengthen the country’s missile interception capability as a deterrent to advanced missiles.