Japan scraps £3.4bn US missile defence system after residents at site complain
Japan on Thursday scrapped plans to build a £3.4 billion US missile-defence system, ending a saga of poor planning and opposition from locals at the proposed site.
Taro Kano, the Defence Minister, announced the decision to cancel the construction of two Aegis Ashore missile interceptor bases after a meeting of the National Security Council on Wednesday.
Two years ago the Japanese government said it would purchase the system, which can intercept ballistic missiles at a range of up to 1,500 miles, in order to counter the rising threat from North Korea.
The potential sites for the bases were identified as Akita Prefecture, facing the Korean Peninsula in the far north of Japan, and Yamaguchi Prefecture, on the far southern tip of the main island of Honshu and providing an arc of defence over islands that are claimed by China as its sovereign territory.
Under the initial plan, the bases were due to be operational as early as 2025.
There was immediate resistance from local residents, many of whom feared that the missile sites would make their communities targets in the event of hostilities with neighbouring nations.
There was also concern over the impact on human health from the electromagnetic radiation that is produced by the radar units, as well as their effect on nearby television, radio and telephone signals.
The controversy deepened when the ministry admitted that it had relied on erroneous data from the Google Earth app to narrow down the potential locations for the bases.
The ministry failed to verify the actual height of mountains close to the proposed sites for the Akita base, which would have affected the effectiveness of the missiles.
The ministry’s failures were again highlighted a few months later when it was pointed out that the coastal site selected for the Akita base, on the military’s Araya training ground, is prone to flooding and simulations show that it would be inundated to a depth of several feet in the event of a tsunami.
Local residents once again expressed their anger when the ministry confirmed that components that are released from the missiles when they are launched could fall on residential districts close to the base.
“We repeatedly took up this issue in protests against the deployment”, Hiroyuki Masuyama, a professor at Yamaguchi University who heads a local group opposed to the deployment, told the Yamaguchi Shimbun newspaper.
“People living near the site had expressed concern that rocket boosters from the interceptors could drop into residential areas”, he added.
The Japanese government has confirmed that it is examining alternative defensive measures, including the construction of Aegis Ashore on floating barges that could be moored offshore.
