Photo/Illutration A testing facility for the land-based Aegis Ashore missile defense system on Hawaii's Kauai island (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The proposed sea-based alternative to the aborted plan to deploy the Aegis Ashore land-based missile defense systems would require twice as much money despite being far less capable.

The total cost of introducing the envisioned offshore systems would be at least some 900 billion yen ($8.24 billion), even though their overall capability would be one-third of the land-based ones.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s administration needs to break away from this “negative legacy” from the previous administration, headed by Shinzo Abe, and start considering a new missile defense program from scratch.

Suga’s Cabinet on Dec. 18 decided to add two vessels equipped with the Aegis missile defense system to the Self-Defense Forces’ catalog of weapons, as a new missile defense program to replace the abandoned Aegis Ashore project.

The new plan would deploy radar and other equipment for the Aegis Ashore system, which the government would purchase from the United States under a concluded contract, on destroyers. Asahi Shimbun editorials have questioned the wisdom of the unprecedented project, whose costs and effectiveness have been unclear.

The Defense Ministry has announced the price tag will run from 480 billion yen to over 500 billion yen for two new Aegis vessels, but has yet to disclose an estimate of the maintenance costs.

But The Asahi Shimbun has reported that an internal document was compiled in November estimating the costs for maintenance and repair over a 30-year period to be between 379.2 billion yen and 384.2 billion yen, at the least.

That means the total cost would be double the figure for the Aegis Ashore project even though the new offshore systems would be operated only 126 days per year, one-third the coverage rate that was to be offered by the land-based systems.

The land-based systems were touted as a powerful shield against missiles that could “protect the entire nation 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

The document also pointed out the possibility of the total cost turning out to be even greater.

The Defense Ministry has apparently concealed vital data for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the project and deciding on whether to introduce the systems.

The report has not prodded the Defense Ministry into disclosing the information. In response to a question about the issue asked by an opposition lawmaker during a Lower House Security Committee session, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said he had to decline to answer questions based on a news report.

Kishi refused to give any estimate of the total costs, even a ballpark figure.

The Defense Ministry’s attitude indicates a lack of respect for the role of the Diet to scrutinize budgets on behalf of the tax-paying public and hampers serious debate on important national security issues.

The tendency of the Defense Ministry and the SDF to conceal embarrassing information was brought to the fore by a cover-up scandal concerning daily logs of the Ground Self-Defense Force peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance operations in South Sudan and Iraq.

This deep-rooted culture of concealment has also been underscored by the ministry’s reluctance to admit the inconvenient fact that there is a large swath of extremely soft ground under the seabed in parts of the reclamation area for a fiercely disputed and deeply troubled project to build a new U.S. military facility off the Henoko district of Nago in Okinawa Prefecture.

Without reforming this cover-up culture and mindset within the ministry, it will be difficult to win broad public support for the government’s security and defense policies.

The question facing Japanese security policymaker is what kind of defense capabilities the nation needs to protect its peace and security amid an increasingly dangerous security landscape in East Asia due to threats posed by China’s military expansion and North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Promoting a meaningful and in-depth national discourse on this question requires disclosure of data crucial for discussions.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 27

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