Japan’s next-gen missile crafted to crack China’s Pacific push

Japan is quietly rolling out a new generation of modular, long-range missiles that threaten to turn the Miyako Strait – one of the few international waterways that allows China’s navy to access the Pacific Ocean from the East China Sea – into a lethal no-go zone.

This month, Defense Blog reported that Japan’s Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) unveiled a prototype for a modular long‑range anti‑ship missile aimed at strengthening Japan’s island defense.

The weapon’s compact, low‑observable airframe is powered by an XKJ301‑1 turbojet and designed to validate propulsion, guidance and seeker integration for naval target engagement at extended ranges across Japan’s remote islands and surrounding waters.

Development posters show an open‑architecture design with internal modular bays and interchangeable payloads—dual and infrared (IR) seekers, jammer/decoy units, electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors and high‑power warheads—enabling anti‑ship, decoy, reconnaissance and strike variants.

A follow‑on test phase scheduled for 2027 adds two prototypes – Airframe A and B – to assess advanced sensor configurations, a high‑speed data‑link, improved flight control surfaces and composite structures optimized for reduced radar visibility.

ATLA did not disclose the range but engineers say the larger fuselage and efficient turbojet indicate substantially greater reach than current surface‑launched systems.

The new missile may build on  Japan’s Type 12 surface-to-ship missile (SSM) modernization that aims to extend its range from 200 to 900 and eventually 1,200 kilometers, the Type 12-SSM Extended Range (ER) with a range of 1,500 kilometers and the Hypervelocity Gilde Vehicle (HVGP) Block I with a range of 500 kilometers. The HVGP Block II, slated to enter service in 2030, will extend that range to 3,000 kilometers.

The missile is expected to integrate into a wider strike network spanning air‑and ground‑launched platforms as Japan seeks survivable, flexible deterrence in an increasingly contested maritime environment.

Japan’s nascent missile arsenal is designed to cover critical maritime chokepoints to prevent a Chinese naval breakout into the open Pacific, including during a Taiwan contingency. It may also aim to pre-emptively neutralize time-sensitive Chinese missile threats – destroying the launchers before they can fire their missiles.

The Miyako Strait is a critical 250-kilometer-wide maritime chokepoint into the open Pacific that China would have to traverse to enforce any blockade of Taiwan or to conduct a counter-intervention against the US and Japan. Such a Chinese action could also cut off Japan from critical sea lanes of communication (SLOCs) – possibly devastating its economy.

Japanese missile batteries stationed in the Ryukyu Islands, adjacent to the Miyako Strait, can threaten Chinese warships – particularly its aircraft carriers. A missile attack on a Chinese carrier battlegroup transiting the Miyako Strait would have to contend with layered defenses.

Daniel Rice mentions in a July 2024 China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) report that China’s carriers would be protected by an “Outer Defense Zone” 185-400 kilometers away by carrier-based fighters and submarines; a “Middle Defense Zone” 45-185 kilometers away by large surface combatants such as the Type 052D destroyer and Type 054A frigate; and an “Inner Defense Zone” 100 meters to 45 kilometers from the carrier by short-range air defense (SHORAD) and close-in weapons systems (CIWS).

To attack a well-defended carrier, a “missile swarm” of sea-skimming, low-observable and intelligent missiles may be required. In such an attack, reconnaissance missiles could fly ahead, forcing the targets to expend limited ammunition and interceptor missiles, while relaying information about the target to the main swarm.

The main swarm, consisting of jammer/decoy, electronic warfare and high-explosive missiles, would close in, with jammer/decoy and electronic warfare units blinding enemy radar and further forcing ammunition and interceptor missile wastage.

These missiles could be networked in a mesh configuration to share targeting data and determine the best flight path to attack a target, or be semi-autonomous to enable operation even under intense electronic warfare. High-explosive missiles would then go for critical areas such as the bridge and engine compartment.

At the operational level, Japan’s nascent missile arsenal complements US missiles stationed in the former’s territory, with those systems providing overlapping fields of fire at different ranges. Long-range missiles, such as the 2,000-kilometer range US Tomahawk missiles fired from Typhon systems stationed in Japan, could provide conventional counter-strike capability against targets deep in China.

Mid-range missiles, such as the Type 12 SSM ER, could cover most of the East China Sea and coastal Chinese targets from the Ryukyu Islands. Short-range systems such as the Type 12 SSM and the US Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) with a 200-kilometer range may be needed to cover the Miyako Strait and repel a possible Chinese island seizure operation in the Ryukyus, which may be needed to allow its warships to transit that critical chokepoint safely.

Japan’s nascent missile arsenal has profound strategic implications, with its buildup giving it a degree of logistics autonomy – critical when US missile stocks may be quickly depleted in just weeks during a conflict with China over Taiwan.

It would also enable a model of indirect intervention, as seen with the US and EU in assisting Ukraine against Russia. The US has provided Ukraine with limited targeting data for long-range strikes, while keeping troop deployments to the latter out of the question.

The US could provide Japan with targeting data – but with an important caveat. The US has at least publicly refrained from providing Ukraine with targeting data for strikes deep inside Russia to avoid provoking a possible nuclear retaliation, as Moscow has frequently threatened over the course of the war.

In the Pacific, the US and Japan may offer indirect support to Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion, such as real-time intelligence, targeting data, and the threat to interdict Chinese forces attempting to cross the Miyako Strait.

However, the US may opt to withhold targeting data for targets deep in China to avoid the risk of nuclear retaliation. Despite that, the US may opt to reserve the capability to conduct conventional deep strikes in China in exceptional circumstances – such as an attack on US forces and bases in Japan or if Taiwan’s conventional forces falter catastrophically.

While the idea of deep conventional strikes in China aims to impose costs and weaken China’s capacity to sustain an invasion of Taiwan without crossing the nuclear threshold, it would be inherently risky.

According to the US Department of Defense’s 2024 China Military Power Report (CMPR), China has 1,300 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and 300 launchers that could reach the Second Island Chain – putting the entirety of Japan within range.

Furthermore, the report says China has 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), with the solid-fuel, road-mobile DF-31A with a range of 11,000 kilometers capable of hitting most of the continental US – threatening the premise of US homeland sanctuary that underpins its extended deterrence guarantees.

Japan must also contend with rising costs for military modernization, overreliance on US security guarantees, its limited defense-industrial base, local sentiment against hosting missiles in remote islands, a longstanding pacifist sentiment and the shadow of a transactional US foreign policy under the Trump administration – one that threatens to treat traditional American allies as bargaining chips in great power competition with China and Russia.