Japan reveals 3 sea-based alternatives for scrapped Aegis Ashore plan

Japan should built it's own. We have enough smart people to do it.

-America's system is not tested enough, doesn't perform as promised.

-Very Short range compared to Russian system.

-Overpriced like everything American.

-Russian s300 and s400 is half the cost of what America is selling.

Turkey was close to USA, Trump even warned them to buy American missile shield or they won't see any F35 from Washington anymore. Can you guess what Turkey did?

They decided to go with the Russian missile defense system.

Saudi Arabia had the American system, when their oil fields got attacked the past year, not one cruise missile was shot down!

Iran angry after their General was killed, fired ballistic missiles towards USA base in Iraq and Afghanistan.... Not one Ballistic missile was shot down!

All the American soldiers run and hide inside a bunker.

Avoid the Missile Shield from America! It's the worst thing you can buy from that country! Let's build our own Missile Shield.

Sorry , but some cheap drones and torpedoes and the system is immediately 95% down.

Return to the land based solution, well, now in an unpopulated coastal area...lol

A platform at sea seems kind of vulnerable.

If there is a need to defend ourselves that merits bureaucrats wheeling and dealing missiles and rockets, it seems reasonable that we should be supplied with weapons (guns!) to protect our families in the real world.

Three alternative missile interception systems to replace the Aegis Ashore systems originally planned in Akita and Yamaguchi are: (1) building destroyer-equipped interception system, that is, building more Aegis destroyers, (2) utilization of private sector vessels, probably unused super oil tankers, and (3) building structures at sea similar to oil drilling platforms.

The U.S. government is reported to have been negative about these alternatives, suggesting Japan stick to land-based Aegis Ashore systems. It's none of their business, of course, but they insist and intervene. Why?

Aegis Ashore systems are not necessarily for the defense of Japan and the U.S. government’s meddling tells something very interesting. 

Whatever alternative is taken by the Japanese government, does the interception system cope with incoming multiple missiles targeted at Japanese cities? If it can’t, it’s already a white elephant before it’s actually deployed. Despite this fact, why does the Japanese government fuss over Aegis Ashore so much? 

Does the Japanese government have to pay damages for breach of contract even though the products it plans to buy have turned out to be defective for the defense of Japan?

It's amazing how politics get in the way of security.

Instead of constantly buying from the US, we should make our own, cheaper, more efficient and reliable defences.

US military tech is like Apple these days...

Build the new Aegis Ashor platform on Senkaku, solve two problems at once. If Japan is to buy from the U.S. also make it so that the U.S. patrols and protects the installation from aggressive Chinese incursions in territorial waters and air space.

Passed the Aegis one in North Kyoto today. It is a massive complex and very expensive looking.

Russian S-300/400/500 can shoot down 12 missiles. They are cheap and very portable. Aegis can only shoot down 3. NK fired 4 ballistic missiles simultaneously last year meaning one nuke could hit Tokyo.

Aegis needs to be tested. One missile costs $100 million dollars!

What ever and which ever system they go for needs to be up to date and built yesterday, the fuse is already lit.

Cannot wait around for ever while the neighbors keep wanting to create havoc and threaten everyone in the area.

Perhaps develop space based laser systems or just arm the population with hand guns and semi automatic weapons in the meantime as some one mentioned, sounds fair enough to the reasonable minded among us here.................the CCP already has thousands of soldiers on the ground in Japan, dressed as civilians.................

Anti-missile systems are garbage - fraudulent systems that rarely reach 50% capability. To wit:

Boeing, the prime contractor for GMD, describes the system as a “shield” (Boeing), its test record reveals that it is more likely to function as a sieve. Nearly half (20 out of 44) of the currently deployed GMD interceptors are fitted with the Capability Enhancement (CE)-I kill vehicle, which has only succeeded in two of its four interceptor tests (the most recent of which took place in 2008). Similarly, over a third of the interceptors (16 out of 44) are fitted with the CE-II kill vehicle, which also has a 50 percent testing record (Government Accountability Office 2019, 57). What’s more, according to the former head of the MDA, Admiral James Syring, these tests take place “in a controlled, scripted environment” (Syring 2013). Given these facts and figures, it seems highly unlikely that GMD would perform as advertised when faced with unexpected threats, decoys, and penetration aids, or multiple targets.

The alternatives, presented at a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, are the introduction of destroyers equipped with an interception system, utilization of ships that belong to the private sector, and an offshore structure similar to those used to drill for oil.

Offshore structures would be priority first targets, immobile and taken out in the first wave of any attack.

Ships that belong to the private sector will have less security and their locations may be purchased for the right price.

The best option is a mobile platform (Navy Destroyer) that can also be used for other normal defense tasks like defending against submarines and surface targets as well as taking out incoming missiles.

Russian S-300/400/500 can shoot down 12 missiles.

An old analog Charles F. Adams class DDG from the 1960s could track that many. It's nothing. In reality the Tombstone Radar can track maybe 100 targets but the battery has far fewer missiles available to shoot. S300 is limited by its TVM guidance (same limit for PAC-2). Targets require illumination for the end game. S400 has an active seeker and doesn't require an illuminator radar.

Aegis is vastly more capable than anything the Russians have. Aegis was designed to defeat stream raids of hundreds of incoming missiles. It was designed at the height of the Cold War when the Soviet Navy was going to try to saturate existing radars and the old slow loading arm launchers with too many missiles in too little time to defeat all of them. Because of that tactical problem the US designed Aegis to track many hundreds of targets simultaneously per radar panel and each panel can control literally hundreds of intercepts at one time. Then combine that with VLS (vertical launch system) that can fire missiles at one second intervals. Now the system could both track anything the Soviets could fire at it and the VLS could launch missiles fast enough to defeat a big stream raid. The system has been in the fleet since the mid 1980s and is proven. In any event once the SM-3 is fired and assigned a target it is autonomous. Same for SM-6. Neither needs an illuminator radar to complete an intercept. That allows an unlimited number of intercepts to occur in a short time frame. The SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 missiles have far greater effective ranges than any other air defense missiles out there.

Aegis' current SPY-1 radars can track anything from objects in space to sea skimming cruise missiles, even artillery shells (much older versions used off Beirut in the 1980s were able to track Syrian artillery rounds and direct counter battery fire from Marines ashore). Because they are phased arrays their scan rates are incredibly fast and they are extremely hard to spoof or jam. The new SPY-6 radars are Actively Electronically Scanned Arrays, or AESAs. These are far more advanced than the existing SPY-1s. They are being installed on new build Arleigh Burke Flight III DDGs for the US Navy after many years of testing and qualification.

Ships that belong to the private sector will have less security and their locations may be purchased for the right price.

The ships would not be operated by private companies. What the Japanese mean is to buy merchant hulls and convert them to Aegis platforms. BMD ships operating off the coast of Japan do not need to be fast as they will be cruising in circles or maybe even anchored.

The best option is a mobile platform (Navy Destroyer) that can also be used for other normal defense tasks like defending against submarines and surface targets as well as taking out incoming missiles.

That is the highest cost option. DDGs are complex ships that require a lot of expensive maintenance. Because they are very high performance, like sports cars, their fuel burn is high. That is an acceptable trade off if you need a surface ship that can outrun nuclear submarines (they can, btw, easily) but unnecessary for patrolling in circles for BMD duty. In any event much of the other military hardware on a DDG isn't necessary for BMD duty. You don't need towed sonars (or any sonar), torpedoes, helicopters, etc for BMD patrols.

What's the accuracy rate of missile defense systems? I entered this question into my computer and hit the following piece:

An article in War on the Rocks debunks President Donald Trump's claim that the missile defense system protecting the United States is "97.5 percent" accurate. The system, according to missile defense experts Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang, is actually just above 50 percent accurate.2017/10/16

It may be surmised from this that the Aegis Ashore systems Japan has been planning to buy from the U.S. for 450 billion yen ($4.1billion) are very unreliable and defective in spite of Trump’s claim. Must a purchaser pay damages for breach of contract when the item for sale and purchase has turned out to be defective?

Offshore structures would be priority first targets, immobile and taken out in the first wave of any attack.

It would be no more vulnerable than a land based system. It could be put inside a breakwater or on a jack up rig close to shore and surrounded by torpedo nets. Or it could be a huge semi-submersible rig. Look at the huge crane ship SSCV Sleipnir or on a smaller scale the launch platform used by Sea Launch, MV Ocean Odyssey, for an idea of what I am talking about. With something like that the missile launch tubes could exhaust downward directly into the ocean. Sleipnir has a cruising speed of 10 knots, more than adequate for BMD duty. Built with an eye on survivability one of these could be made very hard to disable or sink, moreso than any DDG hull. Take a look at photos or video of the failed NSS-8 launch. The rocket blew up on the launch pad at sea. It didn't sink the platform. I saw Ocean Odyssey in Long Beach afterwards. There was some bent metal below the launch pad where blast deflectors were damaged and the upperworks were charred but nothing major. The fireball was larger than the ship and yet it didn't suffer major damage (I'll bet it was darned exciting though !)

@Desert Tortoise

This may interest you:

"https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/09/30ffm-japans-next-generation-frigate-taking-shape-at-two-shipyards/"

See related article on China's blatant copy of the US Navy's Sea Hunter.

Enjoy.

Saudi Arabia had the American system, when their oil fields got attacked the past year, not one cruise missile was shot down!

Nope. Not true. The are only two Aegis Ashore facilities in the world, one in Poland and the other in Romania.

Saudis operate Patriot and THAAD, which are focused on high diving ballistic missiles. Those systems had been successful intercepting Houthi ballistic missiles used in earlier attacks from Yemen to the south. The one successful attack came from the north and east (from Iran rather than from Yemen). The attack was carried out by UAVs and possibly some cruise missiles. The Saudis also had Mistral, Shahine, I-Hawk and Crotale and all of those missed the attacker as well. The Saudis weren't expecting an attack from that direction.

It may be surmised from this that the Aegis Ashore systems Japan has been planning to buy from the U.S. for 450 billion yen ($4.1billion) are very unreliable and defective in spite of Trump’s claim. Must a purchaser pay damages for breach of contract when the item for sale and purchase has turned out to be defective?

From a DoD reply to a critique of SM-3

"... the first tests [used] prototype interceptors; expensive mock warheads weren't used in the tests since specific lethality capability wasn't a test objective—the objective was to hit the target missile. Contrary to the assertions of Postol and Lewis, all three tests resulted in successful target hits with the unitary ballistic missile target destroyed. This provided empirical evidence that ballistic missile intercepts could in fact be accomplished at sea using interceptors launched from Aegis ships.

After successful completion of these early developmental tests, the test program progressed from just "hitting the target" to one of determining lethality and proving the operationally configured Aegis SM-3 Block I and SM-3 Block 1A system. These tests were the MDA's most comprehensive and realistic test series, resulting in the Operational Test and Evaluation Force's October 2008 evaluation report stating that Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Block 04 3.6 System was operationally effective and suitable for transition to the Navy.

Since 2002, a total of 19 SM-3 missiles have been fired in 16 different test events resulting in 16 intercepts against threat-representative full-size and more challenging subscale unitary and full-size targets with separating warheads. In addition, a modified Aegis BMD/SM-3 system successfully destroyed a malfunctioning U.S. satellite by hitting the satellite in the right spot to negate the hazardous fuel tank at the highest closure rate of any ballistic missile defense technology ever attempted.

The authors of the SM-3 study cited only tests involving unitary targets, and chose not to cite the five successful intercepts in six attempts against separating targets, which, because of their increased speed and small size, pose a much more challenging target for the SM-3 than a much larger unitary target missile. They also did not mention the fact the system is successfully intercepting targets much smaller than probable threat missiles on a routine basis, and have attained test scores that many other Defense Department programs aspire to attain."

Btw, as with conventional air defense missiles you generally fire two missiles per target to ensure destruction. If the first missile hits Aegis can communicate a new target to the second missile.

See related article on China's blatant copy of the US Navy's Sea Hunter.

Yep. Look at the Type 730 point defense gatling gun on their warships and then look at the Dutch Goalkeeper gun system. Full on copy stolen from the Dutch. Also go back in time a few decades and find out what a program called ALVRJ, for Advance Low Volume RamJet was. I recommend the discussion of it in a site called Designation Systems. Compare old images of this experimental solid fuel rocket ramjet to the Soviet's 3M54 and Kh-31. Monkey see, monkey do. Nothing new here. Sea Hunter is just a developmental prototype and doesn't represent what will be built for the fleet. In any event what you cannot see is more important that the exterior similarities.

Anti-missile systems are garbage - fraudulent systems that rarely reach 50% capability. To wit:

Japan doesn't intend to buy the GMD system which honestly has a lot of problems. Japan is co-developing Standard SM-3 Block II with the US Navy, based on the highly successful SM-3 series that precedes it. That system has an outstanding test record against complex separating targets and in one case knocked an old US satellite out of orbit with a direct hit on the fuel tank as planned. SM-3 is about the most tested and most successful BMD system anyone makes at this point including many tests conducted from JMSDF warships.

Desert Tortoise,

I cannot go into technical details about U.S. missile defense systems, but I can say with certainty that Aegis Ashore systems aren't finished products with a dubious accuracy rate. You cannot sell an unfinished product, still on a development stage, with an exorbitant price tag attached, and when insoluble glitches are found with the product and the customer cancels the sales contract, you demand an enormous amount of damages for breach of contract be paid. 

The Japanese government is thus helter-skelter to find alternatives to the original plan for Aegis Ashore to be deployed to Akita and Yamaguchi. Seems unfair pressuring is being applied here from the U.S. side.

An article in War on the Rocks on the accuracy rate of the U.S. missile defense systems by two missile defense experts can be more accurate and reliable than President Trump's impulsive claim that they are very accurate (97.5 percent). The authors in War on the Rocks say the U.S. missile defense's accuracy rate is no more than 50 percent.

So hard selling of Aegis Ashore systems to Japan is nothing but shenanigans. There’s no breach of contract on the part of Japan, I think. So don’t be helter-skelter to try to find alternatives for the original deployment of them to Akita and Yamaguchi.

If Japan wants to scrap a plan to deploy the costly Aegis Ashore systems to Akita and Yamaguchi, do so to the nail. No need to worry about breach of contract or find alternatives for them.