Japan is developing its own Neptune: A 1200 km missile to deter Russia
Japan’s Defense Ministry has announced that it intends to accelerate the development and deployment of an upgraded version of the Type 12 cruise missile. If until now the final point was announced as 2026, now the Japanese want to put these missiles into service and mass production as early as 2025, i.e. a year earlier.
This demonstrates Japan’s rather interesting progress in creating its own long-range weapons designed to deter Russia, North Korea, and China in the Pacific region. The Japanese concern Mitsubishi received the contract for the creation of a modernized version of the Type 12 worth $3 billion only in April 2013. This is stated in the publication of the portal Janes.
Defense Express adds that the comparison with our Neptune is actually more than appropriate here. As in the case of Japan, we are also talking about a project under which the basic version of an anti-ship cruise missile will be adapted to strike ground targets, with an increase in the range and change in other characteristics of this weapon.
The only slight difference is that at the moment, Russia is a threat to Japan rather on a prospective level. This gives more time for various kinds of development.
At the level of general details, it may be a discovery for some that Japan has a full-fledged armed forces. But this is the reality – the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have up to 250,000 personnel, including 150,000 “bayonets” in the ground component, and the annual level of defense spending is kept at the equivalent of $50 billion.
Adjusted for local specifics, coastal anti-ship complexes are part of the ground forces. And, according to The Military Balance 2023, the Japanese currently have 30 mobile launchers of the Type 12 anti-ship missile system.
In the basic version, the missile of this complex has a launch range of only 200 kilometers. And the modernized version should have a range of up to 1200 kilometers, with the launch also taking place from sea or air platforms (for example, F-15J fighters).
It is significant that Japan has decided to accelerate the modernization of the Type 12 into a long-range cruise missile after receiving permission from the United States in November 2023 to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles for $2.5 billion. The delivery of which, however, will take several years.
