Japan's Defense Ministry has requested an additional 730 million yen ($6.4 million) in next fiscal year's budget for a plan to introduce two land-based Aegis missile defense systems, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Sunday.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to endorse the so-called Aegis Ashore deployment on Dec. 19, a government source said, as the country aims to bolster its defense capability against North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threat.
"There is a need to strengthen our capability to regularly and sustainably defend all of the country as soon as possible at a time when North Korea is building up its ballistic missile capability," Onodera told reporters in Sendai in northeastern Japan where he inspected a base of the Ground Self-Defense Force.
Onodera said the requested funding for fiscal 2018 starting next April will be used for surveying geological features, designing the deployment plan and other expenses.
The ministry is also seeking to include related expenses in the supplementary budget for the current year ending next March, the minister said.
In the ministry's initial budgetary request for fiscal 2018 made in August, which came to a record-high 5.26 trillion yen, the ministry said it is seeking funds to introduce a new missile shield system, while leaving open the actual sum.
Currently, the Maritime Self-Defense Force's destroyers, equipped with the Aegis combat system and Standard Missile-3 interceptors, are tasked with stopping missiles in the outer atmosphere.
If they fail, the Air Self-Defense Force's ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptors will counter attacks in the lower spheres.
Introducing the Aegis Ashore system is expected to strengthen the country's ballistic missile defense system even further. Compared to the sea-based operations of Aegis destroyers, the land-based Aegis Ashore system makes it easier for the SDF to prepare for missile intercepts because it would be installed at a stationary site.
