Deploying More Anti-Ship Missiles Toward Taiwan, Japan Closes a Key Maritime Chokepoint for China

A Type 88 launcher. U.S. Marine Corps photo

The Japanese army formally activated its 8th Surface-to-Ship Missile Regiment in Oita in southern Japan late last month. The activation completes Tokyo’s long-term plan, formulated a decade ago, to establish a veritable wall of surface-to-surface missiles between southern Japan and China, and northern Japan and Russia.

Each regiment has hundreds of soldiers as well as at least four batteries of quad launchers for old Type 88 radar-guided anti-ship missiles or, increasingly, new radar-guided Type 12 ASMs. All told, that’s at least 112 missile launchers, arrayed in two arcs on the southern and northern approaches to the Sea of Japan.

“The formation of the 7th Surface-to-Ship Missile Regiment has strengthened our deterrence,” the ministry of defense in Tokyo stated.