Japan’s counterstrike missile goes on public display
Japan has put its longest-range missile system on public display for the first time since deployment, showing the Type 25 surface-to-ship guided missile launcher to local residents at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Camp Kengun in Kumamoto.
Four vehicles, including the missile launcher and an ammunition carrier, were lined up inside the camp’s maintenance facility, Kyodo News reported. A company commander from the 5th Surface-to-Ship Missile Regiment, the unit that operates the system, briefed visitors on the equipment. About 80 people attended the morning session, taking photos and asking soldiers questions.
Photos from the event show the launcher, a heavy multi-axle truck, with its box-shaped launch canisters raised at an angle inside a hangar lined with shipping containers. The display was open to residents of Kumamoto city and people from elsewhere in Kumamoto Prefecture who work or study in the city, with participants applying in advance.
The Type 25 is an upgraded, ground-launched version of Japan’s Type 12 anti-ship missile, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The original Type 12 has a range of about 200 km (125 miles). The new version can fly about 1,000 km (620 miles), Japanese media report, putting much of the East China Sea, parts of China’s coast and the Korean Peninsula within reach from Kyushu.
It is the first missile Japan has fielded to carry out what the government calls “counterstrike capability,” the ability to hit enemy bases and launch sites, which Tokyo adopted in its 2022 National Security Strategy. Japan’s Defense Ministry describes it as a stand-off weapon, meaning it can strike an invading force from beyond the range of that force’s own weapons.
The missile was deployed to Camp Kengun on March 31, the same day the ministry formally named it the Type 25 surface-to-ship guided missile, or 25SSM. Before that deployment, the Defense Ministry showed the launcher only to a limited group that included Kumamoto Gov. Takashi Kimura, Kumamoto Mayor Kazufumi Onishi and heads of local community councils. Residents had called for a showing open to the general public, Kyodo reported.
Camp Kengun sits in a residential area in the eastern part of Kumamoto city, on Japan’s southwestern island of Kyushu, the closest of Japan’s main islands to the East China Sea and Taiwan.
The Type 25 surface-to-ship missile is one of two new long-range weapons Japan deployed this year. On the same day, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force sent the Type 25 Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile, a ballistic weapon with a gliding warhead, to Camp Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture.
The Defense Ministry plans to add ship-launched and air-launched versions of the Type 25 missile on Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers and Japan Air Self-Defense Force fighters in fiscal 2027.
Source: Defence Blog
