The U.S. is planning a major expansion of missile defenses in Asia, a
move American officials say is designed to contain threats from North Korea,
but one that could also be used to counter China's military.
The planned buildup is part of a
defensive array that could cover large swaths of Asia, with a new radar in southern
Japan and possibly another in Southeast Asia tied to missile-defense ships and
land-based interceptors.
It is part of the Obama
administration's new defense strategy to shift resources to an Asian-Pacific
region critical to the U.S. economy after a decade of war in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The expansion comes at a time
when the U.S. and its allies in the region voice growing alarm about a North
Korean missile threat. They are also increasingly worried about China's
aggressive stance in disputed waters such the South China Sea, where Asian
rivals are vying for control of oil and mineral rights.
U.S. defense planners are
particularly concerned about China's development of antiship ballistic missiles
that could threaten the Navy's fleet of aircraft carriers, critical to the U.S.
projection of power in Asia.
"The focus of our rhetoric
is North Korea," said Steven Hildreth, a missile-defense expert with the
Congressional Research Service, an advisory arm of Congress. "The reality
is that we're also looking longer term at the elephant in the room, which is
China."
China's Ministry of National
Defense didn't comment directly on the anti-missile plans, but sounded a
cautious note.
"China has always believed
that anti-missile issues should be handled with great discretion, from the
perspective of protecting global strategic stability and promoting strategic
mutual trust among all countries," it said in a statement on Thursday.
"We advocate that all parties fully respect and be mindful of the security
concerns of one another and try to realize overall safety through mutual
benefit and win-win efforts, while avoiding the situation in which one country
tries to let its own state security take priority over other countries'
national security."
In a separate statement, China's
Foreign Ministry said it hopes the U.S. "will carefully handle this
problem out of concern for maintaining the global and regional strategic
balance and stability, and promoting the strategic mutual trust among all
countries."
A centerpiece of the new effort
would be the deployment of a powerful early-warning radar, known as an X-Band,
on an undisclosed southern Japanese island, said U.S. defense officials. The
Pentagon is discussing that prospect with Japan, one of Washington's closest regional
allies. The radar could be installed within months of Japan's agreement,
American officials said, and would supplement an X-Band the U.S. positioned in
Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan in 2006.
A Japanese Ministry of Defense
spokesman said the government wouldn't comment. The U.S. and Japan have ruled
out deploying the new radar to Okinawa, a southern island whose residents have
long chafed at the U.S. military forces' presence there.
Officials with the U.S.
military's Pacific Command and Missile Defense Agency have also been evaluating
sites in Southeast Asia for a third X-Band radar to create an arc that would
allow the U.S. and its regional allies to more accurately track any ballistic
missiles launched from North Korea, as well as from parts of China.
Some U.S. defense officials have
focused on the Philippines as the potential site for the third X-Band, which is
manufactured by Raytheon Co. Pentagon officials said a location has yet to be
determined and that discussions are at an early stage.
The beefed-up U.S. presence will
likely raise tensions with the Chinese, who have been sharp critics of U.S.
ballistic missile defenses in the past. Beijing fears such a system, similar to
one the U.S. is deploying in the Middle East and Europe to counter Iran, could
diminish China's strategic deterrent. Beijing objected to the U.S.'s first
X-Band deployment in Japan in 2006. Moscow has voiced similar concerns about
the system in Europe and the Middle East.
Without commenting on specific
plans, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said: "North Korea is the
immediate threat that is driving our missile defense decision making."
In April, North Korea launched a
multistage rocket that blew up less than two minutes into its flight. It
conducted previous launches in August 1998, July 2006 and April 2009.
The Pentagon sent a sea-based
X-Band, normally docked in Pearl Harbor, to the Pacific to monitor the most
recent North Korean launch as a precaution.
The Pentagon is particularly
concerned about the growing imbalance of power across the Taiwan Strait. China
has been developing advanced ballistic missiles and antiship ballistic missiles
that could target U.S. naval forces in the region.
China has between 1,000 and 1,200
short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, and has been developing longer
range cruise and ballistic missiles, including one designed to hit a moving
ship more than 930 miles away, says the Pentagon's latest annual report on
China's military.
The proposed X-Band arc would
allow the U.S. to not only cover all of North Korea, but to peer deeper into
China, say current and former U.S. officials.
"Physics is physics," a
senior U.S. official said. "You're either blocking North Korea and China
or you're not blocking either of them."
Beijing has said it poses no
threat to its neighbors.
One goal of the Pentagon is to
reassure its anxious regional allies, which are walking a fine line. Many want
the U.S.'s backing but also don't want to provoke China, and they aren't sure
Washington can counter Beijing's rapid military modernization because of
America's fiscal constraints.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta said during a visit Wednesday to the USS John C. Stennis warship in
Washington state that the U.S. would "focus and project our force into the
Pacific."
The U.S. presence on the ground
in Asia, especially the Marine bases in Okinawa, has been a source of constant
tension, and a more determined presence could spark similar problems. In
addition to the new X-Band site in southern Japan, the U.S. plans to increase
the number of Marines in Okinawa in the near term before relocating them to
Guam. As the Marines are pulled out of Afghanistan, going from 21,000 to less
than 7,000, the number of forces on Okinawa will rise, from about 15,000 to 19,000,
officials said.
Analysts say it is unclear how
effective U.S. missile defenses would be against China. A 2010 Pentagon report
on ballistic missile defenses said the system can't cope with large-scale
Russian or Chinese missile attacks and isn't intended to affect the strategic
balance with those countries.
The senior U.S. official said the
new missile defense deployments would be able to track and repulse at least a
limited strike from China, potentially enough to deter Beijing from attempting
an attack.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the
East Asia nonproliferation program at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies in California, said any missile-defense deployments in the Asian
theater will alarm the Chinese, particular if they believe the systems are
designed to cover Taiwan. "If you're putting one in southern Japan and one
in the Philippines, you're sort of bracketing Taiwan," Mr. Lewis said.
"So it does look like you're making sure that you can put a missile
defense cap over the Taiwanese."
Mr. Hildreth of the Congressional
Research Service said the U.S. was "laying the foundations" for a
regionwide missile defense system that would combine U.S. ballistic missile
defenses with those of regional powers, particularly Japan, South Korea and
Australia.
U.S. officials say some of these
allies have, until now, resisted sharing real-time intelligence, complicating
U.S. efforts. Territorial disputes between South Korea and Japan have flared
anew in recent weeks, underlining the challenge of creating unified command and
control systems that would be used to shoot down incoming missiles.
The U.S. has faced a similar
problem building an integrated missile-defense system in the Persian Gulf.
Once an X-Band identifies a
missile's trajectory, the U.S. can deploy ship-or-land-based missile
interceptors or antimissile systems.
The Navy has drawn up plans to
expand its fleet of ballistic missile-defense-capable warships from 26 ships
today to 36 by 2018, according to Navy officials and the Congressional Research
Service. Officials said as many as 60% of those are likely to be deployed to
Asia and the Pacific.
In addition, the U.S. Army is
considering acquiring additional Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD,
antimissile systems, said a senior defense official. Under current plans, the
Army is building six THAADs.
—Jeremy Page, Kersten Zhang and
Yoli Zhang in Beijing contributed to this article.
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