It just got a little bit harder for China to try and take Taiwan or impose its will in the western Pacific. That’s because Japan just moved a battery of its new Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles to Okinawa.
Ryukyu Shimpo, a media outlet in Japan, reported the country’s Self Defense Force, the official name of the Japanese military, moved the components for the Type 12 missile unit to the island in mid-March. It’s the first time there’s been an anti-ship missile unit on Okinawa, and the Type 12 is certainly a great weapon system to mark the occasion.
Japan test fired the new missile off Australia’s east coast last year during Talisman Sabre. The upgraded surface-to-ship missile is longer, features a modified shape and boasts increased engine endurance. The Type 12 also got an upgrade to its command link. So, it can get target updates while in flight. That’s handy against ships, which don’t exactly sit still waiting to be sunk.
One of the greatest upgrades on the Type 12 is its new range. Initially Type 12s were only effective to about 100 kilometers. Now, they’re good to about 1,000 kilometers, and that’s why putting them on Okinawa means so much, because it’s a critical chokepoint in what’s known as the first island chain.
So, let’s go ahead and break down that first island chain (FIC) and talk about why it’s so important. It starts up in the northern part of the Japanese archipelago, and then it extends southward to include Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Okinawa is right about the middle of the FIC. How far, you might ask yourself, is Okinawa from mainland China? That’s a distance of 723 kilometers. For those who were paying attention earlier, you might remember that the Type 12 missile has a range now of 1,000 kilometers.
So, from Okinawa, the Japanese Self Defense Force could, in theory, hit targets within mainland China. Now, these are anti-ship missiles. So, it is unknown if they have the technology necessarily to target land-based objects. But it should help deter the People’s Liberation Army Navy from trying to attack past the first island chain.
Also, this is a good time to tell you, readers, about the two F-35s that just landed in Brunei. The two jets are assigned to Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska but operated from Brunei’s Rimba air base during a visit from a Pentagon official. The occasion is further proof of the U.S. strengthening alliances in the Indo-Pacific region (INDOPACOM).
So, in addition to the Japanese Type 12s in Okinawa (and probably elsewhere), we have the U.S. Air Force landing F-35s in Brunei, the Air Force and Marines in the Philippines, and we also know that the Marine Corps and the Air Force are going to be populating many of these small little remote islands, littoral locations, with forces. “ACE” is the name of the initiative in the Air Force, or Agile Combat Employment. The Marines used to call it Force Design 2030. Now, they’ve kind of gotten rid of the “2030” part. But all of that is in addition to the 30,000 troops the U.S. already has stationed in Okinawa.
So, what the U.S. has done with the partnerships that it’s created with its allies, is essentially create a steel maritime curtain across this entire region of the first island chain. And they do that to keep the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) locked in within that first island chain.
The PLAN has the world’s largest navy, but that is only by hull number, not necessarily by mass. And the vast majority of the vessels in the PLAN are not blue water ships. The Chinese navy is not a blue water navy. What does that mean? They can’t sail in the wide-open ocean like the U.S. fleet can.
The world’s foremost fleet in maritime open ocean navigation is, by far, the United States Navy, and the PLAN just doesn’t have the capacity to compete with the U.S. Navy in the open ocean. Which is why so much focus is put on keeping the PLAN locked into that first island chain, to deter it from wanting to become a blue water fleet, and prevent the PLAN from being aggressive on the open ocean, where more maritime assets might be put at risk.