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U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile (photo from U.S. Navy website)
Jiji Press
12:42 JST, February 28, 2023
TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Monday that the government plans to purchase 400 U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles for possible use in the exercise of counterstrike capabilities.
It is the first time for the government to disclose how many Tomahawk missiles it plans to buy. Meanwhile, Kishida avoided mentioning how much per missile the government will spend.
Kishida was responding to a question from Yuichi Goto of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet.
The government clarified the possession of counterstrike capabilities when it revised the country’s three key national security documents late last year.
It plans to deploy the latest Tomahawk model with a range of about 1,600 kilometers in fiscal 2026 to 2027.
At the same committee meeting, Kishida said that the government’s plan to double its budget for policies related to children and child-rearing is not based merely on numerical figures.
The prime minister had said on Feb. 15 that the government was planning to double family-related social spending after it reached 2% of the country’s GDP in fiscal 2020.
The government later explained that it has not yet decided on the basis for the doubling.
