MISSILE DEFENSE ARC BEING CREATED ACROSS ASIA-PACIFIC

As part of Obama's recent announcement about expanding "missile defense" (MD) systems in Alaska, along with studies to determine a possible site for an East Coast base in the US, the Pentagon also announced a second MD X-band radar would go into Japan.

The US military uses X-band radars to precisely track the trajectory of an "enemy" ballistic missile, allowing its forces to launch Army ground-based (PAC-3) and Navy sea-based (SM-3) interceptors as soon as a missile is detected.

The Kyogamisaki base in Japan, on the Sea of Japan coast, has been selected as the site to deploy the second radar unit.

While the US claims that its MD program is aimed at North Korea's tiny nuclear program, the growing numbers of systems now being deployed in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Okinawa (and the direction they point) indicate they are in actuality being used against China.

Some reports have indicated that the Pentagon is also considering plans to deploy a third radar somewhere else in the region like the Philippines to create an “arc” across East Asia to bolster MD capabilities.