Thursday, May 8, 2003
Japan studied strike against North Korea to prevent missile attack: Report
Agence France-Presse Tokyo, May 8
Japan has studied the feasibility of carrying out a pre-emptive air attack on a North Korean military base to prevent an imminent missile launch toward its territory, a press report said on Thursday.
The study was made in 1993 by a small group of military and civilian officials at Japan's Defence Agency following North Korea's launch of a Rodong missile into the Sea of Japan, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said. They concluded it was technically difficult to carry out such an attack because the country had no bombers while its most fighters did not have the range for round trips between the two countries, the daily quoted unspecified sources as saying.
A press officer at the agency could not immediately confirm the report. Japan has not conducted any similiar research since, but its capability for overseas military action has advanced with the introduction of AWAC (airborne warning and control systems) radar planes and inflight refueling aircraft, the daily said.
The report was made at a time when Japan is braced for a fresh threat from North Korea which has hinted that it had and was developing nuclear weapons.
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's hawkish defence chief, said in parliament in January that Japan could ask US forces to launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korean missile bases if Pyongyang was preparing to fire missiles at the archipelago.
In 1998, Pyongyang sent shockwaves around the world by test-firing a suspected Taepodong-1 missile, which flew over Japan's main island of Honshu and into the Pacific.
The 1993 launch of a Rodong missile, which has a range of 1,300 kilometres followed the North's testing of crude Scud missiles.
The newspaper noted that the Tokyo government in 1956 stated that it was within the legal definition of self-defence to strike a foreign military base when it is preparing to launch a military attack on Japan. But such an attack has been widely regarded as a taboo issue as Japan's post-World War II constitution bans the use of force in settling international disputes.
The pacifist charter has been interpreted to mean that the country could have forces strictly for defensive purposes which could therefore only respond once an attack was under way.
The 1993 study was "research in concrete terms concerning an attack on enemy territory," the daily quoted one source as saying.
It concluded that Japan's air force could launch limited attacks on North Korea by sending its F-1 or F-4EJ fighter planes equipped with 500-pound bombs or air-to-ship missiles modified for ground attacks, the daily said. But Japanese F-1 pilots would have to eject in the Sea of Japan on the way back from a sortie, while the F-4EJs could only be dispatched and return to one base on Japan's main island because of their short flying range. At the same time, Japan does not yet have hi-tech electronic planes capable of jamming enemy radar to make such a sortie a success.
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