Japan’s Defense Shift With New Submarines and Long-Range Missiles Draws China’s Concern.

Japan’s decision to deploy a medium-range air defense unit on Yonaguni Island has triggered sharp condemnation from China, which accuses Tokyo of escalating regional confrontation. The move fits into Japan’s broader shift toward long-range strike and expanded undersea capabilities, reshaping the balance across the Taiwan region.

According to information published by Reuters, on November 24, 2025, China sharply condemned Japan’s plan to deploy a medium-range surface-to-air missile unit on Yonaguni Island, just 110 km east of Taiwan, accusing Tokyo of deliberately stoking confrontation and warning that right-wing forces are pushing the region toward disaster. The criticism lands as Japan accelerates a broader shift toward long-range strike and undersea warfare, with new submarines, upgraded cruise missiles, and U.S.-made Tomahawks all being woven into a single counterstrike architecture aimed squarely at the first island chain.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

Japan's expanding missile and submarine forces, including Taigei-class boats and long-range Type 12 systems, are reshaping the first island chain and tightening pressure on China, prompting sharp warnings from Beijing as Tokyo positions new air defense units on Yonaguni near Taiwan (Picture source: Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force).

That shift is anchored in Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy and Defense Buildup Program, which openly embraces counterstrike capabilities using standoff weapons to hit military targets on an adversary’s territory if Japan itself comes under attack. Tokyo’s plans include rapid deployment of an improved Type 12 surface-to-ship missile with a range extended from roughly 200 km toward 900 km and beyond, alongside the purchase of up to 400 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles for Aegis destroyers and future Aegis system-equipped vessels. For Beijing, that combination means Chinese bases and naval concentrations along the coast are no longer safely outside Japanese reach.

At sea, the core qualitative change is Japan’s Taigei class of attack submarines. Displacing about 3,000 tons and fitted with large lithium-ion battery banks, Taigei boats can remain submerged longer at higher speeds than traditional diesel-electric designs while drastically reducing acoustic signatures, especially during low-speed patrols. Each submarine mounts six 533 mm HU-606 torpedo tubes capable of firing the new Type 18 heavyweight torpedo, a successor to the Type 89 with improved propulsion and guidance, as well as UGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and, in the next phase, a domestically developed submarine-launched cruise missile derived from the Type 12 family.

From a tactical perspective, that turns the Taigei force into a stealthy, mobile firing line that can sit astride the Luzon Strait, the Miyako Strait, or deeper in the Philippine Sea astride and launch standoff strikes against Chinese surface groups or coastal nodes without ever exposing itself inside the dense PLA anti-submarine envelope of the East China Sea. PLA Navy carrier groups and amphibious task forces leaving the East China Sea to operate east of Taiwan already squeeze through a handful of predictable deep-water corridors. In a crisis, the review of open-source bathymetric charts suggests these same corridors would become prime Japanese submarine hunting grounds, forcing China either to accept higher attrition risk or to divert scarce escorts and ASW aircraft away from offensive tasks to convoy protection.

The upgraded Type 12 missile family is the second pillar of this evolving kill web. The improved ground-launched Type 12, sometimes dubbed Type 12 Kai, carries a 700 kg-class missile with inertial and GPS guidance, terrain contour matching, and a Ka-band AESA seeker for terminal homing. Its redesigned low-observable body and extended range, now publicly targeted at at least 900 km and potentially up to 1,200 km, allow dispersed launchers on Kyushu or the Nansei islands to threaten Chinese warships across much of the East China Sea and, in land-attack mode, selected coastal infrastructure. Networked targeting lets the missile receive mid-course updates from other sensors, including maritime patrol aircraft and surface ships, complicating PLA efforts to break the kill chain simply by jamming one link.

Yonaguni Island is the forward tripwire of this architecture. The new deployment is built around the Type 03 Chu-SAM medium-range air defense system, which uses truck-mounted launchers tied to an AESA fire control radar able to track roughly 100 targets and engage about 12 simultaneously. Each missile weighs around 570 kg, accelerates to about Mach 2.5, and can intercept aircraft or cruise missiles out to 50 km and up to around 10 km in altitude, creating a compact but potent protective bubble over the island’s existing radar site and electronic warfare unit. From Beijing’s viewpoint, that means Japanese sensors and interceptors are now sitting almost inside the Taiwan Strait approaches, directly overlooking key air and sea routes Chinese forces would use in any operation against Taiwan.

Layered on top of this are the future Tomahawk batteries embarked on Japanese Aegis destroyers and ASEV hulls. Tomahawks in Block IV and Block V variants give Japan precision land-attack options at ranges of around 1,600 km, filling the gap until the longest-range indigenous cruise missiles mature. Chinese analysts writing in state media and regional think tanks have warned that, taken together, Taigei-class submarines, Type 12 variants, Tomahawks, and Chu-SAM on Yonaguni are turning the first island chain into what some describe as a continuous counterstrike belt that could fracture longstanding PLA assumptions about seizing the initiative in a Taiwan scenario.

For PLA planners, the military concern is straightforward: a navy built to push through the Miyako and Bashi channels into the Philippine Sea now faces hostile submarines sitting outside its main sensor range, coastal batteries that can target ships long before they close with Japan, and air defense nodes that protect those launchers at the very front line. To restore freedom of maneuver, China would need to invest heavily in blue-water anti-submarine warfare, distributed logistics, and long-range counter-battery strikes against hard-to-find mobile launchers across Japan’s southwest islands. That is a far more demanding problem than dealing with the largely defensive, short-range posture Tokyo maintained only a decade ago.

In strategic terms, Japan’s evolving armada turns any Taiwan conflict from a primarily Sino-American contest into a triangular one in which Japanese forces can independently threaten Chinese assets across the theater. The key point is that these are not abstract policy shifts but concrete systems with specific ranges, seekers, and launch platforms that directly constrain PLA options. The more credible Japan’s undersea and missile forces become, the higher the cost for Beijing of using force against Taiwan or Japan’s own islands, and the more intense the undersea and missile duel along the first island chain is likely to be if deterrence ever fails.