Japan’s new air defense system spotted near Tokyo

A military truck with no unit markings, seen on a highway outside Tokyo this week, may be the first public sighting of Japan’s new short-range air defense missile system, according to Japanese military enthusiasts on social media.

A user who posts as 柚子 (@RJR114C) wrote on Thursday that they had recently passed a Ground Self-Defense Force High Mobility Vehicle “with no unit markings” while driving on Route 246, the highway running from central Tokyo toward Shizuoka Prefecture. “The plate number is 04, so maybe it’s guided weapons?” the user asked. The post had been viewed more than 48,000 times by Friday.

Another account, ベータ (@mod04tk24509), which regularly posts about Japanese military equipment, identified the vehicle as the new system the Defense Ministry calls Shin-Kin SAM, short for “new close-range surface-to-air missile.”

“New Kin-SAM! It’s finally been spotted,” the account wrote. It said the vehicle appeared to match the ministry’s concept drawing, with what looks like an independently rotating search and aiming unit in the middle of the launcher, but added that whether the vehicle carries a machine gun “is still unclear.”

The ministry’s concept drawing shows a Toyota-built High Mobility Vehicle, the Japanese army’s standard light truck, carrying four box-shaped missile canisters in two pairs around a central sensor turret. Visually, the new turret, with its missiles and sensor, looks considerably larger than the launcher on the Type 93, which rides on the same vehicle.

JGSDF Type 93 Surface-to-air missile system. Photo by Los688

Japan began developing the system in fiscal 2022 to replace the Type 93 close-range SAM, known in Japan as Kin-SAM, which has guarded army units since 1993. The Type 93 mounts eight short-range, heat-seeking Type 91 missiles on the same kind of vehicle, and its crews trained with it this year at ranges in Hokkaido and Aomori.

According to a 2021 Defense Ministry document, the new system reuses the missile and launcher from an upgraded base air defense missile being developed for the Air Self-Defense Force, and is designed to be highly mobile and able to take on “various aerial threats, including cruise missiles.” The ministry said it found no domestic or foreign system that met its range and vehicle-mounting requirements at an acceptable cost.

The ministry estimated the new system’s lifecycle cost at about ¥75.7 billion, not counting the missiles.