At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lisbon, Portugal in November, the 28-member military bloc endorsed U.S. plans to place the European continent under an American-dominated interceptor missile shield.
The SM-3 is the interceptor missile heart of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System developed by the Pentagon, which has as its only partner to date the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.
In 2007, 2008 and again in October of last year Japanese Aegis class warships launched SM-3s in tests run from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii. In the most recent test, the recently upgraded JDS Kirishima guided missile destroyer fired an SM-3 100 miles over the Pacific to destroy a ballistic missile target, a "significant milestone in the growing cooperation between Japan and the U.S. in the area of missile defense." [20]
Tokyo's new National Defense Program Guidelines mandate equipping all six of its Aegis class warships with SM-3s as observed earlier.
JDS Kirishima Aegis class destroyer
In addition to rendering the U.S. services for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Japan is also planning to become the first non-NATO nation to join the Pentagon in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti by opening its first overseas military base since World War Two. [21]
Japan's military partnership with the U.S. will include joint endeavors in three continents -" Asia, Europe and Africa -" and the Middle East and the Arabian Sea.
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