Wednesday security links:
In an interview with Defense News, Satoshi Morimoto, Japan’s former defense minister, warned that the country’s plans to procure 42 F-35 fighter jets by 2021 could be delayed by two years due to the devaluation of the yen. Tokyo had plans to import for the first four JSFs by 2017 and locally assemble the remaining 38.
In other F-35 news, the House Armed Services Committee in the U.S. Congress rejected an amendment that would have frozen funding for the JSF program for the 2014 defense budget.
In further F-35 news, Breaking Defense reports that U.S. Air Force’s version fired its first in-flight air-to-air missile and its concurrency cost estimates dropped by the negligible figure of US$500 million.
Meanwhile, in non-F-35 news, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin announced on Tuesday that his country will have a “pre-emptive missile destruction system by 2020” to guard against threats posed by North Korea. The system will detect signs of an impending missile launches, allowing Seoul to take pre-emptive action to destroy the missiles. This is consistent with South Korea’s “active deterrence” military doctrine, which Kim unveiled earlier this year.
Foreign Policy's John Reed provides a slideshow of what some believe is China's new stealth bomber design.
In a new report, the Center for a New American Security examines the rise of bilateral security ties in Asia between countries not named China or the United States.
The U.S. Congressional committee, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, has a new backgrounder examining the implications of Taiwan’s declining defense spending.
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