According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency on the 22nd, Japan revised the "Three Principles for the Transfer of Defense Equipment" and its application guidelines on the same day, and decided to provide the United States with "Patriot" air defense missiles made in Japan.
Recently, a number of U.S. and Japanese ** reports that Japan plans to revise relevant documents and export lethal equipment to the outside world for the first time. Japanese media said that before Japan, it was only possible to manufacture parts and components of "Patriot" air defense missiles under a license, and this revision will allow Japanese contractors to export finished defense equipment to countries with manufacturing licenses. Japan's "Mainichi Shimbun" said on 19 August that the ability to export "Patriot" missiles to the United States in the future will be a major change in Japan's defense equipment transfer policy.
The "Patriot" family is the third generation of medium- and long-range medium- and high-altitude anti-aircraft missile systems of the US Army. Among them, the "Patriot-3" was developed by the US company Raytheon, and each launch vehicle can be equipped with four sets of launchers, each group is equipped with four missiles, and the maximum range is about 20 kilometers when performing anti-missile interception operations. At present, the "Patriot-2" and "Patriot-3" surface-to-air interceptor missiles, as well as their semi-trailers and launchers, are all produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which has obtained US licenses, and other Japanese enterprises. (Reporter Lin Bohan).