The United States and Japan are expected to announce an agreement this week to jointly develop missile interceptors capable of shooting down hypersonic weapons from China, Russia and North Korea.
Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister, will meet in Washington DC on Friday, where a deal is likely to be discussed.
The pair will meet on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, at Camp David, according to a Sunday report in Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper.
Washington and Tokyo agreed in January 2022 to work more closely in the research and development of defence technologies, including ways to counter hypersonic missiles.
Hypersonic missiles have the advantages of fast flight – travelling at five times the speed of sound or more. But their key features are their increased manoeuvrability, and their ability to fly at lower altitudes than ballistic missiles, making it difficult to track and counter them. Interceptors would need to fly long distances at high speeds and be able to change direction to respond to changes in a hypersonic weapon’s flight path.
China is thought to be ahead of the US in developing hypersonics, while Russia has also demonstrated its arsenal in Ukraine, striking Kyiv just last week.