Japan Arms Cargo Planes With Missiles & Bombs to Counter China

By Logan Williams, Warrior Contributor

Japan is frantically attempting to build-up its military in the face of escalating conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the “South China Sea.” For example, Japan has recently retrofitted a helicopter destroyer, the JS Kaga, transforming it into an amphibious assault ship capable of carrying the F-35B variant stealth fighter.

However, Japan’s adaptations don’t end with the JS Kaga.

The Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces are working on converting its C-130 and C-2 cargo planes into missile/bomb carriers, capable of launching an effective strike against hostile targets within the Indo-Pacific. This is a direct contravention of the post-World War Two paradigm, in which the outdated Article Nine of the Constitution of Japan forbids the island nation from engaging in offensive warfare, possessing offensive weapons, and establishing a standing military. Bombers are one particular piece of equipment which has traditionally been viewed as a taboo, since they can only serve an offensive purpose, and thus, are ostensibly forbidden for Japan to possess.

It is likely that Japan will complete the necessary modifications of their cargo planes with the help of U.S. technology.

In December of 2019, the United States’ defense apparatus began research on a program called “Rapid Dragon,” which attempted to design a mechanism through which traditional cargo planes can be used to deliver “roll-on, roll-off,” palletized cruise missiles, striking a hostile target. This functionality can enable the delivery of an overwhelming mass of missiles at one time, potentially overburdening air/missile defense systems, and enabling the deep penetration of enemies’ anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. The “Rapid Dragon” Palletized Munition Deployment System, as it is called, entered the testing phase two years after the project’s inception, with its first live-fire test occurring in December of 2021.

Presently, “Rapid Dragon” is capable of deploying cruise missiles from the AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) family, however, it is expected to be outfitted to achieve a launch functionality with other munitions, soon. Most notably, for example, the Palletized Munition Deployment System is expected to be made compatible with the deployment of the Joint Direct Attack Munition GBU (JDAM) munitions, another cost-effective adaptation that could only be said to punch above its weight, and which drastically increased the effectiveness and strike capacity of the U.S. military. A JDAM is a piece of “bolt-on” technology that transforms an unguided, gravity-based, “dumb-bomb,” into a GPS-precision-guided, propulsed, extended-range modern munition. JDAM functionality would greatly enhance the usefulness of the capabilities offered by the “Rapid Dragon” technology, because the present munition utilized by “Rapid Dragon,” the AGM-158 JASSM, has a unit cost ranging from $850,000 to $1.5 million and the U.S. military only possesses a couple thousand of these munitions — whereas, the unit cost for a JDAM kit to convert a “dumb bomb” already in the possession of the U.S. military doesn’t rise above $20,000, and the U.S. already owns well over 200,000 JDAMs.

A profile in Popular Mechanics described the function of the “Rapid Dragon” the best, as follows…