Japan’s Ministry of Defense announced on Sept. 29, 2025, that the Aegis destroyer JS Chōkai completed a dummy Tomahawk loading drill in Yokosuka and will head to the United States for roughly a year of shipyard modifications and crew training to integrate Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. The move represents the first operational step toward putting U.S.-made Tomahawks aboard Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force surface combatants and sets a model for how the fleet will assume a new long-range strike role. The Chōkai is expected to return in 2026 with an upgraded combat system, certified strike crews, and magazines configured to carry theater-range precision weapons.
As a Kongō-class Aegis destroyer, Chōkai displaces roughly 9,000–9,500 tons and is built around an AN/SPY-1D radar and an Aegis combat system. Crucially, the ship already has strike-length Mk 41 vertical launch cells, enabling rapid Tomahawk integration without major structural change. The yard period will therefore focus on software updates, safety cases, handling procedures, and mission-planning integration rather than new launcher hardware. Training in the United States will certify crews in canister handling, crane operations, safe magazine loading, targeting, mission planning, and Tomahawk’s two-way datalink-enabled in-flight retasking.
Embedding Tomahawks turns Chōkai from a high-end air- and missile-defense escort into a distributed fires node capable of holding airfields, logistics hubs, and missile sites at risk well beyond coastal-defense envelopes. Each Tomahawk canister occupies a cell that might otherwise carry SM-2, SM-3, or ASROC, so commanders will tailor loadouts—surging strike capability in crisis while preserving defensive inventories for BMD duties.
Chōkai’s conversion is the first tangible outcome of Japan’s 2022 counterstrike policy and its multiyear defense spending push. In a region marked by North Korean missile tests and China’s growing anti-access networks around Taiwan and the Ryukyus, equipping surface combatants with theater-range strike increases deterrence and complicates adversary planning. The initiative also deepens operational ties with the U.S. Navy on targeting, training, and sustainment. If Chōkai succeeds as a pathfinder, follow-on work across Kongō, Atago, and Maya classes could rapidly transform Japan’s Aegis force from a predominantly defensive shield into a fleet capable of both protection and long-range precision fires.
