Until recently, Tokyo relied fully on its anti-missile shield, and in particular on its 8 AEGIS Kongo, Atago and Maya class heavy destroyers, to neutralize the ballistic threat coming from North Korea. But the performance demonstrated in recent months of Pyongyang's technology, whether it is semi-ballistic trajectory missiles capable of moving under the floor of anti-ballistic systems, or some new systems with hypersonic gliders, have largely undermined these certainties, to the point of leading the Japanese authorities to consider options that until now were not even imagined. On October 23, at the follow-up to the latest SLBM tactical missile test by Pyongyang, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has publicly stated that now, Tokyo would consider all options to neutralize this threat.
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