Japan hosts multinational drills to intercept weapons at sea
Japanese navy sailors in a speedboat raced to a simulated suspicious boat while aircraft watched from the sky in a multinational exercise Wednesday off Tokyo’s southern coast to practice intercepting weapons of mass destruction at sea.
Destroyers and surveillance aircraft, as well as coast guard ships from Japan, the U.S., South Korea and Australia, participated in the exercise, part of the Proliferation Security Initiative.
Journalists observed from the Japanese destroyer Murasame.
Wednesday’s “Pacific Shield 18” exercise off the coast of the Boso Peninsula, southeast of Tokyo, simulated the halting of ships suspected of carrying materials related to weapons of mass destruction to conduct inventory checks.