The United States and Japan will join forces to protect against hypersonic and space-based weapons

 

 The United States and Japan will join forces to develop protection against hypersonic missiles and space-based weapons, the two said in a joint statement on Friday, quoted by The Times.

Following an online meeting between the two countries' defense and foreign ministers, they agreed to work more closely together to develop military technology and condemned "China's efforts to undermine the rule of law."

Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said: "Our allies must not only strengthen the tools we have, but also develop new ones.

 North Korea was testing a weapon Wednesday that it claims was a hypersonic missile and that the national news agency said it had hit a target directly more than 400 miles away. Hypersonic missiles - those that can fly five times faster than the speed of sound - pose a greater threat than their ballistic counterparts because they can travel faster and at lower altitudes, making them more difficult to intercept.

But despite the fact that the North Korean missile was launched into Japan's territorial waters, the main concern of Tokyo and Washington is the increasingly assertive China.

 Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, said of the talks: "We are facing tensions and challenges to the free, stable and secure Indo-Pacific region that we want both sides - challenges posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions and from the coercive and aggressive behavior of the People's Republic of China.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said it "regrets" the statements made by the United States and Japan and will issue formal objections to both sides.

 Japan has also agreed to host the US military for another five years and increase its contribution to its spending by about 5 percent to $ 1.8 billion a year. There are more than 50,000 US troops in the Asian Empire, stationed at dozens of bases across the country, many of them based on the Okinawa Islands, Japan's closest point to China.

 In recent weeks, there have been outbreaks of coronavirus at US bases in Japan that have spread to surrounding communities. Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan's foreign minister, asked his US counterpart during the meeting to restrict the movement of personnel outside the bases and demanded that they be required to wear masks when leaving the perimeter.