US forces in southern Japan are beefing up surveillance to monitor a possible Chinese ballistic missile test, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun said Tuesday.
The US military had deployed a reconnaissance plane and ship in the Yellow Sea since mid-May for an imminent test-firing of a Dongfeng-31 missile, the conservative daily said, quoting Japanese defense agency sources.
According to US intelligence information, China would test-fire the missile from a military base in Shanxi province to a desert area in Xinjiang Uygur in northwest China, the newspaper said.
The Dongfeng-31 with a 8,000-kilometer (4,960-mile) range was tested in August last year at the same missile base, the defense agency sources were quoted as saying.
Defency Agency director general Tsutomu Kawara told a news conference he was not aware of any ballistic missile test by China, saying he had only heard of the matter from the newspaper.
A spokesman for US forces in Japan was not immediately for comment.
