Japanese → English transcript

We have a model of the Type 10 tank here. According to the Ground Self-Defense Force, the Type 10 tank is…

a domestically produced, state-of-the-art tank, and mass production has been underway since 2010. Because production began in 2010, they took the “ten” from that year for the name “Type 10 tank.”

Its actual size is like this. It would pretty much fill the entire width of this studio.

Its overall length is about 9.5 meters, and it weighs about 44 tons. In addition to the main gun, it is equipped with a machine gun and other weapons.

A tank is broadly divided into two parts: the lower hull section, and then the upper section called the turret, which is the part that moves.

It is divided into these two, and the shell is fired from the gun barrel here that extends forward from the front of the tank.

In this incident, an accident occurred inside this turret section. Normally, the crew is three people, with the commander in charge positioned in the upper section,

the tank commander and the gunner who does the firing, and in the lower section the driver who operates the tank, making three crew members in total.

Could you walk us back through what the Ground Self-Defense Force said at today’s press conference about this accident? Yes, regarding the contents of the press conference, they said that they were conducting live-fire training using real ammunition, and also that

because this was training, a safety officer was also on board to check the training procedures and so on.

Due to the explosion, the three on top—the tank commander, the gunner, and the safety officer—were killed, and the driver in the lower section was injured.

They said the three who died had each undergone a certain level of training. They also stated that they are not aware of any similar accidents in the past.

In addition, they said the cause of the explosion and whether there were any problems in the maintenance process are under investigation. As for this Type 10 tank, how does the mechanism for firing shells work, starting from the basics?

We spoke with Katsuki Takata, a former Ground Self-Defense Force officer who has served in posts including commander of the Ground Component Command.

First, under normal circumstances, when a shell is fired from the Type 10 tank, the shell is automatically loaded, and after loading, the breechblock, which is the door that seals in the shell…

This also closes automatically, and at the same time as you press the fire button, an electrical signal is sent and the shell is fired, as you can see.

In other words, this mechanism is designed so that you cannot fire unless the breech block is completely closed.

According to Mr. Takada, a malfunction of this breech block is also hard to imagine. At this point, there is very little material with which we can even try to infer the cause.

However, even so, Mr. Takada was focusing on causes and phenomena that occur only extremely rarely.

The probability is extremely low, but he says it might be related to what is called a misfire.

It is not a term we hear very often, but a “misfire” here refers to cases where the shell is fired with a delay, or does not fire at all.

That is the kind of phenomenon we are talking about. To explain what this means, we will look at this simplified model.

Now, the shell is automatically—although I am doing it manually here—automatically loaded like this, and the breech block also automatically closes like this, and then it is fired, as you saw earlier.

However, according to Mr. Takada, if the shell is not fired immediately, in that case the rule is to wait for a certain period of time.

He says there are cases where it fires after a delay, but if it still does not fire after that,

the personnel will manually open this breech block and remove the shell in a procedure called dud removal.

Misfires are said to be extremely rare, but if one did occur, what kind of danger might the person be exposed to?

Mr. Takada stresses that this is only one possible scenario, but if a misfire occurs, the personnel will have to open this breech block, and

he says that when they tried to remove this shell, some kind of trouble may have occurred.

For example, one possibility is that after opening the door, this shell exploded inside the policy room.

And another possibility considered was that when the shell was being taken out, some kind of trouble occurred and it exploded.

However, Mr. Takada himself also said from experience that the probability is extremely low. He also said it was a very regrettable accident and that he wants a careful investigation of the cause and measures to prevent a recurrence.

That is what he said. The Self-Defense Forces say they are proceeding with an investigation into the cause of the explosion.