The United States plans to send two more missile defence warships to Japan to counter the threat posed by North Korea's "provocative" actions, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said Sunday. "In response to Pyongyang's pattern of provocative and destabilizing actions, including recent missile launches in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, I can announce today that the United States is planning to forward-deploy two additional AEGIS ballistic missile defence ships to Japan by 2017," Hagel told a joint news conference in Tokyo after talks with his Japanese counterpart, Itsunori Onodera.