That would be the sound way to do things, but it's also surprisingly common for arrays for some reason. It also doesn't get checked compile time in Java, although it does throw an exception because the arrays are type-enforced at runtime at least.

This compiles fine:

    class A {}

    class B1 extends A {}
    class B2 extends A {}

    public class MyClass {
        public static void main(String args[]) {
            A[] array = new B1[1];
            array[0] = new B2();
        }
    }