Japan reveals plans for military build-up
Print Edition
Japan will set up a new amphibious military unit and deploy unarmed surveillance drones in its southwest, where it faces a row with China over the Diaoyu Islands, according to drafts of the nation’s latest defense plans.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the defense policy review after returning to office last December, pledging to strengthen the military and boost Japan’s global security role.
The new defense guideline and military build-up plan will be approved by the government next week.
Drafts of the two plans were made available at a meeting of ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and shown to reporters. Final versions of the defense guideline, which lays out Japan’s defense policy for the next 10 years, and the build-up plan, called the mid-term defense program and covering a five-year period, will be unveiled next Tuesday.
Citing Japan’s concerns about what it calls China’s attempts to “change the status quo with force,” the guideline says Japan will “respond calmly and resolutely to the rapid expansion and step-up of China’s maritime and air activities.”
Japan plans to set up an amphibious unit designed to take back the remote islands in case of “invasion” and boost the number of fighter jet squadrons at its Naha base on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa to two from one to maintain air superiority. One squadron usually consists of 20 fighter jets.
It also plans to procure unmanned surveillance planes and establish a unit of E-2C early warning aircraft at the Naha base.
E-2Cs, routinely used to keep watch in the area surrounding the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, are currently based in northern Japan’s Misawa base.
Japan will also bolster its overall capability to respond to missile attacks in the face of improvement in North Korea’s ballistic missile technology.
But it stopped short of a call to acquire the capability to strike enemy targets — a controversial and costly step that would further stretch what Japan dubs its “purely defensive” defence posture allowed under decades-old interpretations of its post-World War II pacifist constitution.
Japan’s concerns over a rising China and unpredictable North Korea were also echoed in a new national security strategy, a draft of which was also made available.
The draft calls for “cultivating love of country” and expanding “security education” in institutions of higher learning.
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