Posted on 08/29/2014 9:03:41 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Japan’s defense planners are seeking their biggest budget ever for the coming fiscal year to pay for stealth fighters, drones and a hi-tech submarine, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bolsters the military amid an intensifying rivalry with China.
The Defense Ministry on Friday requested a 3.5% increase to 5.05 trillion yen for the year starting next April. If approved, this third increase in a row will more than reverse the decade of cuts that Abe ended after coming to office in December 2012.
Abe, taking a more assertive stance on national security, has also ended a ban on Japanese soldiers fighting abroad and eased curbs on weapons exports.
By testing the constraints of Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution, Abe has angered some neighbors, especially Beijing, which accuses him of reviving the nation’s wartime militarism.
Japan, in turn, is wary of the rapid military buildup in China, which has overtaken Japan in recent years as the world’s second-biggest economy. Beijing’s military budget has jumped fourfold over the past decade to 808 billion yuan ($132 billion), nearly triple Japan’s.
In recent years, Sino-Japanese tensions have ramped up over the ownership of a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea. Patrol ships and military planes from both countries now routinely shadow each other in the area.
In an bid to better protect remote islands, Japan’s Defense Ministry wants to buy six F-35 stealth fighters from Lockheed Martin Corp as well as 20 P-1 patrol planes from Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd - a bulk purchase to cut per-unit cost.
The government says procurement reform, including bulk purchases for multi-year projects, will save 700 billion yen over five years.
In another request meant to patrol the waters plied by China, the ministry is seeking 64.4 billion yen for an upgraded Soryu class submarine that can stay submerged far longer than the boat of the same class it requested for this fiscal year for 20% less.
The new sub has a propulsion system using long-running lithium-ion batteries, replacing one that used liquid oxygen to run a diesel engine, allowing it to stay underwater for around two weeks. The new design allows a “significant extension to the submarine’s ability to stay submerged,” said a ministry official.
Australia has said it is interested in the Soryu design as a possible replacement for its Collins class subs, which need to suck air through a snorkel at the surface when they use their diesel engines while submerged.
Japan’s shopping list also includes unmanned surveillance planes and tilt-rotor aircraft that take off and land like a helicopter but fly like a plane, as Japan aims to boost its monitoring and troop-deployment capabilities.
The ministry does not specify which models of tilt-rotor aircraft and unmanned drones it has in mind because talks with potential suppliers are still going on, but the V-22 Osprey, built by Boeing Co and Bell Helicopter, is the only tilt-rotor plane in military use - including by U.S. forces in Japan.
Besides the cutting-edge weapons, the budget request is boosted by the planned replacement of aging government planes, used for purposes like the prime minister’s overseas trips - akin to the U.S. president’s Air Force One - with two of Boeing’s 777-300ER jets.
When expenses for the new government planes and costs associated with the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan are excluded, the budget request comes to 4.9 trillion yen, up 2.4% from this year.
The Defense Ministry is also eying North Korea, seeking its seventh destroyer equipped with the Aegis ballistic-missile defense system.
“We will fortify our system of defending the whole of our country continuously and in a multi-layered fashion against ballistic missile attacks,” the ministry said in a statement.
Much of the Japanese archipelago sits within the range of North Korea’s mid-range Rodong missiles. The ministry’s latest white paper calls Pyongyang’s military activity a grave destabilising factor for Japan and the rest of the world.
The submission of the initial budget request will be followed by a series of negotiations between the Defense and Finance ministries ahead of the compilation of the government’s budget bill at the end of the year.
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Beef up your arms industry and put that huge population of bored young people to work.
It is far past time for Japan to have a real military again.
Toyko saw how the U.S. backed off an earlier agreement to come to the Ukraine's defense if they were attacked in return for giving up nukes.
They see the aggressive stance Beijing takes in the South China Sea regarding the disputed islands. And I'll bet Beijing will make a move on Taiwan before obama’s term is up.
I don't blame Japan one bit.
Toyko saw how the U.S. backed off an earlier agreement to come to the Ukraine's defense if they were attacked in return for giving up nukes.
They see the aggressive stance Beijing takes in the South China Sea regarding the disputed islands. And I'll bet Beijing will make a move on Taiwan before obama’s term is up.
I don't blame Japan one bit.
Interesting when Defense expenditures are thrown around, especially when converted to US Dollars so we can understand equivalency better....Uh Hm
The cost of labor in US dollars is far less in China than Japan or the US.
We have already exported (in a liberal use of the word exported) good technology to China.
When I was young we used to laugh at products “Made in Japan” as substandard.....they were.....for a while
If I were them I’d develop some nukes.
Russia and Japan postured quite interestingly 110 years ago in the Sino - Russo War.
Didn’t turn out too well for Russia
I say let them return to putting pagoda masts back on their capital ships.
Even if true, what's wrong with Japan carrying a larger part of their defense load? The article is right; China is becoming more aggressive. So instead of Japan beefing up her military you would rather let her maintain the same level and have us beef up our military in the area instead?
Given their technological and scientific resources I doubt it would take very long at all for them to make some. If they haven't done so already.
I think you're right. I would if I were them.
“Even if true, what’s wrong with Japan carrying a larger part of their defense load?”
>>Nothing at all, in my estimation.<<
“So instead of Japan beefing up her military you would rather let her maintain the same level and have us beef up our military in the area instead?”
>>No. It was not my intention to imply that if I did. My understanding is we had agreements with Japan after WWII that they never again have a war machine (offensive weapons) and we will establish a couple of bases on the island and also in the Phillipeans, to deter aggression in addition to coming to their aid if ever threatened.
It’s not what I would rather see personally, but we did have an agreement. Further, our military presence is not all about Japan. We want a presence in that area of the world (according to both Bush’s) for strategic reasons. And also Australia is deemed important strategically to have as an ally.
Back to my point - Japan is justified in ramping up their military if for no other reason than the US can no longer be relied upon.
That’s Philippines.
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