Japan plans to build additional fuel and munitions depots on the Nansei Islands, also known as the Ryukyu Islands, in case the “Taiwan problem” becomes a reality, Japanese Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada told the Nikkei Shimbun on Tuesday.
“We will radically strengthen the defense capabilities, including our capacity for sustained and flexible deployment,” he said.
Hamada said the first step toward realizing that goal would be the construction of new munitions depots for the Japan Self-Defense Forces on Amami Oshima, which lies about 800km to the northeast of Taiwan proper, between Kyushu and Okinawa.
Photo: Reuters
Establishing forward fuel and munitions depots would allow Japan to better support US military operations should a conflict break out in the Taiwan Strait, the newspaper said.
More than 70 percent of the country’s munitions are stored in Hokkaido Prefecture, 2,000km from Taiwan, leaving Self-Defense Forces stationed on Honshu, Japan’s main island, with only two months of munitions, Hamada said.
Forces stationed in Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands have on hand only 10 percent of the munitions allotted to them, the Nikkei Shimbun said.
In the event of an emergency, the Self-Defense Forces might lack transport capability to ferry munitions from Hokkaido to areas of conflict, it said.
Tokyo is also not ruling out deploying standoff missiles on Amami, Hamada said.
Building new depots is not only aimed at increasing the mobility of the Self-Defense Forces, but also stepping up the rate at which munitions and fuel are transported to the front lines, he said.
Japan has five months of oil reserves, but if the fuel cannot be delivered to the front lines, the country’s forces would be unable to operate, he added.
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