The Japanese Ministry of Defense is requesting a nearly 12 percent budget increase that includes two warships with advanced radar and long-range cruise missiles as it further fortifies the nation’s military in the face of North Korean threats and Chinese military advancement.
The record ￥7.7 trillion (US$52.8 billion) request for the 2024 fiscal year marks the second year of a rapid five-year military buildup under a new security strategy Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government adopted in December last year. It focuses on reinforcing strike capability in a break from Japan’s post-war principle of having a military only for self-defense.
Under the five-year plan, Japan plans to spend ￥43 trillion through 2027 to nearly double its annual spending to about ￥10 trillion, making it the world’s third-biggest spender after the US and China. How to finance and justify the growing military spending is uncertain in a country with steeply declining births and increasing costs of caring for its aged population.
Photo: AP
The budget request was approved at the defense ministry’s meeting yesterday and submitted to the Ministry of Finance for negotiations.
The request includes a hefty ￥490 billion to start building two Aegis-radar equipped warships that would be deployed in 2027 and 2028, as well as for training, testing and other costs related to the ships.
The warships, each carrying 240 crew members, would be designed to fire long-range cruise missiles, including US-made Tomahawks and a modified version of the domestically made Type-12 surface-to-ship missile, planned for deployment in 2032 to serve as something of a floating missile base.
The warships would have SPY-7 radar that could locate harder-to-detect missile launches, including those on a high-arch trajectory. North Korea has often test-fired missiles at a high angle to avoid neighboring countries. Japan earlier had ordered the SPY-7 for land use, but was forced to scrap the plan due to safety concerns in the regions that would host them.
Japan is spending ￥321 billion this year to buy 400 Tomahawks for deployment in 2026-2027 and is retrofitting existing destroyers to carry them.
In the 2024 budget request, the defense ministry is seeking ￥755 billion to develop and acquire “standoff” capability to strike distant targets, especially for the defense of Japan’s southwestern islands, the area feared to become the front line in case of a Taiwan emergency. The ministry requested about ￥80 billion for the development and production of hypersonic guided missiles.
For overall missile defense, the ministry is requesting ￥1.27 trillion for spending that includes the Aegis-equipped warships. The ministry is also seeking ￥75 billion for joint development of glide-phase interceptors with the US to be deployed around 2030 to counter hypersonic missiles being developed by China, North Korea and Russia.
The Japanese government is preparing to ease its arms transfer policy, which currently bans export of lethal weapons, to allow some of them. Due to the need for developing and producing defense equipment at home, the ministry is seeking to strengthen Japan’s feeble defense industry and is adding 540 new staff for equipment development.
The government also hopes the ongoing joint development of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry next-generation fighter jet with the UK and Italy, for which the ministry is requesting ￥72 billion, would help the Japanese defense industry’s growth.
To step up Japan’s rapid deployment and transportation capability in the southwestern region, the ministry plans to establish a new sea transport unit combining ground, maritime and air forces and to be based in Kure, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, in 2025 and purchase three transport ships and a fleet of 17 Boeing Chinooks.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS