Japan to boost defense budget by 13%
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Japan's Defense Ministry requested a $53 billion budget for the next fiscal year, a 13% increase.
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Japanese Ground-Self Defense force type 90 tanks during the annual drill with live ammunition drills at Minami Eniwa in northern Japan island of Hokkaido on December 7, 2021. (AP)
According to the Wall Street Journal, Japan's Defense Ministry requested a $53 billion budget for the next fiscal year, a 13% increase, to add antimissile equipment and enhance maintenance for a force that has long been short on fundamental duties.
On Tuesday, Chief of Staff of the Japanese Joint Staff General Yoshihide Yoshida claimed that Japan's Armed Forces in their current state are unable to protect the country from emerging global challenges and rising geopolitical threats.
The 7.74 trillion yen budget proposal is a record, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has committed to increase Japan's defense expenditure to 2% of GDP by fiscal 2027, after many years of being around 1%, measured somewhat differently.
Kishida has shifted Tokyo's conventional defense-only approach to play a more supportive role in US policy regarding China.
Exploiting the pretext of deterring the DPRK, the United States has opportunistically escalated its military collaboration with Japan and South Korea, raising concerns of nuclear war in the Korean peninsula.
Abandoning its former position of non-offensive weapons acquisition, the Japanese government has requested 400 Tomahawk missiles made in the US, set for delivery in April 2026. The US approved the prospective sale of up to 50 extended-range air-to-surface missiles to Japan for an estimated cost of $104 million on Monday.
In mid-August, the two agreed on a joint project to develop an interceptor missile to allegedly counter the hypersonic weapons of Russia, China, and the DPRK.
The military strategy also calls for investing $2.6 billion to build two of a new type of ship, 623 feet long and outfitted with Aegis antimissile systems. Japan had intended to install land-based Aegis systems but abandoned the idea in 2020 due to local resistance.
Taiwan has also been rushing to improve its military readiness, with the island's president ordering another significant increase in military spending in August.
China, Russia, and the DPRK are at the center of Tokyo's updated defense papers passed in 2023. The 510-page assessment claimed that these three countries contribute to "the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II."
Japan's post-WWII military, known as the Self-Defense Forces, has tended to downplay mundane operations like maintenance and ammunition restocking, requesting $16 billion in funding to upkeep and maintain equipment, a 15.5% increase over last year, and is raising its ammunition budget.
