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Japan boosting capabilities to counter PRC threat

Felix Kim

Japan’s defense planners are pointing to the growing threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the need for the island nation to transition to high-technology weapons involving space, cyberspace, and powerful air and sea defense systems in the country’s new defense white paper, Defense of Japan 2019, released by the Ministry of Defense in September 2019.

“China is expanding and stepping up its activities in the seas and airspace neighboring Japan, with more and more fighters and bombers advancing to the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean,” Takeshi Iwaya, Japan’s former minister of defense, stated in his introduction to the document.

Adding to this threat are new systems recently obtained by the PRC to launch preemptive precision strikes with ballistic missiles launched from a nuclear-powered submarine, the defense paper states.

Tokyo’s response to increased defense spending by Beijing has been to increase the budget for its own defense forces to a record U.S. $48.9 billion in 2019.

Big-ticket purchases include both the A and B variants of the F-35 stealth fighter jet and U.S.-made interceptor missiles, Rand Corp. Japan analyst Jeffrey Hornung told FORUM. The six F-35Bs included in Tokyo’s requested defense budget feature short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities to be carried atop Japan’s Izumo-class destroyer. (Pictured: The first F-35A stealth fighter assembled in Japan is unveiled at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries factory in Toyoyama, Aichi prefecture.)
“They are starting development on a future fighter [aircraft],” Hornung added. “They’re constructing a new [naval] destroyer, the FFM they are calling it. It’s going to have destroyer and minesweeper capabilities.”

New weapons and capabilities will accompany a strengthened “multifaceted, multilayered security cooperation” between Japan and partner countries including the United States, Iwaya said, along with Australia, India, countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and others to realize a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region.

The former minister emphasized the importance of Japan’s alliance with the U.S., which he described as “the cornerstone of Japan’s security” along with his country’s own defense systems.

“By deepening cooperation at all levels, from the summit level to the working level, we must strive to further strengthen the deterrence and response capabilities of the Japan-U.S. alliance,” he said.

Japan will expand personnel levels and the capabilities of its Cyber Defense Group by about 30% in 2019, the white paper states, in line with an overall strengthening of its cyber defense capability, enabling it to disrupt an opponent’s use of cyberspace during an attack against Japan in armed contingencies. In the electromagnetic spectrum, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will “strengthen capabilities to neutralize the radar and communications of opponents who intend to invade Japan.” In space, the Defense Ministry plans to deploy radar to monitor threats to its surveillance satellites and build the capability to disrupt command and control, communications and intelligence gathering of adversaries.

“We intend to develop a multi-domain defense force that fuses the new domains of space, cyberspace and electromagnetic spectrum with the traditional domains of land, sea and air,” Iwaya said.

Felix Kim is a FORUM contributor reporting from Seoul, South Korea.

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