By PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU
TOKYO — Japan’s Ministry of Defense on Sept. 10 requested 4.57 trillion yen ($58 billion) in budget appropriations for the next financial year, starting April 1, 2013, a figure that is 1.7 percent lower than the current budget. This represents the biggest one-year decline in half a century and the lowest total in two decades.
But the request also signals an ongoing restructuring and updating of Japan’s defense posture to counter China, and greatly upgrades command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; ballistic missile defense; and cyber defense capabilities.
Japan’s current five-year Mid-Term Defense Program of December 2010 has tasked the MoD with bolstering defense of the nation’s sea lanes and far-flung southeastern island chain, which extends from Okinawa to a few hundred kilometers from Taiwan. More recently, the MoD has begun to openly acknowledge China, which has an increasingly assertive Navy in the region, as a strategic concern.
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