News Story: Japan Steps Up Surveillance Posture Against China

E-2C Hawkeye of the JASDF (Image: Wiki Commons)

TOKYO — Japan bolstered its military surveillance capabilities in the southern island region of Okinawa over the weekend, reports said, as territorial tensions with China simmer.

The nation’s armed forces, called the Self-Defence Forces, launched a squadron of four E-2C early warning planes at its air base in Naha on the main Okinawan island Sunday, the Jiji and Kyodo news agencies reported.

This is the first time such planes have been based on the island. At the inauguration ceremony in Naha, Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said Japan faced a “dangerous situation” as China’s continual attempts to “change the status quo by force and threaten the rule of law could trigger emergencies,” Kyodo News reported.

“The squadron was newly established to firmly defend our country’s territorial land, sea and air,” he told reporters afterward, according to Jiji Press.

Japan’s air force possesses 13 E-2C airborne early warning planes at the Misawa base in northern Japan. Four of these have been transferred to the Naha base.

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