 |
| Indigenously Designed Kawasaki C-2 Transport Aircraft |
By PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU
TOKYO — Japan’s Ministry of Defense has hinted it may try to re-establish a centralized procurement agency to streamline purchasing and concentrate talent and resources so Japan can participate in the global arms trade.
An MoD report also suggests the government should begin to subsidize arms development and the MoD be directly involved in the nation’s basic science and technology research.
In addition to making suggestions about reforming Japan’s pricey and uncompetitive domestic arms industry, the MoD’s 26-page “Defense Production and Technology Infrastructure Strategy” calls for procurement practices to be restructured and recentralized, which strongly hints at establishing a procurement agency, according to Satoshi Tsuzukibashi, director of the Office of Defense Production Committee at Nippon Keidanren, Japan’s most powerful business lobby.
Historically, the former Japan Defense Agency procured arms through its powerful but increasingly scandal-prone Central Procurement Office (CPO). Following a long series of corruption cases, the CPO was successively reformed, abolished, and then replaced by a series of smaller, weaker organizations resulting in today’s Equipment Procurement and Construction Office.
Read the full story at DefenseNews