With rising threats from North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme and repeated incursions by Chinese ships into waters surrounding a string of islands claimed by Japan, the request would let the ministry develop new anti-ballistic missiles and place troops on southern islands closer to the chain in dispute with China.
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In March, Tokyo began deploying the “Jinryu”, a Soryu-class submarine, a month before Japan’s fighter jets began to warn Chinese planes repeatedly entering Japanese airspace between April and June.
The defense ministry’s budget allocation is a 2.3 percent increase from this year’s apportionment and will total more than 5 trillion yen (48.42 billion United States dollars), as the government under Abe continues to push to expand the scope of its Self-Defense Forces at home and overseas, and press for constitutional amendment to achieve this despite widespread public opposition and condemnation.
If approved by parliament, the budget request submitted Wednesday would be the fifth annual increase under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who ended a decade of defense budget cuts after taking office in late 2012.
The next-generation missile interceptors will be developed in collaboration between Japan and the USA, according to the news agency.
About $735.3 million of the budget is to go toward building powerful new submarines with improved sonar systems that could monitor the Sea of Japan.
The budget includes allocations for the relocation of the US air base in Futenma, which, according to the report, would cost $1.74 billion. Japan controls the remote, uninhabited islands.
Japan is bolstering surveillance and defense in the country’s southwestern seas amid intensifying tensions around the disputed islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.
The new land-to-ship missile system is expected to have a range of 300 kilometres (190 miles), far enough to reach the vicinity of the disputed islands, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported earlier in August. It would also set up an amphibious unit to be stationed in Nagasaki on the southern main island of Kyushu.
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