Japanese Missile Defense Plans Stall

Japanese plans to acquire missile defense capabilities have been pre-empted by concerns over the dispatch of soldiers to Iraq, recent parliamentary elections and a lack of military consensus on the direction of missile defense purchases, the Japan Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Sept. 2).

In August, the Japanese Defense Agency announced plans to seek $1.3 billion for missile defense efforts in fiscal 2004. Agency officials said that the National Security Council would hold meetings on the effort before the funding request became official, but those meetings do not appear imminent and the draft budget must be finalized by the end of the year, according to the Times.

“Time is pressing,” a senior Defense Agency official said. “To squeeze out the cost for missile defense from the 5 trillion yen [$46 billion] defense budget means we have to decide on a major course for national security policy,” the official added (Nao Shimoyachi, Japan Times, Nov. 8).

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