Japan Hikes Defense Budget

Japan’s draft defense budget was set at a record 9.04 trillion yen (about 58 billion U.S. dollars) for fiscal 2026, local media reported Friday.

The figure exceeds the then record initial budget of 8.7 trillion yen for the current fiscal 2025 starting in April and is in line with Japan’s defense buildup plan to allot about 43 trillion yen to defense outlays from fiscal 2023 through 2027.

Under the defense budget, 100.1 billion yen has been earmarked for building the “Shield” layered coastal defense system, which requires numerous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles, while 1.1 billion yen has been set aside to assess the use of long-endurance drones as a measure against airspace violations, Kyodo News reported.

Meanwhile, an 18.3 trillion yen supplementary budget enacted on Dec. 16 for the current fiscal year included 1.7 trillion yen for security and diplomacy, allowing Japan to bring defense-related spending to its target of 2 percent of gross domestic product within fiscal 2025, two years ahead of the previous schedule, the report said.

For decades, Japan capped its annual defense budget at around 1 percent of GDP, roughly 5 trillion yen, reflecting its postwar pacifist stance under the war-renouncing Constitution.

But the government, despite widespread opposition, set a goal in 2022 of gradually hiking defense-related spending to 2 percent of GDP by fiscal 2027. (RSS)