Free Republic

Japan began its first military expansion at the western end of its island chain in more than 40 years on Saturday, breaking ground on a radar station on a tropical island off Taiwan. The move risks angering China, locked in a dispute with Japan over nearby islands which they both claim. Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, who attended a ceremony on Yonaguni island to mark the start of construction, suggested the military presence could be enlarged to other islands in the seas southwest of Japan's main islands. "This is the first deployment since the U.S. returned Okinawa (1972) and calls...

The Yomiuri Shimbun The Defense Ministry is looking to expand the capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces to make them akin to those performed by the U.S. Marine Corps, including the ability to retake outlying islands that have been invaded, sources said. The changes are expected to be included in a midterm report to be issued later this month on the revision of the National Defense Program Outlines late this year. The idea is primarily intended to bolster the defenses of the Nansei Islands, in particular the Senkaku Islands, the sources said. The about 7,000 troops of the Ground Self-Defense Force’s...

Finding itself in an increasingly complex and hostile security environment, Japan has taken the first steps towards developing a pre-emptive first-strike capability. This is a controversial move in a region that remains wary of a potential return to Japanese militarism. Just a few years ago, the idea that the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) would be given the ability to conduct operations that go beyond “self defense” would have sounded ludicrous, not to mention that offensive capabilities would have contravened a longstanding interpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution.