Japan Can’t Say No to US Weapons Systems

SNA (Tokyo) — Recent revelations regarding the Japanese government’s purchase of US military drones underlines the East Asian nation’s unwillingness to refuse the “requests” of their US allies as they relate to the acquisition of weapons systems.

Illustrating this point is the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone produced by Northrop Grumman, which the Japanese government first agreed to purchase in 2014 at a unit price of about US$160 million.

Three years later the US manufacturer bumped up the estimated cost by about 23%, so that three of these drones would cost Japanese taxpayers about US$590 million in total. There would be an additional US$145 million in annual maintenance costs.

These drones were planned for deployment at Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture.

Then, in 2020, the Ministry of Defense began to have second thoughts. These drones have little use in military combat and are alarmingly vulnerable to missiles, as was demonstrated in 2019 when Iranian forces shot down a Global Hawk drone over the Strait of Hormuz. Moreover, the ministry also doubts the usefulness of the drones even for core surveillance missions because they cannot fly high enough to avoid rival nations’ defense systems.

In other words, Japanese defense officials concluded that Global Hawk drones are both too expensive for the Japanese military budget and not truly useful for the defense of the nation.

But that was not the end of the matter.

Shortly thereafter, then-Defense Minister Taro Kono announced that Japan would also be cancelling its purchase of the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile system, in part, once again, due to inflated costs, but also because local communities in Japan–namely in Akita and Yamaguchi prefectures–steadfastly resisted siting the Aegis facilities near their homes.

This created a perceived political dilemma for the administration of Shinzo Abe, which feared the overall impact on US-Japan relations should they cancel two major US weapons system purchases around the same time.

According to Kyodo News, Japanese officials fretted that it would “anger Mr. Trump, who has insisted on exporting US-made weapons” within the context of his repeated claims that the US-Japan Alliance is tilted unfairly toward Japan’s benefit.

Acting on these concerns, near the end of his administration in 2020, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reinstated the agreement to purchase the unneeded Global Hawk drones, and this is a decision which still stands.

This episode clearly reveals the pressure that the Japanese government feels to purchase expensive US weapons systems, not always for the defense of the nation against enemies, but as political consideration for its ally, itself driven by the interests of the military-industrial complex.

Air Self Defense Forces personnel have been dispatched to Misawa Air Base where the Global Hawk drones are expected to be delivered next month.

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