(AFP) — Japan loosened arms export controls Friday to enable it to sell domestically made Patriot missiles to the United States, which is seeking to stock up after sending the weapon systems to Ukraine.
Washington has supplied Kyiv with the highly-effective Patriot air defense systems as part of the massive Western military aid effort to help President Volodymyr Zelensky's country fight back against Russia's invasion.
"We welcome the government of Japan’s announcement today that it will transfer Patriot interceptor missiles to the United States to replenish U.S. inventories," the White House said in a statement.
The announcement came as Japan approved a record defense budget Friday worth $56 billion for the next fiscal year, as tensions rise with China and North Korea.
The 7.95 trillion yen ($56 billion) draft budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year was approved by the cabinet, in line with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's pledge to raise defense spending over the next few years.
Japan has a pacifist post-war constitution, which limits its military capacity to ostensibly defensive measures.
But it updated key security and defense policies last year, explicitly outlining the challenge posed by China and setting a goal of doubling defense spending to the NATO standard of two percent of GDP by 2027.
The defence budget announced Friday includes 370 billion yen to build two new warships rigged with the US-developed Aegis missile defence system.
Japan also plans to spend 734 billion yen to shore up the nation's "stand-off" defence capacity such as purchases of missiles.
And about 75 billion yen will be used for joint development of interceptors to shoot down hypersonic missiles.
The budget also includes costs Japan agreed to pay to the United States over the relocation of the U.S. forces in Japan.
The defense budget is part of the 112.07 trillion yen ($787 billion) Japan plans to spend for the next fiscal year, down from a record 114.4 trillion yen in the previous year.
Japan wants to dramatically expand the country's defense capacity as it has been alarmed by China's expanding military ambitions.
Japan produces the PAC3 surface-to-air missile defense system, paying a license fee to U.S. defense firm Lockheed Martin, which developed the system.
Japan strictly controls the export of arms under its pacifist constitution, which limits its military capacity to ostensibly defensive measures.
"The appropriate transfer of defense equipment overseas will contribute to ... international peace and security, and will also strengthen cooperation with allies and the U.S.," a Tokyo government document said after the rule was approved by the Cabinet.
Sales of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system to the United States would be Japan's first export of lethal arms since the end of World War II, local media reported.
With the new rule Japan "will be able to export arms which were domestically produced under license of a foreign company to the licensing country," an official in the prime minister's cabinet told AFP.
A senior ruling party official told reporters this week that the export plan was at the request of Washington, Kyodo News reported.
U.S. President Joe Biden raised the issue with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a meeting at Camp David in August, as well as during an economic summit in San Francisco last month, the Washington Post reported this week, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
Washington is increasingly looking to its allies to supply sophisticated weapons against the backdrop of a shortfall in Ukraine's air defenses, with South Korea quietly pledging to provide hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition to Kyiv over the past year, the newspaper said.
The White House added that Friday's decision "will contribute to the security of Japan and to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region by ensuring that U.S. forces ... will continue to maintain a credible deterrence and response capability."
Japan used to ban all exports of defense equipment but in 2014 the late prime minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet loosened the rules.
The country's defense industry is small, with the only customer being the Japanese military and the market estimated at around 3 trillion yen ($20 billion) annually — less than some individual U.S. defense contractors' yearly revenues.
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by Agence France-Presse
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