Here's What You Need to Remember: Obtaining that many Lockheed Martin-built F-35 stealth fighters won’t come cheap—but the ministry has unveiled a record-setting budget request, which was for $52 billion, and is part of a push to maintain military readiness as Tokyo faces increased pressure from China and North Korea.

This week the Japanese Ministry of Defense announced that it is looking to deploy the F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike fighter to additional Air Self-Defense Bases across the home islands. This would be in addition to the current host, the Misawa base in Aomori Prefecture in the Tōhoku region at the north of Honshu, the largest island of Japan.

The ministry has expressed a desire to purchase four more F-35A conventional takeoff and landing variants, the same version used by the United States Air Force, for a cost of approximately $308.5 million; as well as two additional F-35B short takeoff-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) variants, which are used by the United States Marines Corps. 

The Japanese Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), which is the air warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and is responsible for the defense of Japanese airspace and for other aerospace operations, currently is home to seventeen F-35A jets, with the number set to increase to twenty by next spring. After trail operations, the fifth-generation stealth aircraft could be assigned missions such as scramble responses—and these could also be deployed to other bases around Honshu as well as the other home islands.

“When the number of F-35s increases, new fighters may be deployed to bases other than Misawa that currently operate fighter jets,” a ministry official told the Japan Times on Monday. “As we need to gain approval from local communities, we have not decided yet where to deploy them.”

The Japanese Ministry of Defense has announced plans to procure 147 of the F-35 jets to replace the F-15 jets that can no longer be modernized. That includes aircraft currently housed at the Chitose base in Hokkaido and the Komatsu base in Ishikawa Prefecture. Upgraded F-15 models will continue to remain in service and have been deployed to the Naha base in Okinawa Prefecture, which handles frequent scramble missions against aircraft from the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

Obtaining that many Lockheed Martin-built F-35 stealth fighters won’t come cheap—but the ministry has unveiled a record-setting budget request, which was for $52 billion, and is part of a push to maintain military readiness as Tokyo faces increased pressure from China and North Korea.

Naval Aircraft 

The budget request also calls for funding to purchase the F-35B the short takeoff-and-vertical-landing variant, which is currently used by the United States Marine Corps. The F-35B aircraft would reportedly be operated onboard the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter destroyer Izumo, which has been undergoing a retrofit so that it can deploy the Lockheed Martin fighters. 

In addition, the ministry has announced plans to use the F-35B jets for the defense of remote islands and Pacific coastal areas, which also cover a vast airspace. The JASCF’s Nyutabaru base in Miyazaki Prefecture has been regarded as a strong candidate to host the F-35B jets—and it is geographically close to the MSDF’s Kure base in Hiroshima Prefecture, which hosts the Kaga, the other of the two Izumo-class helicopter carriers. Upgrades to the warship’s heatproof painting of the flight deck—which is necessary to make it resistant to the exhaust heat from the F-35B jets—are also included in the ministry’s budget request. 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. This article first appeared last year.

Image: Reuters