Japan wants a stronger army. Can it find enough troops?
After 75 years of peace, Japan faces enormous challenges in its rush to build a more formidable military. To understand why, consider the Noshiro, a recently commissioned Navy frigate equipped with anti-ship missiles and sonar for submarine tracking.
The ship was designed with an undermanned vessel in mind: it can operate with approximately two-thirds of the crew required to operate a predecessor model. At the moment there are even fewer sailors going to sea.
On the ship’s bridge, duties that previously occupied seven or eight crew members have been combined to three or four crew members. The ship’s nurse also serves as a dishwasher and cook. Additional sprinklers were installed to compensate for the reduced crew on board when fighting fires at sea.
“We are systematizing a lot of things,” said Captain Yoshihiro Iwata, 44, as the frigate was recently docked in Sasebo, southwestern Japan. “But honestly,” he added, “one person does two or three different jobs.”
The downsized crew of the Noshiro nods to Japan’s grim demographic reality as the country faces its most serious security threats in decades from China’s increasingly provocative military actions and North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal.
Japan has committed to increasing military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product over the next five years, or by about 60 percent. third largest defense budget in the world. The country is rapidly acquiring Tomahawk missiles and has spent about $30 million on ballistic missile defense systems.
But as the population rapidly ages and shrinks — nearly a third of Japanese are over 65, and births fell to a record low last year — experts worry that the military simply won’t be able to sustain traditional fleets and squadrons. man.
The Army, Navy and Air Force have failed to meet recruitment targets for years, and the number of active-duty personnel — about 247,000 — is down nearly 10 percent from 1990.
Even as Japan struggles to recruit conventional troops, it must also attract new battalions of technologically savvy soldiers to operate advanced equipment or defend against cyberattacks. For some tasks, military leaders say they can turn to unmanned systems like drones, but such technology can still require large numbers of personnel to operate.
The demographic challenges also bring economic challenges: there are strong public resistance tax increases to finance the defense budget at a time of rising social costs for the elderly.
“The budget itself cannot defend the country,” said Yoji Koda, a retired vice admiral. “The fundamental thing is how to recruit,” he added. “That means we have to think about how to wake up the kind of dormant Japanese community.”
With the United States under pressure from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and from growing competition with China, there is a need for Japan to become a more equal partner. Since the end of World War II, Japan, which hosts more American troops than any other country, has been de facto a protectorate of the United States.
So far, U.S. political and military leaders have spoken approvingly of Japan’s defense progress, applauding budget expansion and new investments in military hardware. “It adds credibility to deterrence,” said Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan.
To demonstrate closer coordination, the two nations have expanded and accelerated their military exercises.
Last summer, during the largest-ever edition of Resolute Dragon, an annual bilateral exercise, the U.S. Marines and Japanese Army conducted operations “side by side,” said Lt. Gen. James W. Bierman, the commander of the Third Marine Expeditionary. Force Okinawa.
The idea is to train with Japanese forces so that “we can really swap one platform or capability from one country for another,” said Adm. Christopher D. Stone, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group Seven in Okinawa.
The closer relationship comes as the Japanese public’s view of the military has evolved.
The country has pacifism written into its constitution, and until recently the public has opposed the acquisition of missiles that could hit enemy territory or legal changes that would allow Japanese troops, limited by the constitution to the defense of the nation, in any or all could fight another battle. situations outside Japan. With much of the population seeing China as a threat to Japan’s security, opinion polls show support for such measures.
However, that has not translated into an increase in enlistments in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, as the military is known.
“The social acceptance of the SDF is much broader and deeper” than in the past, he said Ayumi Teraoka, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. “But that doesn’t translate into ‘OK, let’s send our children to the SDF’”
Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, chairman of Japan’s Joint Staff, acknowledged the challenges in an interview at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo. “We are facing enormous difficulties in recruitment,” he said, adding that “it is not enough just to do what we have done” given the speed at which Japan wants to achieve its ambitious goals.
To expand the overall ranks, General Yoshida said the Self-Defense Forces must increase the proportion of women from less than 8 percent to 12 percent by 2030. The military must recruit mid-career officers, partner with the private sector and leverage artificial intelligence. and unmanned systems, he said.
The obstacles are high. Reports of sexual harassment in the military discourage women from enlisting. With an unemployment rate of 2.5 percent, it is difficult to attract recent graduates or job changers.
“In the past, people came to the Self-Defense Forces because they had no other choice,” said Col. Toshiyuki Aso, recruitment director at a military center in Naha, Okinawa’s capital. “Now they have much more choice.”
On the walls of the center, in a drab office building on a side street, were posters intended to attract women and older recruits. “Protect people, it’s so satisfying,” read a slogan under a photo of a female soldier. “A future to be proud of, even after retirement,” said another addressed to future reserve officers. “It’s not over yet!”
A recent exercise at a base in Naha revealed the labor demands of even mundane tasks: 90 troops gathered on a 50-meter-long concrete slab to practice repairing a runway after a hypothetical enemy attack. For nearly three hours they bulldozed piles of rubble and tamped the dirt with tooth-rattling soil compaction rammers.
The troops performed their duties with artisanal care, smoothing newly laid concrete with hand trowels and sweeping away cement dust with small brushes.
Beyond the numbers, experts say the modern military will demand higher-level skills to operate advanced weapons and surveillance equipment. Japan already lags behind its allies in protecting against cyberwarfare.
“There is no military structure to defend Japanese citizens against cyber attacks,” he said Hideto Tomabechia computer scientist who has advised the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and is a fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The government has said it plans to expand its military cyber force as many as 4,000 peoplealthough many Japanese are suspicious of cybersecurity operations that they believe could invade their privacy.
“There is great concern that the government will be able to monitor the emails, information and Internet searches of all citizens,” said Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister.
To make military service more attractive, General Yoshida said the Self-Defense Forces should offer higher salaries or better housing. For example, Navy recruiters are having trouble attracting sailors because young candidates are afraid they will run out of Wi-Fi at sea. American sailors, on the other hand, can access social media on their phones and can even receive deliveries from Amazon on board.
Some recruitment tactics have failed. In an effort to mimic the “Be All You Can Be” ads familiar to American moviegoers, the Self-Defense Forces aired ads in theaters last summer before screenings of “The Silent Service”, a thriller set on a nuclear submarine.
Asked whether the ads had inspired new sign-ups, Hironori Ogihara, a spokesman for Okinawa’s recruiting center, grinned with a shrug.
“Not yet,” he said.