TOKYO: Japan's defense budget for fiscal 2020 totaled 5,313.3 billion yen, hitting a record high for the sixth straight year, according to the government's draft budget for the year from April that was adopted at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

The figure is up 1.1 pct from the fiscal 2019 initial budget level.

The fiscal 2020 defense spending includes 11.1 billion yen in initial designing costs for fighter jets that will succeed the retiring F-2 fighters and 3.1 billion yen for funds to upgrade the Maritime Self-Defense Force's Izumo-class destroyers into de facto aircraft carriers.

Positioned as the centerpiece of future networked combat operations, the F-2 successor model will have an air-to-air combat capability.

The initial designing costs for the new jet will include expenses for setting the sizes of its engines and funds for fixing the model's flight range and stealth levels. Combined with other related costs, such as research costs for creating a computer system that will allow Japan to take the initiative in its upgrade process, the total budget related to the F-2 successor jet will come to around 28 billion yen.

The government will also promote efforts to tread in new defense territory. It will spend a total of 50.6 billion yen in the field of space, including costs to set up a new unit that will take on tasks related to space surveillance, which will comprise some 20 Air SDF members, and expenses for the development of a space situational awareness satellite.

For the planned introduction of the Aegis Ashore land-based missile defense system, the government will set aside 11.5 billion yen in costs to acquire the launchers and 1.4 billion yen as related research fees and other expenses.

As the government is currently redoing its surveys on candidate sites for deploying the Aegis Ashore systems and negotiating with local communities, it did not create any budget that is based on the assumption of deploying the systems to particular locations.

The government will also spend 471.3 billion yen for defense equipment procurement under the US government's Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, program, the third-largest for such expenditures. The total includes 79.3 billion yen to acquire six F-35B cutting-edge stealth fighters for the first time and 28.1 billion yen to buy three F-35A fighters.

The Japanese government plans to stop the imports of finished F-35A jets and have Japanese companies perform the final assembly process of such jets.

JIJI Press