Japan Defense Ministry to Boost Air Surveillance Capacity

September 18, 2018

Tokyo- The Defense Ministry has decided to upgrade the Air Self-Defense Force's Airborne Warning and Control Group to enhance its surveillance activities in the airspace surrounding Japan.

The ministry included expenses for the organizational change in its budget request for fiscal 2019, officials have said. The move is aimed at strengthening surveillance for possible airspace violation as Chinese fighter jets and bombers have repeatedly flown over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan.

The ASDF unit has Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, aircraft at the Hamamatsu air base in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, that are capable of detecting aircraft flying in the ground radar's blind spots beyond the horizon and at low altitudes.

Also included in the unit's fleet are E-2C early warning aircraft, deployed at the Misawa base in the northern prefecture of Aomori and the Naha base in the southern prefecture of Okinawa.

The ministry will upgrade the ASDF unit to an airborne warning and control wing in order to enhance its information gathering and analysis capabilities, because its operations to deal with Chinese aircraft have increased and its size expanded.

The new organization will have some 860 personnel, up around 30 from the current level.

The upgrade will also follow the ministry's decision to acquire E-2D early warning airplanes with greater detection capabilities under the U.S. government's Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, program for 27 billion yen per unit, in order to bolster the ASDF's surveillance capacity over the Nansei southwestern islands.

The first E-2D plane is expected to be deployed at the Misawa base at the end of fiscal 2018, to be followed by an E-2D deployment at the Naha base in fiscal 2020.

The ministry is considering equipping the E-2D aircraft with the U.S.-developed Cooperative Engagement Capability system to share location information on enemy fighter jets and cruise missiles with the Maritime SDF's state-of-the-art Aegis destroyers. Jiji Press