Hello and welcome to the details of Japan eases arms export controls allowing weapons sales to US and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A US soldier inspects a Patriot missile defense battery during join exercises at military grounds in Sochaczew, near Warsaw March 21, 2015. — Franciszek Mazur/Agencja Gazeta/Reuters pic
TOKYO, Dec 22 — Japan loosened arms export controls today, for the first time in nearly a decade, a move that would enable the US ally to sell domestically made Patriot missile defence systems to Washington.
Japan strictly controls the export of arms under its pacifist constitution, which limits its military capacity to ostensibly defensive measures.
“The appropriate transfer of defence equipment overseas will contribute to ... international peace and security, and will also strengthen cooperation with allies and the US in security fields,” a government document said after the rule was approved by the Cabinet today.
Advertisement
Sales of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC3) system to the United States would be Japan’s first export of lethal arms since the end of World War II, local media have reported.
With the new rule, Japan “will be able to export arms which were domestically produced under licence of a foreign company to the licensing country”, a national security official in the prime minister’s cabinet told AFP prior to the Cabinet approval.
Japan produces the PAC3 surface-to-air missile defence system, paying a licence fee to US defence firm Lockheed Martin which developed the system.
Advertisement
“Theoretically, the new rule will enable export” of the PAC3 to the United States, the official said.
A senior ruling party official told reporters this week that the export plan was at the request of Washington, Kyodo News reported.
US 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 US officials.
Washington is increasingly looking to its allies to supply sophisticated weapons against the backdrop of a shortfall in Ukraine’s air defences, and South Korea has quietly pledged to provide hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition to Kyiv over the past year, the newspaper said.
Japan used to ban all exports of defence equipment but in 2014 the late prime minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet loosened the rules.
The country’s defence industry is small, with the only customer being the Japanese military and the market estimated at around ¥3 trillion (RM92 billion) annually — less than some individual US defence contractors’ yearly revenues.
Government also approved today a record defence budget worth US$56 billion (RM259 billion) for the next fiscal year, in line with Kishida’s goal of doubling defence spending to the Nato standard of two per cent of GDP by 2027. — AFP
These were the details of the news Japan eases arms export controls allowing weapons sales to US for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
