Recruitment shortfalls for Japan’s Self Defense Force (JSDF) have reached ‘crisis’ levels and require ‘bold’ new measures, Tokyo’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence heard in a sitting in early May.
The severity of recruitment shortfalls was highlighted in an enquiry to the Committee by Masahisa Sato, a councillor of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and a former Colonel in the Japan Ground Self Defense Force (JGSDF).
According to an account of the meeting posted on Sato’s official webpage, the councillor said that the figures for new recruits for 2023 (the Japanese financial year ends 31 March 2024) are likely to come in at about 8,500, a substantial drop from the roughly 10,000 (10,120) figure for fresh rank and file recruits in 2022, and the 14,000 that the councillor cited as being the figure for 2019 (the first year of the Reiwa era).
Sato - who said that one Japan Ground Self Defence Force division recently reported having as little as 30 fresh recruits - called the latest figures ‘shocking’.
The former Colonel noted that low wages were making it difficult for the JSDF/Ministry of Defence to attract specialists, with younger doctorate-educated research officers employed by the Ministry receiving wages well below industry standards. He said that ‘bold measures’ would be needed for the JSDF to compete against the private sector for talent.
A number of initiatives have been implemented by the Ministry of Defence to address recruitment and talent shortfalls, such as raising the maximum age of eligibility and introducing flexible working arrangements for specialists in areas such as cyber warfare. The Ministry of Defence also provides generous subsidies to companies employing reserve personnel and has instituted a business-ministry talent exchange program. In October 2023 the JSDF opened a JP¥54,000 (AU$520) per month scholarship loan scheme for natural science and engineering students, with a full repayment exemption for students who take up a career in the JSDF.
Yet with the JSDF’s recruitment pool cohort (aged 18-32) forecast to shrink by nearly a quarter within 20 years (2044), attention has more recently turned to other ways to bolster the ‘human resource base’ of the JSDF.
Last year the Ministry of Defence convened a ‘Expert Panel on Reinforcing the Human Resource Base of the Ministry of Defence/Self Defence Force’, which delivered a report in July 2023. The report stressed that aside from recruitment efforts, the JSDF should seek to improve talent retention by promoting JSDF personnels’ ‘active participation over the whole lifecycle’, and should ‘diversify its human resources’ by tapping into the private sector.
Recommendations in the report include lifting the compulsory retirement age and streamlining avenues for reappointment, implementing ‘drastic rationalisation’ measures including expanding ‘outsourcing’ to allow more regular recruits to take up front line roles, creating expedited training programs for talent with experience in the private sector, and developing special incentive schemes to recruit cyber and other specialists.
The report was followed by two papers published in March by the Japan Ground Self Defense Force’s Training, Evaluation, Research and Development Command (TERCOM) titled ‘Report on human resource policies for preventing talent migration from the Self Defence Force’ and ‘New ways for the JSDF to capitalise on external support’. The first, citing gaps in the export panel report, recommended introducing a ‘reward pension’ scheme based on US models to increase JSDF personnels’ ‘organisational commitment’. The latter recommended that private contracting practices in other public institutions could be consulted to devise ways to expand the purview of outsourcing in the JSDF.
Yet the most ambitious attempts of the Ministry to combat the problem of dwindling human resources have come in the form of advancing automation, principally through accelerating the use of AI, using automatic systems to reduce crew numbers in ships, and expanding the volume and functional purview of air, land and sea-based drones.
The last year has seen a spate of competitive tenders posted for different types of drones and drone components through the newly formed Rapid Acquisition Program, which was formed to advance closer cooperation with civilian technology providers to refit cutting edge dual-use technology for military use. A number of tenders for drones, drone defence systems and AI development projects have also been opened by JSDF/Ministry of Defence departments including the Ground Material Control Command (GMCC) and the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA), whose mission includes ‘strengthening… technology cooperation with other countries’.
Drones and AI have been a core focus in a defence industry and technology sovereign capacity push in Japan, reinforced by a recent report from TERCOM titled ‘The need for Japan to domesticate the production of military-use UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)’.
“Eligibility to participate [in bids for tenders] will be granted if the requisite documents are prepared and the application is approved,” a spokesperson from ATLA said in response to an enquiry on the eligibility of Australian companies to bid for tenders.