Expanding Japan’s “comprehensive national power,” absorbing lessons from the Ukraine conflict and strengthening the nation’s defence industrial and technological bases were among the key themes addressed in an advisory committee meeting on national security held at the Japanese Prime Minister’s official residence on 27 April.
The meeting, which was attended by Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, was convened to discuss the expedited revision of Japan’s three key security documents – the National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defence Strategy (NDS) and Defence Buildup Program (DBP).
The government plans to publish the revised documents in December – one year prior to their originally scheduled release.
Among the reasons given by government officials for expediting the revisions were deteriorating regional security, rapid transformations in warfighting, and a forecast need to substantially revise the 2022 documents’ ¥43 trillion (approx. A $380 billion) five-year defence budget to account for factors including a weakened yen.
The core theme of the meeting was to look beyond the conventional focus on defence and economic security and explore the role of “comprehensive national power” for countering increasingly stern and complex/diverse national security threats.
Reflecting this theme, an eclectic panel of 15 expert advisors participated in the meeting.
Among them were Boston Consulting Group Japan Managing Director, Reiko Akiike; President of the Yomiuri Shimbun news group, Toshikazu Yamaguchi; IT giant NEC Corporation’s CEO, Takayuki Morita; as well as insurance/banking consultants, prominent academics and think tank leaders.
According to an introductory statement on the meeting posted on the official website of the Cabinet Secretariat, “comprehensive national power” refers to the combination of “diplomatic, defense, economic, technological, information, and human resources.”
These can be mobilised through “cross-ministerial initiatives” in areas such as research, cybersecurity and international cooperation to improve the nation’s “deterrence capabilities,” the statement said.
A longer document released on the same day from the National Security Secretariat (a bureau within the Cabinet Secretariat), titled “Changes in the security environment around Japan and the importance of comprehensive national power,” emphasised the need to “organically link” these six elements, stating that the world was entering into a time in which “economic and technological power determine diplomatic influence and defence capability.”
Absorbing lessons from the “new ways of fighting” in the Ukraine War was also a core theme in the documents produced by the Cabinet Secretariat, as well as remarks on the meeting by Takaichi and Koizumi.
Among those listed by the National Security Secretariat were the effectiveness of cheap mass-produced drones, the need to prepare weapons production and maintenance capabilities for a sustained conflict, and the need for secure supply chains and economic resilience measures to support citizens’ livelihood and retain public confidence during a prolonged contingency.
Other lessons from the conflict listed in the document were the need to prepare for cyber/space attacks as a precursor to conventional attacks, the effectiveness of drone saturation for enhancing battlefield awareness, the need to optimise data integration across assets, the expanding use of AI in battlefield decision making, and the hastening of upgrade cycles for equipment and software.
Statements by the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretariat also emphasised the need for defence industry reform, with points set out in the National Security Secretariat report closely mirroring recommendations contained in a report on Japan’s defence industry/technology base published by the Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) in February.
Among the many recommendations set out in the two reports were expanding the use of government owned facilities to produce defence equipment, stockpiling substitute materials for equipment production and investing in excess production capacity for dual use items, and developing and manufacturing missiles and drones that maximise the use of general purpose commercial components.
Emphasis was also placed on encouraging start-ups into the defence industry through incentives and flexible contract requirements to contribute to growth areas including drones and AI, as well as increasing industry innovation through developing a framework for public-private-academic collaboration.
The advisory panel meeting is set to be followed by submissions to the government on the constitution of the three security documents next month from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), with an outline plan for the three documents scheduled for August.