Analysis Is Japan ready for civil–military ‘integration’?

Isa Khan

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The 2021 defence White Paper was unconventional in many ways. Adorned with an ink-painting of a samurai warrior on its cover, it contains the first-ever mention in a Japanese defence White Paper of the importance of stability in the Taiwan Strait and highlights Japan’s expanding defence partnerships beyond the region. Whilst all of these developments are important, the strong call for Japan to leverage and enhance its advanced technology base for defence applications also deserves attention. Since the Second World War, Japan has excluded its defence establishment from the making of the country’s science and technology (S&T) strategy.

US–China technology competition as a driver​

The White Paper states that strategic competition between the US and China is becoming ‘more prominent’ across the political, economic and military realms and that ‘competition in [the] technological field is likely to become even more intense’. The paper identifies the rapid development of hypersonic weapons systems – such as hypersonic-boost glide vehicles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCM) that fly at the speed of at least Mach 5 – by the United States, China and Russia as a top trend in advanced military technologies. It adds a sense of urgency to the need for Japan to enhance its advanced technological base to achieve ‘technological superiority’ in technologies such as these that will transform future warfighting. Both Tokyo and Washington believe that the undetectability, unpredictability and manoeuvrability of HGVs and HCMs could significantly challenge the effectiveness of US and Japanese ballistic-missile defences designed to deter Chinese aggression in the First Island Chain.

The paper also puts forward fifth-generation wireless networks and 3D computing for the first time as examples of advanced technologies in the civilian sector that have military applications, in addition to artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum technologies, as highlighted in previous papers. Against this backdrop, the paper emphasises that Japan’s research and development in defence technologies is much smaller in scale than not only the United States and China, but also in comparison with other major and regional economies, such as the United Kingdom, the EU, and South Korea.

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New initiatives to encourage ‘spin-ons’​

The 2021 White Paper highlights several new initiatives launched in the fiscal year 2021 (April 2020 to March 2021) intended to identify and foster basic research with defence applications or ‘spin-ons'. It reveals that the Japanese MoD is reviewing its 2016 ‘Medium to Long-Term Defense Technology Outlook’ – the ministry’s estimate of S&T trends over the subsequent 20 years – to address how Japan could strategically apply critical technologies such as AI to defence. It also outlines several organisational developments in Japan’s defence-equipment procurement agency, the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA). One is the establishment of the Future Capabilities Development Center, which will enhance the defence equipment R&D system using advanced technologies. This includes R&D that enables cross-domain operations, including new domains, such as space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum.

ATLA has also established a new position and a new division to accelerate the development of spin-ons: the Director for Advanced Technology Strategy and the Technology Collaboration Support Division. The former will monitor S&T trends both domestically and internationally. The latter aims to apply the outcomes of advanced basic research by academic institutions, industry and national research laboratories for defence purposes. The small funding allocation to the MoD for basic research makes these new positions vital for Japan to ensure that its civilian and commercial advanced technology research can be leveraged for R&D in defence equipment, so allowing the MOD to keep up with technology trends in future warfighting.

Obstacles to integration remain​

Yet there are significant obstacles that stand in the way of Japan’s ability to maintain and develop an advanced defence technological base. The first is the refusal of Japanese academic institutions to take part in basic research with potential defence applications. This trend is most apparent in the declining participation of universities in ATLA’s National Security Technology Research Promotion Fund, a new funding mechanism established in 2015 to facilitate basic research in advanced technology areas with potential for military use. To foster basic research into dual-use technologies, such as AI, quantum technologies, sensing technologies and advanced materials, in 2017 ATLA expanded its funding capacity 18-fold, from 600 million yen to 11 billion yen, but the numbers of participating academic institutions have continued to decline since then. The opposition of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), the umbrella organisation for Japan’s scientific community, to its members taking part in such programmes has exacerbated this trend. In 2017, the SCJ released a statement that repeated its 1950 and 1967 statements, which pledged that the SCJ ‘will never become engaged in scientific research for military purposes’ and highlighted its concerns around government intervention in ATLA’s new R&D and funding mechanisms.

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Another challenge is the absence of Japan’s defence minister from the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI), a key forum that sits in the Cabinet Office and considers government policy in these areas, including the five-year Science and Technology Basic Plan. This significantly inhibits the application of strategic thinking on ways to deploy civilian technologies for military purposes. The exclusion of the defence minister from the Council since its 2001 founding, despite Article 29 of the 1999 Cabinet Office Establishment Act, which allows the prime minister to invite any cabinet ministers, suggest that this is a political decision.

The defence White Paper’s messages come at an important time. The disconnect between Japan’s academic institutions, its S&T strategy-making process, and the MoD, risks constraining developments in Japan’s advanced defence technology base, and will make it more difficult for Japan to keep up with the intensifying US–China technology competition. It also risks a leakage of dual-use technology to its competitors. Some Japanese universities are producing world-class research in areas that lie at the heart of the competition with China, such as quantum technologies.

 

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