Japan will be adopting new guidelines for defence from the oncoming weeks in response to the perceived security threats it faces from China and North Korea, according to an official from the ruling party on Thursday.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is set to approve rules intended improve the collaboration between the air, land and sea forces of Japan for effective and strong response to danger, an official from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) told the agencies.
China and Japan are involved in a bilateral clash over the sovereignty of a small island chain in East China Sea. The clash became stronger over the year as both China and Japan took up defensive positions.
The legislators in the government approved of the new defence plan and called it a “Dynamic Joint Defence Force”, the official said.
“For the first time, we will be able to obtain mobility, or the capability to deploy swiftly in an integrated manner,” Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said Thursday.
“When we deploy troops to remote islands… we need to respond with ground, marine and air defence forces,” Onodera said in a speech at a private think tank in Tokyo. He further added that the country’s military had to be alert to a possible “intrusion from the sea”.
