Japan Press Weekly

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2021 June 23 - 29 [POLITICS]

Purchase of US weapons and weapons systems come in 1st with 420.2 billion yen, far exceeding 2nd-place Japanese firm

The contract value of weapons from the United States under the U.S. administration's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) totaled 420.2 billion yen in fiscal 2020, coming in the first place and far exceeding the second-place Japanese firm of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

This was revealed on June 28 in a response from Japan's Defense Ministry to an inquiry by Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Inoue Satoshi.

The former Abe government gave in to pressure from the U.S. administration led by former President Donald Trump to purchase a large quantity of U.S.-made weapons. The continuous procurement of the costly U.S. weapons has been allowing a great deal of Japanese taxpayers' money to flow to the U.S. war industry. Under the U.S. FMS program, it is the U.S. administration that can decide the price and the date of delivery of its weapons systems and military equipment. This partially explains the continuous increase in Japan's military budget.

According to the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, major procurement items in FY2020 included three F-35A stealth fighters and six F-35B fighters (115.7billion yen), four KC-46 air tankers (105 billion yen), and components of the E-2D early warning aircraft (38 billion yen).