The Defense Ministry's budget requests for fiscal 2018 hit a record ¥5.25 trillion, a 2.5 percent increase from the initial budget for this year. The rise reflects plans to upgrade the nation's missile defense capabilities in light of North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs — a threat that was highlighted once again this week when an intermediate-range ballistic missile fired by Pyongyang flew over Hokkaido. It is important to beef up the missile defense system to serve as a shield against possible attacks. Still, the spending requests need to be scrutinized item by item to see if they serve their intended purpose given the nation's tight fiscal conditions.
The combined funding requests from ministries and agencies submitted by the Thursday deadline exceeded ¥100 trillion for the fourth year in a row, although that amount will be pared by the Finance Ministry as the requests undergo screening until the draft budget is compiled by the end of the year. Both budget requests and the government's actual budget keep rising as social security expenses increase with the rapid aging of the nation's population. Amid lukewarm efforts by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to rein in rising public expenditures, the goal of achieving a primary balance surplus by fiscal 2020 remains elusive, while the combined debts of national and local governments have topped ¥1 quadrillion.
Defense spending has increased five years in a row since Abe returned to the government's helm, with the fiscal 2017 defense budget hitting a record ¥5.125 trillion. The Defense Ministry's requests for fiscal 2018 include ¥47.2 billion to buy the SM-3 Block IIA, an improved interceptor missile being developed by the United States and Japan, to be deployed aboard Maritime Self-Defense Force Aegis destroyers, as well as ¥20.5 billion to obtain the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, an improved version of the Air Self-Defense Force's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 surface-to-air guided interceptor missile. The Standard Missile-3 interceptors installed on the Aegis ships, tasked with stopping missiles in the outer atmosphere, and the PAC-3 missiles deployed at SDF bases constitute the two layers of Japan's ballistic missile defense system.