Japanese military announces new policy to shoot down all UFOs including balloons and drones
Japanese self-defence forces will be able to use weapons, including air-to-air missiles, to bring down balloons intruding into its airspace
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Your support makes all the difference.Japan’s security forces will now be allowed to consider unidentified drones as legitimate targets to be shot down, the country’s defence minister said on Friday.
The latest guideline is among the Fumio Kishida administration’s plans to ease rules for weapons use by the Self Defence Forces (SDF) to shoot down aerial objects that violate Japanese airspace, reported Kyodo news.
This comes as the administration is also assessing the requirements surrounding the SDF’s ability to shoot down unidentified flying objects after several were spotted crossing the country’s skies in the past few years, which the Japanese officials suspect to be unmanned Chinese spy balloons.
On Wednesday, the Japanese defence ministry said that it carried out a fresh “analysis of specific balloon-shaped flying objects previously identified in Japanese airspace, including those in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021”.
Defence minister Yasukazu Hamada said the SDF will be allowed to use weapons, including air-to-air missiles, to bring down balloons intruding into its airspace, Kyodo reported.
The government concluded that the balloons are strongly presumed to be unmanned reconnaissance balloons flown by China, the ministry said.
It added that Tokyo “strongly demanded China’s government confirm the facts” of the incident and “that such a situation not occur again in the future”.
“Violations of airspace by foreign unmanned reconnaissance balloons and other means are totally unacceptable.”
On the same day, senior lawmakers in Japan’s governing party said they were mulling over expanding the SDF law to also include violations of Japanese airspace by foreign balloons.
Prior to this move by the defence ministry, security forces in Japan could only use weapons for legitimate self-defence or to avoid clear and present danger. Under the SDF law, Japan stipulates that "necessary measures" can be taken to expel foreign aircraft or make them land if they entered Japan’s skies.
The three unidentified flying objects were spotted in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in November 2019, and the northeastern prefectures of Miyagi and Aomori in June 2020 and September 2021, respectively, ministry officials said.
Officials in Beijing presented a backlash to Japan’s announcement and accused the Kishida administration of “making up stories to smear and attack China” without any “clear evidence”.
“We are firmly opposed to this,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said earlier this week, as she defended China as "a responsible country" that has "never infringed on any sovereign country’s territory or airspace".
The Xi Jinping administration said that it was unaware of any past flying objects spotted in Japan.
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