Defenders of Japan: The Post-Imperial Armed Forces 1946-2016, a History by Garren Mulloy

Author:Garren Mulloy [Mulloy, Garren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780197606155
Google: bkBWzgEACAAJ
Published: 2021-08-15T16:06:24+00:00

Mobility

Since the 2004 NDPG, each defence review has stressed force mobility and transferred units to south-western Japan. During the Cold War, northwards reinforcement exercises were infrequent, the first held in 1977, and the first GSDF-US exercises in 1981.¹⁰⁹ Middle Army’s Northern Manoeuvre Special Exercises (Hokuhōkidō tokubetsuenshū) were held eight times (1987–2017), in summer, with light units of approximately 2,000 troops.¹¹⁰ The three 2013–17 exercises included amphibious embarkation-disembarkation training with MSDF landing vessels and Landing Craft Air-Cushion (LCAC), but only for one day, main transport being commercial ferries, the same pattern as in other RA, with implications for contingency planning.¹¹¹ Combined training with US forces was more frequent, under the Yamasakura (YS) banner, emphasizing command coordination, but critics relate coordinated but separate small units of different doctrines, minimally interacting.¹¹² The fast catamaran ferry Nanchan-World shipped GSDF forces to Kyushu for exercises from October 2011, prompting speculation that the MSDF would invest in these vessels for mobile force posture.¹¹³ The rail network was utilised for movements (with weight and width limitations, as Type-90 tanks could not be moved by rail), and in Hokkaido GSDF tanks drove to Tomakomai West Port on four occasions in 2011–2017, taking more than eight hours to complete 30km, with whole neighbourhoods woken as witnesses to the nocturnal, rumbling snail-like ‘rapid reaction reinforcement’ demonstration.¹¹⁴

Given that GSDF brigade-level amphibious operations were established by 2020 (see below), the relative lack of MSDF amphibious and logistical capacity is remarkable. The UK developed extensive sealift capacity after the Falklands Conflict revealed alarming weaknesses, peaking between the 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). A Japanese-built sealift ‘ro-ro’ (roll-on/roll-off ferry) was commissioned into the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA Sea Crusader), succeeded by six purpose-built Point-class RFA-Private Finance Initiative (PFI) vessels.¹¹⁵ This relatively cheap sealift capacity was complemented by four large Spanish-Dutch-designed RFA amphibious landing-dock auxiliaries and RN amphibious-warfare vessels.¹¹⁶ RFA crews varied from seventeen to sixty, so that a typical destroyer complement (200) could theoretically provide at least three transport vessel crews, two Point-class accommodating approximately an armoured brigade’s vehicles, more than the three MSDF Ōsumi-class combined. Ōsumi are more flexible ships, more survivable, performing multiple naval roles, but the MSDF has generally avoided large, cheap transporters that Japanese shipbuilders export.

Similarly, the MSDF has only five AOE to replenish warships, amphibious forces’ considerable consumption of supplies rendering them operationally limited without logistic reinforcement.¹¹⁷ In 1981, the logistics officer of Britain’s 3 Marine Brigade displayed three days’ training exercise supplies, shocking troops who later realised they required 9,000 tonnes of supplies, not including vehicles, in the Falklands Conflict.¹¹⁸ Such conspicuous operational consumption would be a major concern for the Forces as the ammunition budget declined more than 20 per cent 1990–2011, despite being a constant US focus for improvement.¹¹⁹ Sealift was partly addressed by the radical step of establishing a ‘special shipping company,’ Kosoku Marine Transport, with two ferries, the fast Nacchan World (Hokkaido), and slow Hakuo (Osaka), used commercially and for JSDF exercises and contingencies, crewed ultimately by twenty-one MSDF reservists, the first post-war civilian naval ‘operational reserves.

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