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Publish Date : 06-Nov-2015

Japanese new agency for defense equipment procurement has been tasked with using modern civilian technology for public purposes and needs to learn from the United States how to reduce the cost of procurement and boost its efficiency.

Addressing a think tank in Washington on Wednesday, Hideaki Watanabe, commissioner of the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, said the agency's main challenge is to "secure a technological advantage" over other countries in the face of an increasingly uncertain security situation around Japan.

Part of the Defense Ministry, the agency, was formed on Sunday and its tasks include handling foreign transfers of weapons and other defense equipment under the relaxed arms export rules adopted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government in 2014, which marked a major shift from Japan's decades-old arms embargo policy.

He said, "Our big challenge is how better to utilize advanced technology in the private sector for the purpose of (national) defense in an efficient and effective manner."

The veteran defense bureaucrat who earlier led the ministrys Technical Research and Development Institute said "materials, sensors and robots," are the strong points of Japanese defense technology.

Watanabe said the fledgling agency requires U.S. advice to streamline procurement, which has so far involved many entities and sections in the ministry as well as the Self-Defense Forces.

He added, "We're ready to listen to any good advice about how to procure defense equipment more cheaply and quickly as the SDF will need more highly advanced equipment to respond to the severe security situation in the future."

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