2/10/2024 0 Comments Japanese tanks modern 2017![]() As a result, the GSDF is developing rapid-deployment divisions and brigades, including a new unit trained specifically in amphibious warfare. Tanks would still be essential if China were to attack Japan's larger offshore islands, where thousands of people live. Japanese troops exit an armored vehicle during an exercise, August 30, 2003. "Instead, they see that you have all these islands in the southwest island chain that if the GSDF are going to be involved in, they have to rapidly get there, and they have to have the capability to fight in that environment," Hornung added. "They don't anticipate China doing any sort of amphibious invasion of Japanese territory, and so in that environment they don't see a need for the heavy artillery and tanks." Hornung said. Japanese leaders believe that since China is not trying to export global revolution like the Soviet Union and is focused on just the Senkakus, a large-scale ground invasion of its home islands is unlikely. That threat is primarily in the air and at sea, and centers on the Senkaku Islands, which Japan administers but China claims, calling them the Diaoyu Islands. "It starts to crystallize, really in the last decade, decade and a half, where it's the China threat," Hornung told Insider. "As we got farther from the Cold War and different threats arose, Japan started to shift overall defense thinking about where the real threat is emanating from," said Jeffrey Hornung, an expert on Japanese security and foreign policies at the RAND Corporation. CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesĪdopting lighter tanks may seem counterintuitive, but it actually fits perfectly within the force the JSDF is building - one capable of dealing with the new threat posed to Japan's southwest by China. A Type 16 during a live-fire exercise in Japan, May 23, 2020. ![]()
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