ISTANBUL

Japan's Defense Ministry requested a record 8.8 trillion yen ($59.9 billion) budget Friday for fiscal year 2026 with a focus on missiles and drones, according to Kyodo News.

The request includes about 1 trillion yen for "standoff" missiles capable of hitting targets while staying outside the striking range of adversaries; 39.2 billion yen for high-speed glide weapons designed for the defense of the southwestern remote islands and 30.5 billion yen for hypersonic guided missiles.

About 517.4 billion yen is planned for the reinforcement of air defense capabilities by improving missile detection and tracking systems and 312.8 billion yen will be set aside to purchase aerial and underwater drones.

The largest ever initial budget of the ministry was recorded in the 2025 fiscal year of 8.5 trillion yen.

Japan had decided in 2023 to spend 43 trillion yen for the next five years.

The East Asian nation's GDP in 2024 was $4 trillion yen.

It had been keeping its annual defense budget under 1% of GDP until 2022, due to a post-World War II pacifist stance under the war-renouncing Constitution.

But in 2022, Tokyo pledged to increase its defense budget to 2% of GDP by fiscal 2027, amid rising tensions and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war that began earlier that year.

The request does not include expenses related to hosting US military bases, which cost approximately 200 billion yen annually.

Okinawa hosts 31 US-exclusive military facilities, accounting for 70.3% of such sites in Japan in terms of land area. The island is home to roughly half of the 50,000 US troops deployed in the country under a security pact.