JMSDF members participate in cyber offensive and defensive drills.
By Li Hai
Japan's Ministry of Defense recently announced plans to establish a new Fleet Information Warfare command for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) to enhance the ability to engage in comprehensive information warfare. The move, as a part of JMSDF's latest restructuring, marked a new step to enhance its layout for cyber and information warfare.
According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, the new Fleet Information Warfare Command will encompass former information-related units, including JMSDF's Communications Command, the Fleet Intelligence Command, and the Oceanography ASW Support Command, aiming to enhance JMSDF's comprehensive information warfare capabilities. Kenji Yoshinaga, a former intelligence officer in the JMSDF, said the Fleet Information Warfare is modeled on the US Fleet Cyber Command/US 10th Fleet both in terms of functions and organizational structure. According to him, in addition to grasping and analyzing the movements of enemy forces, the new command will be responsible for a wide range of information warfare tasks, such as submarine sound signature analysis, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, and C4ISR. It will be regarded as JMSDF's "brain".
In recent years, the JSDF has reorganized its command and management system and continued to strengthen its cyber warfare capabilities. In 2024, it has spent 230.3 billion Yen (about US$1.625 billion) implementing this concept. Japan's new National Defense Strategy also stated that greater security in the cyber information system is JSDF's priority both at present and in the foreseeable future.
At the moment, JSDF's cyber offensive and defensive force is one of the joint combat forces in normal operation, comprising the cyber-related unit and the cyber defense unit. The cyber-related unit has expanded from 890 members in March 2023 to 2,230 and will continue to swell to more than 4,000 by 2027, while the cyber defense unit, a land-sea-air joint combat unit newly formed in March 2022 as JSDF's core force for cyber offensives and defensives, will grow from the current 730 members to 880 by 2025.
Analysts said that given the feature of cyber-information integration in JSDF and the background of the so-called surrounding incident for the formation of cyber offensive and defensive forces, it can be inferred that once the new Fleet Information Warfare command is in place, JSDF's cyber/information warfare forces will take a series of cyberattack operations on the principle of confidentiality and surprise attack. These may include attacking the enemy's military supplies and combat support systems, disrupting its logistics support plan and various communications systems, and attacking basic infrastructure networks bearing on the national economy and people's livelihood, covering communication, military industry, agriculture, energy, and water and power supply facilities, thus causing social chaos and taking the opportunity to smear and slander the enemy nation.
To establish a joint combat system, JSDF has also taken strong measures to integrate its central command and control system with the command and communication systems of the ground, maritime and air self-defense forces to put in place an information sharing system to facilitate connectivity. In its 2025 defense budget request, the Japanese Defense Ministry stressed the importance of possessing the ability to share intelligence in real-time and creating the posture of seamless information collection.
With Japan significantly enhancing its cyber and information offensive and defensive capabilities, we cannot exclude the possibility that it may create and engage in regional conflict by way of providing information support and other related means, a trend that calls for close attention and high vigilance.
