Photo/Illutration A high-altitude balloon floats over Billings, Montana, on Feb. 1. (The Billings Gazette via AP)

An incursion into Japanese airspace is a violation of Japan’s sovereignty, and the nation has every right to make strict responses to such violations.

But the act of shooting down a flying object violating Japan’s airspace, even if it is an unmanned aircraft, could heighten tensions in the region, depending on the circumstances.

Clear rules for taking military action and exercising cautious judgment are required in dealing with such cases.

The Defense Ministry has decided to ease the requirements for the Self-Defense Forces to use weapons to destroy trespassing foreign unmanned airborne vehicles including balloons and airships.

The relaxed rules will allow the SDF to shoot down such vehicles when it is necessary to protect “the lives and properties of people on the ground” or to ensure “the safety of aircraft traveling in air routes,” even if the action is not for “self-defense” or “necessity defense.”

Legally allowed responses to airspace violations are defined in Article 84 of the SDF law. It says the defense minister can take “necessary measures” for forcing a trespassing flying vehicle to land at the nearest airport or forcing it to leave Japanese airspace. The necessary measures are interpreted to include using weapons.

Since this provision was designed to deal with cases involving manned military aircraft, use of weapons that threatens the life of the pilot is limited to cases of self-defense or necessity defense, basically when the foreign aircraft fights back or otherwise makes a threatening response to the SDF’s action.

Since it is unlikely that an unmanned balloon or airship will launch an attack, the current rules can hamper effective SDF responses to airspace violations involving such flying objects.

The ministry has decided to relax the requirements on the grounds that shooting down unmanned airborne objects will not result in a death.

The SDF’s use of weapons needs to be based on strict rules. It is important to deal quickly with any related legal issues as they arise. But the ministry’s decision, made in the wake of the U.S. military action to shoot down a Chinese balloon, was a hasty move that was not well thought out.

There were three reported incidents of a balloon flying over Japan between 2019 and 2021. In the case reported in 2020, then Defense Minister Taro Kono said it posed “no security threat.” “Ask the balloon,” he quipped when he was asked about its course.

The ministry recently announced it has strong reasons to believe that unidentified objects spotted in Japan’s airspace between 2019 and 2021 were Chinese spy balloons. But it did not show any signs of recognizing these objects as serious security problems when they were spotted.

Three of the four flying objects shot down recently by the U.S. military are suspected to be civilian in nature. Experts have also pointed out the possibility that the Chinese balloon that was brought down first might have veered off its course due to winds and reached American airspace.

These facts clearly point to the technological difficulty of knowing for sure the purposes and characteristics of such flying objects.

How is it possible to detect balloons flying into Japanese airspace and determine whether they are civilian balloons or military vehicles that should be shot down? Aren’t there any technological difficulties for Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets to bring down such objects? These and many other questions remain unanswered.

There have been many reports about Chinese unmanned aviation vehicles (UAVs), or drones, operating around Okinawa Prefecture and other parts of Japan, if not within Japanese airspace. The relaxed rules will also be applied to UAVs.

To ensure there will be no unforeseen and dangerous incidents involving Chinese drones, Japan should swiftly step up its bilateral political dialogue with China.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 18

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