China Wearing Down Japan's Defense Force

Chasing Chinese Planes 400 Times a Year Is Wearing Out Japan's Top Guns

China outnumbers Japan almost eight-to-one in air force manpower and is building its capacity, debuting its newest stealth fighter in November. Even so, Chinese pilots lag their Japanese counterparts in training and experience, raising the risk of a near miss or collision. The fly-bys also highlight the obstacles to warmer ties between Asia’s two largest economies.

As the Japanese pilots on stand-by watch television, read and sip tea in a lounge, the atmosphere is tense, according to F-15 flying Fukuda, who goes by the call-sign Mars, the Roman god of war. To save time, they wait in the tight-fitting anti-G suits needed to protect them from otherwise deadly acceleration forces, and keep life jackets and helmets in their planes.

“A scramble is when something could actually start with another country,” he said. “You know you can’t make a mistake.”

...China is rapidly expanding its air force -- boasting a total of 398,000 personnel according to a 2013 White Paper on defense. It is updating its equipment and training to catch up with its neighbor, long seen as the benchmark for the region. Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force has about 50,000 personnel.