The Defense Ministry is considering a plan to employ former Maritime Self-Defense Force members as crew on MSDF vessels for the first time, to make up for a worsening shortage of personnel due to a sharp drop in the birth rate and other factors, ministry sources said.
The move is aimed at resolving the shortage of personnel by hiring former MSDF members who reached the mandatory retirement age and assigning them to fuel transport ships, while shifting active personnel from those ships to vessels engaged in frontline duties.
Reemployed personnel will likely be assigned to ships that operate in ports and coastal waters to store and supply fuel for destroyers. The MSDF currently possesses about 20 small oilers, and will build two large tankers within this fiscal year. The number of crew members is between a handful and a dozen per ship, and the MSDF expects to fill most of these slots with former personnel. It will expand the assignment of former officials to other non-combat vessels, if doing so causes no hindrance to their operations.
According to the Defense Ministry, a reassignment program for retired Self-Defense Forces personnel was introduced in fiscal 2001, with a total of 951 people working under the program as of the end of fiscal 2017. The upper limit on the age of such personnel has been set at 65. They are paid between 60 percent to 80 percent of what they had been paid during their active service.
Their tasks require a lesser degree of physical strength, such as desk work for general affairs or accounting. The task of boarding ships is not included in the list of jobs available for rehired personnel, and the ministry hopes to change the current directive in order to utilize former personnel as soon as possible.
Despite a growing number of tasks assigned to the MSDF, such as monitoring North Korean ships engaged in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of goods, as well as patrol activities in waters around the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, the number of personnel has remained at the same level due to budget restrictions, and it has been common for the number of crew members to fall below the quota.
The number of applicants to become MSDF personnel especially has continued to decline due to such tough job assignments as sailing for extended periods. The low birth rate will further make it difficult for the MSDF to secure personnel in the future, and the MSDF has considered it necessary to make use of former officials.
For the "toughness" required in SDF, an early-age retirement system has been adopted whereby personnel retire at ages between 53 and 56 if they have not been promoted to a general officer. The retirement age has been raised in stages, but a senior SDF official said, "Many of them retire while still retaining their vigor."
The MSDF wants to assign former officials to auxiliary services such as on oilers, then sending young active officials to frontline tasks such as on destroyers.
According to the National Defense Program Guidelines approved at a Cabinet meeting in December, "Reinforcing human resource base" is stipulated as one of the priorities in strengthening defense capability. The MSDF has taken various measures to conserve its personnel, such as by introducing 12 patrol boats that are downsized to trim the number of members required aboard as well as deploying female officials for the first time on submarines.
"Securing SDF personnel is an issue closely related to national security," a defense ministry official said. "We'd like to take any possible measures to recruit personnel in a stable manner, on top of the use of former officials."
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