The Defense Ministry intends to extend the retirement age of Self-Defense Forces personnel by up to five years to solve a shortage of SDF personnel, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
The ministry will consider raising the mandatory retirement age by 1 to 5 years from fiscal 2020 depending on rank. If realized, it will be the first attempt since the last extensions were introduced for each rank in phases between fiscal 1990 and fiscal 1996.
SDF personnel are specially appointed national public servants who engage in important tasks and retire at a relatively young age under the "early retirement system," which is different from national public servants doing regular work whose retirement age is set at age 60.
The retirement ages are set based on ranks such as classes of general/admiral, colonel/captain, captain/lieutenant and sergeant/petty officer. The retirement age of lieutenant general and major general, for example, is 60, while that of sergeant 1st class and sergeant is 53.
The ministry will later discuss to what extent it will postpone their retirement within the range of by 1 to 5 years.
It will likely stipulate securing personnel as an important item in the National Defense Program Guidelines to be drawn up at the end of this year.
In relation to this event, the government decided Monday to set up an expert panel to discuss security and defense capacity and include their proposed ideas in the guidelines.
The SDF have been suffering from a chronic shortage of personnel. In fiscal 2016, the quotas for the Ground, Maritime and Air Self-Defense forces were a total of 247,154. The sufficiency rate of higher-ranking personnel is about 93 percent.
With the envisioned postponement of the retirement age, if veteran personnel rich in experience remain in the forces, it is expected to secure ample time to pass down to younger personnel such technical knowledge as how to deal with and use equipment.
As about 200,000 SDF personnel will be subject to the extension of retirement ages, the ministry plans to apply the system over several years. The ministry intends not to change the number of total SDF personnel to minimize the expansion of the ministry's personnel as much as possible.
The cost of "manpower and rations," which is the wage and food cost for personnel at bases, is 2.185 trillion yen in fiscal 2018, which accounts for about 40 percent of the nation's defense budget.
Concerning the lowest ranks of private/seaman/airman, as they are in a fixed-term employment system that does not presuppose lifetime employment, they will not likely be subject to the envisioned retirement expansion.
The ministry plans to raise the upper limit on the hiring age from the current "up to 26" to "up to 32" for SDF cadets who will serve as a private, seaman apprentice or airman for a fixed term of two to three years as well as for general cadets to become sergeant/petty officers, the rank that accounts for more than half of SDF personnel.
The ministry plans to revise relevant rules and make them come into effect in October. It hopes to open the door to SDF positions to those who have experience working in civilian society.
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