Defense Intelligence Headquarters

History

Back in the 1980s, the former Defense Agency had several intelligence divisions with different duties. Among these intelligence divisions in the Defense Agency had included those from the Central Data Command Unit, the Joint Staff Council's Second Office and the three branches from the chiefs of staff in the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). Most of the DIH's establishment was based on the Annex Chamber (or Special Annex), Second Intelligence Division, Ground Staff Office. They collected signals from the Sino–Soviet border conflict of 1969 and the Soviet Afghan war of 1979. They were also involved in intercepting communications that led to and after the shooting of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 through the Wakkanai Station.

A supposed plan to integrate the intelligence divisions of the three JSDF branches started in 1988 before lack of cooperation and subordination ended it.

Plans to consolidate all the intelligence bureaus of the old Defense Administration into one agency had started in the 1990s after the National Diet had passed a law in May 1996, calling for the creation of a central military intelligence agency before the DIH was eventually established on January 20, 1997 after intelligence units from the JSDF, Japanese Defense Agency and the Joint Staff council are united with the appointment of Lieutenant General Kunimi Masahiro as the agency's first commanding officer.

Initially, DIH civilian and military staff members were numbered at 1,580 with a planned manpower of 2,000 personnel before it reached its current manpower of 2,300 staff members. In 2011, the manpower is 1,907 members

Spy satellites had been planned for launch in 1998 in order to augment the DIH's intelligence gathering capabilities. Though two were able to launch into space, two more were destroyed in a botched attempt to send them to space.

In 2005, the DIH suffered its first internal leak of classified information when a Colonel in the JASDF was arrested for allegedly leaking information regarding an accident involving a People's Liberation Army Navy Submarine that took place that same year in the South China Sea.

The DIH announced in 2006 that a liaison office had been established in Washington, D.C., with the National Security Agency.

By FY 2027, the DIH plans to use AI to automate intelligence collection through OSINT and future forecast functions.

Known activities

• After a North Korean Taepodong-1 ballistic missile had been launched on August 31, 1998, JSDF ships and aircraft began to search the Sea of Japan to collect any debris of the missile with the DIH providing intelligence support such as dispatching North Korean specialists to the United States over the matter.
• North Korean radio communications were intercepted by the SIGINT division's Kikaijima, Kagoshima radio monitoring station. The successful interception of North Korean communications later led to a naval shootout between ships of the Japan Coast Guard and a suspected North Korean spy boat in 2001 near the island of Amami-Ōshima before the latter had been destroyed.
• The DIH had provided intelligence to JGSDF forces that were deployed in Indonesia during the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake.
• Using a signals intelligence facility in Tachiarai, the DIH reportedly monitor communications from transiting satellites for Cybersecurity as part of a program codenamed MALLARD. The program reportedly intercepts more than 12 million Internet communications per day.
• In May 2019, several Chinese JH7 fighter-bombers conducted a training exercise over the high seas of the East China Sea, using a JMSDF destroyer as a target for attack. The JSDF side is said to have intercepted radio transmissions emitted by the Chinese warplanes stating that they were training to attack the Maritime Self-Defense Force ships as targets.