TOKYO - JAPAN is to consider using unmanned aircraft for surveillance flights, a newspaper reported on Thursday, at a time of heightened tensions with neighbouring China and North Korea.
Japan will send military officials to the United States, which uses the cutting-edge Global Hawk high-altitude surveillance aircraft, to study how they operate and maintain the drones, the Yomiuri daily said.
The defence ministry will start fully fledged research in the next fiscal year starting in April, and intends to make a final decision on whether to deploy such aircraft by the end of fiscal 2015, according to the report.
The drones can fly at an altitude of 18,000m and have a surveillance radius of 550km in any direction, the daily said.
Three of them would cover Japan and surrounding maritime territories, it said.
The report did not say where Japan might deploy the drones or say whether they would be used to overfly foreign territories. -- AFP
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