Over 50% of US oversea troop deployments are in Asia Pacific: NGO

A Chinese non-governmental organization issued reports on Wednesday on the 2013 military power of the US and Japan.

The reports, the third since 2012, were released by the China Strategy Culture Promotion Association.

Data for the two reports comes from official materials released by the US and Japan. Fan Gaoyue, researcher of the Academy of Military Science, says that this year's reports were composed by experts and researchers from the two countries.

The report on the US military pointed out that 56% of the country's troops who were stationed abroad – amounting to 154,100 personnel - were deployed in the Asia Pacific region last year. In 2012 the number was 145,400.

Among their foreign deployments, the Army reduced its numbers by 900, but the Navy, including the Marine Corps, added 8,800 members, and the Air Force added 800.

Troops stationed in Europe reached 74,300, 15,200 more than the previous year. The cut was about 17%. Currently, the US active duty troop strength is 1.372 million, of whom 273,500 are deployed overseas.

The report on the Japan noted that in 2013 the Defense budget of Japan has reached to 4.89 trillion yen (48 billion US dollars), an increase of 134 billion yen from the previous year - the first increase in 11 years. In the 2013 defense budget, arms procurement accounted for 39.7%.

Japan's Self-Defense Forces weapons and equipment procurement cost 744 billion yen (7.33 billion US dollars). This included 107.7 billion yen for aircraft, and 152.8 billion yen for naval vessels. New military equipment and technology research and development expenses amounted to 154 billion yen.