Defense Intelligence Headquarters - History

History

Back in the 1980s, the former Japanese Defense Agency had several intelligence divisions with different duties. Among these intelligence division in the Defense Agency had included those from the Central Data Command Unit, the Joint Staff Council's Second Office and the three branches of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. 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 Diet of Japan had passed a law on 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 as part of augmenting the DIH's intelligence gathering capabilities. Though two were able to launch into space, two more were destroyed in a botch attempt to send them to space.

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

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