Sunday’s Sankei wrote that the GOJ is pressing the USG to improve the administration of the foreign military sales (FMS) program since the delivery deadlines for purchased defense hardware have frequently not been met. According to the article, Tokyo is also unhappy with certain elements of the FMS mechanism because sometimes the U.S. has allegedly refused to quote prices for orders and prices have been raised after contracts were signed. But since Japan is not permitted to import advanced weapons systems from U.S. defense manufacturers directly, it has no option other than to rely on the government-sponsored FMS system to procure state-of-the-art defense equipment at a time when the security situation surrounding Japan is becoming increasingly harsh.