The first of the main contingent of the Air Self-Defense Force will leave the ASDF base in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, on Thursday to assist efforts to rebuild Iraq, according to government sources.
About 100 ASDF members are scheduled to arrive in Kuwait on a government plane Friday afternoon. They will join some 40 members of an advance team that has been stationed at Ali Al Salem Air Base in western Kuwait since late December.
One of the government's two Boeing 747 jets flew from Chitose air base near Sapporo to Komaki base Wednesday afternoon to prepare for the transportation of the ASDF main unit.
The ASDF will airlift such items as food, medicine and other goods between Kuwait and Iraq as part of Japan's assistance toward Iraq's postwar reconstruction.
Members of the the main ASDF contingent will be joined by a second group, which is likely to travel from Komaki base to Kuwait on three C-130 transport planes next week, the sources said.
In light of the potential danger of attack in Baghdad and its vicinity, the ASDF has equipped its C-130 planes with antimissile countermeasures.
The core units are expected to transport mostly relief assistance supplies, though it is also possible that they will carry armed U.S. and British troops on the transport planes.
The outline of the government's basic plan for the dispatch says the SDF members will not transport arms and ammunition.
The government believes an operational adjustment to the basic plan would make it possible for the ASDF personnel to transport armed soldiers.