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5www.mod.go.jp/en/jdf/ATLA newly established “Defense Innovation Science and Technology Institute (DISTI)” in Tokyo in October 2024 to significantly enhance the ability to create defense innovation and epoch-making equipment. Rapid progress in science and technology is fundamentally changing society and ways of warfare. At the DISTI, we conduct Breakthrough Research, Think Tank activities on advanced science and technology and administer funding pro-gram of Innovative Science and Technology Initiatives for Security.As part of Breakthrough Research, we conduct Disruptive Breakthrough Research. In this research, we set challenging goals and take risk to foster innovative and cutting-edge technologies towards creation of new functions and technologies that are not extensions of the past under the leadership of program managers recruited outside industry, research institutes and academia.As submarine capabilities advance, detection using sound waves becomes increasingly difficult, one idea of the Disruptive Breakthrough Research subject could boldly take up the chal-lenge of creating innovative functions using elementary particles to detect previously undetectable objects.Another program for the Break-through Research is Spin-on based Breakthrough Research which inte-grates various technologies possessed by industry or entities outside the ministry into functions and capabili-ties. We aim to quickly deploy those functions and capabilities necessary for future warfare on battlefields.Through the Think Tank activity, we analyze science and technology trends and examine how we can best use those technologies to transform soci-ety and defense capability of Japan.In the Innovative Science and Tech-nology Initiatives for Security, we solicit and fund a wide range of advanced basic research from universities, research insti-tutes and businesses. We expect the research results to be widely used in commercial sector.The DISTI aims to create innovation through the interaction among experts of diverse tal-ents in an open environment. Director of DISTI Katayama talked about its slogan; “The DISTI’s slogan is “change”. Change does not merely mean changing the ways or creating new ways of our warfighting but to change drastically the old systems, rules, education, and values and culture of warf-ighters, which are deeply rooted in our organization. To do so, we need to expand the breadth of information as broadly as possible and discover revolutionary technologies that can significantly impact our lifestyles and change the very nature of society, as GPS and the Internet have done. In other words, changing how society works naturally changes how we fight in the battlefields. We are considering an approach that is not limited to im-proving defense technology, which is bound to change.”Establishment of the Defense Innovation Establishment of the Defense Innovation Science and Technology Institute (DISTI)Science and Technology Institute (DISTI)