U.S. and Japanese officials have held their first talks under a new framework to deepen defense-industrial collaboration, taking the security relationship to new heights as the allies partner in repairing U.S. warships and aircraft in Japan and jointly developing and producing advanced weapons.
The two days of talks that ended Monday marked the inaugural meeting of the Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition and Sustainment (DICAS) forum, a newly established mechanism to identify areas for closer industrial cooperation following Tokyo’s revision of its strict defense export guidelines in March.
A key focus of DICAS — an evolutionary reorganization of the U.S.-Japan Systems and Technology Forum — will be integrating the allies’ defense-industrial bases to facilitate co-development and co-production of missiles and other military assets.
At the same time, the forum will explore the joint maintenance of forward-deployed U.S. warships and aircraft, including fourth-generation fighter jets, at Japanese commercial facilities.
“It’s clear that the United States military-industrial base cannot meet all the strategic challenges and obligations we have, and we now need to think anew about how to do that,” U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel told reporters Monday.
U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante and Masaki Fukasawa, the commissioner of Japan’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, co-chaired the opening of the talks, where the two sides met with private companies from each country.
At the gathering, the two sides agreed on a set of guiding principles that include a focus on mutually beneficial projects and working together to overcome identified challenges and hurdles.
One key goal of the forum, Emanuel said, is to figure out how Japanese companies can help expand production of jointly fielded weapons systems that the U.S. can’t make in sufficient numbers. DICAS, he added, will not only examine the type of weapons to be co-produced but also how they will be maintained and what can be done to speed up these processes.
The U.S. envoy noted several factors that prompted the creation of the forum, including a shrinking U.S. defense-industrial base and an urgent need to increase stockpiles of certain weapons that have been eroded by Washington’s support for Ukraine and Israel, as well as its defense commitments across the globe.
Inventories of key weapons in the U.S. arsenal such as anti-tank projectiles have fallen significantly since the Ukraine war began, Emanuel said, noting that it would take the Pentagon between 18 months and two years to fully restock these.
“Those who want to do harm to the United States are not going to wait for our industrial capacity to build itself up,” he added, emphasizing that Japan’s engineering and industrial base represents “a solution to that problem.”
Japan acquires much of its advanced defense equipment from the U.S., meaning that the allies possess a number of jointly fielded weapon systems. This provides a logical basis from which to make easy decisions on what to co-produce as they work to implement lessons taken from the DICAS forum, said Jeffrey Hornung, a senior political scientist and Japan lead at the Rand Corp.
“Items that both countries currently do not have in large quantities are the likely low-hanging fruits they could aim for, with things like munitions, such as Patriot interceptors or other types of antiair or anti-ship munitions, being perfect candidates,” he said.
In terms of co-development, the key lies in finding that “unicorn” of a capability that neither has developed or deployed in large numbers but both require, he said, citing hypersonic missiles and various unmanned systems as potentially promising ideas.
Under DICAS, four committees or working groups have already been established, each with a different focus ranging from ship and aircraft repairs to missile production and supply chain resilience, Emanuel said.
The first of those working groups — one focused on ship repair and maintenance — held its inaugural meeting Tuesday.
Consisting of representatives from the U.S. Navy and Maritime Self-Defense Force, as well as private companies from both countries, this group’s goal is to improve the operational readiness of forward-deployed U.S. warships by having them serviced in the region they operate in, instead of back in the United States. Such a move would not only help the Pentagon reduce domestic servicing backlogs, but also save money.
In a speech to the ship repair group, Fukasawa highlighted the strategic importance of this move.
“Increasing the opportunities for U.S. naval vessels to undergo (maintenance, repair and overhaul) at Japanese shipyards will contribute to the readiness of U.S. forces and strengthening the deterrence of the alliance as a whole,” he said.
The main goal, Emanuel told the same event, is to figure out how to leverage each country’s capacity to enhance collective deterrence.
It would take years to get U.S. shipyards to achieve the production capacity currently required, he said, noting that those are years “we cannot afford from a strategic standpoint.”
It remains unclear, however, just how many U.S. warships Japanese private shipyards would be able to sustain at any given time. Also, not all ship types would come into consideration, with Emanuel emphasizing that U.S. nuclear-powered vessels such as submarines and aircraft carriers would be “off-limits.”
At the same time, the ambassador left no doubt as to who Washington and Tokyo are competing against.
“China has a major capacity. We already know they will surpass us on new shipbuilding, so every day that we are doing maintenance means we are not building something new,” he said.
But while Washington sees Tokyo as a crucial element in bolstering its strained defense production base, there are concerns that Japan might end up as a de facto subcontractor due to weaknesses in its domestic defense industry, said Misato Matsuoka, an associate professor at Teikyo University. Extensive discussion, she said, will be required to avoid this.
Robert Ward, a Japan expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, echoed this view, saying that while defense-industrial collaboration makes strategic sense for the two countries, their capability asymmetry is glaring.
“The U.S. boasts what remains the world’s most formidable defense-industrial base, while Japan’s is fragmented, lacks scale and has been hamstrung by the historic reluctance of many civilian scientists and researchers to work on national defense projects,” he said.
Although there has been some progress, structural issues in areas such as security clearance and the resilience of Japan’s cyberdefenses also remain, Ward said.
Some say these fears may be overblown.
Whether it be helping sustain the U.S. Navy, jointly producing arms that the SDF can use or co-developing future high-tech weaponry that is more efficient and economically feasible, there are many potential benefits for Japan, Hornung said.
Japan, he noted, has historically had only one client — the SDF — a fact that “has stunted the growth” of its defense industries. Mechanisms such as DICAS could provide these companies “a much needed lifeline that they may not otherwise have.”
Nevertheless, the defense-industrial tie-up — and more broadly Japan’s shedding of some of its postwar defense constraints — have stoked concerns that Tokyo could find itself entangled in escalating security tensions around the globe, Matsuoka said.
Others have noted the growing possibility of a regional arms race as the U.S. and China compete to gain a military advantage, with ostensibly pacifist Japan stuck in the middle.
For now, though, these fears have been outweighed by concerns over what Tokyo says is an increasingly fraught security environment.
https://freedom-vaca.org/vaca-blog-tieng-viet-nam/
https://freedom-vaca.org/vaca-main-blog-english-articles/
Sent with Proton Mail secure email.