US ambassador wants Japan to become a drone production hub for the alliance

The United States ambassador to Japan, George Glass, has proposed turning Japan into a production hub for military drones that would serve the US-Japan alliance across the Indo-Pacific, according to a report in the Nikkei newspaper that was relayed on Sunday 25 October by two South Korean outlets, the Financial News and The Asia Business Daily. Glass made the remarks on Saturday 24 October at a US-Japan strategic dialogue in Tokyo.

The Financial News said the forum, which it called the Fuji meeting, was jointly organised by the Japan Center for Economic Research and the Japan Institute of International Affairs. According to that report, Glass described the drone industry as the next area of success for cooperation between the two countries and said the moment had come to pair American technological know-how with Japanese manufacturing capacity.

The Asia Business Daily framed the proposal as a way to strengthen deterrence against China and North Korea. It reported that Glass warned that provocations by hostile forces were becoming more brazen and said joint US-Japan drone development offered a chance to build both a solid industrial base and a production hub.

The idea draws on how cheap drones have changed fighting in Ukraine, where large numbers of inexpensive unmanned aircraft have repeatedly been used to strike far more costly military equipment, the Financial News noted. Drone makers such as Anduril Industries have grown in prominence among American defence technology companies, while Japan has a deep parts supply chain and production base built up by its car industry. Glass said he wanted to widen cooperation by joining those manufacturing strengths with US technology, according to the report.

Glass pointed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the conflict between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other as signs of a worsening security environment. He said threats were also rising in the Indo-Pacific and that the alliance needed to strengthen its deterrence capabilities quickly. Both outlets reported that he rejected China's description of Japan's defence build-up as a new form of militarism, calling the charge unreasonable and an attempt to obscure the real issue.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a video message to the same gathering in which she called the alliance the cornerstone of Japan's foreign and security policy, the Financial News reported. She said that, building on her meeting and phone call with President Donald Trump in September, Tokyo would further strengthen the alliance's deterrence and response capabilities.

The remarks come as the Japanese government works to revise its three main security documents by the end of the year. The Asia Business Daily reported that the Ministry of Defense is planning to write the introduction of long-range attack drones into the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Buildup Program, as part of its effort to acquire counterstrike capability against enemy bases. Neither report described a specific programme, partner company, budget or timetable for the drone production that Glass proposed.