US Navy Pacific Commander Boards Japanese Warship – Supporting Japan’s Massive Military Build-Up

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

Launching F-35Bs from destroyers, flying Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and Global Hawk drones, sharing ballistic missile target track with Aegis radar and co-developing critical weapons systems with the US such as the SM-3 Block II and Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile Block II ….are all critical elements of Japan’s explosive military build-up and growing war preparation training with the US Navy.

The US Navy’s Pacific Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo recently boarded a Japanese warship in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to inspire Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces sailors and discuss fast-expanding US-Japanese military collaboration.

Paparo boarded the Japan Training Squadron warship called JS Kashima visiting Pearl Harbor on an annual training cruise. While US-Japanese collaborative efforts in the world of defense have been going on for many years, as joint development of the ESSM Block II goes back more than 10-years, the joint defense training is making a massive uptick now. Not surprisingly, Japanese leadership is quite clear and expressive about the specific threat from China as being a reason for the country’s large-scale defense buildup. Japan is not only working on revisions to its long-time Pacifist constitution to further enable defensive training, weapons acquisition and more broadly scoped concepts of operation but also implementing a large scale increase in defense spending and weapons development.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense recently published its Defense of Japan 2023 annual report, a document which specifies dangers related to Chinese aggression, which have included massive increases in PLA-Air Force fighter jet flights over the Sea of Japan as well as aggressive Y-8 early warning aircraft and Y-9 intelligence gathering planes.

“China’s current external stance, military activities, and other activities have become a matter of serious concern for Japan and the international community, and present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge,” the Defense of Japan 2023 states. 

The seriousness of Japan’s concerns about Chinese expansionist ambitions were also well-articulated in Japan’s 2022 White Paper essay called “Defense of Japan 2022.”