Japan's defence minister says the United States and Japan have agreed to establish a Japanese facility to jointly produce advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles under a programme called Operation Supercharge.
The United States and Japan have agreed to establish a Japanese facility for the joint production of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said late on Wednesday.
Koizumi announced the agreement at a news conference in Cebu in the Philippines, where he met United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on the sidelines of an annual meeting of Southeast Asian defence chiefs and their major Asian and Western counterparts. The missiles, produced under a joint effort called Operation Supercharge, are essential for the F-35 fighter jet, Koizumi said, without giving further details of the agreement.
During his brief meeting with Hegseth, Koizumi said he shared a sense of crisis regarding the increasingly severe regional situation and that the two sides agreed to strengthen the deterrence and response capabilities of the Japan-United States alliance with greater speed and intensity than ever before. He added that they reaffirmed the importance of a free and open international order based on the rule of law, which rejects attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo through force or coercion.
Koizumi cautiously added that the discussions were not directed at any specific country, and he did not elaborate on where in Japan the facility would be built, when production would start, or how many missiles it would make. Those details were not part of the announcement, so the scale and timetable of the project remain unconfirmed.
The agreement is the latest move by the two allies, which have repeatedly expressed alarm over China's growing military activity in Asia. The annual Cebu meetings aim to avert a major regional conflict and strengthen defence cooperation, and the joint production plan will be measured next by whether Tokyo and Washington publish a location, a start date and a production target.