United States Forces Japan is getting a glow up, and Japan couldn’t be happier about it. After a meeting between the U.S. secretaries of State and Defense and their Japanese counterparts, the four leaders announced a plan to upgrade the headquarters of U.S. military personnel in Japan to a joint force headquarters.
“This will be the most significant change to U.S. Forces Japan since its creation and one of the strongest improvements to military ties to Japan in 70 years,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said.
The move is the next milestone in modernizing the alliance as the two allies look to head off growing aggression from China. The new joint forces HQ will be commanded by a three-star general and serve as a counterpart to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces’ own joint operations command. Austin said the move allows for greater interoperability between the U.S. and Japanese forces.
So what sort of other changes should we expect to accompany such a significant announcement? Well, none of the leaders at the historic “2+2” meeting really got into specifics.
Straight Arrow News turned to Jon Molik to provide an explanation. Molik is a U.S. intelligence officer with two decades of experience under his belt. He also hosts a podcast called “Headlines and History,” so significant events like this are right up his alley.
“It’s interesting because the headquarters, or the unit that’s in charge of U.S. Forces Japan, is already a three-star command, and it’s already joint in nature,” Molik said. “Meaning they have multiple services already supporting what is going on in Japan.
“The change is really going to come from the command structure, and what I mean by that is the operational command for the forces that are in Japan are currently in Hawaii. And what they want to do is they want to bring the operational command right there into Japan so they can streamline orders, and they can streamline operations in the event of conflict potentially against China. That’s the number one fear for everyone.”
Molik said streamlining command structures and putting them onsite in areas of potential conflict is part of the established U.S. playbook of military partnerships.
“There’s nothing like being in the scenario, being in the environment when your forces are on the ground,” Molik said. “It’s just not the same thing when you’re thousands of miles away from what’s actually happening on the battlefield, and this is something that happens all of the time.
“We have commands that are located in the United States, but when things get ratcheted up, if you will, then they send commands forward. The number one example right now, our most common example would be Army Central Command. It’s located at Shaw Air Force Base back in the United States, but when things ratchet up in the Middle East, then they send commanders forward.”
Molik also said one very important aspect of the new agreement is how much work Japan had to do on its own to get here.
There were many milestones Japan had to reach in its defense strategy, defense funding and defense operations in order for the United States to agree to send an operational command to Japan in the same way it did in South Korea.
“Japan has now reached those expectations,” Molik said. “That’s why the State Department was involved as well. It’s not always the Department of Defense that’s involved in those negotiations as to how a country is going to outfit and then fund its military.”
In addition to beefing up the command structure, the U.S. will also partner with Japan to build more munitions. Specifically, advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, or AMRAAMs, and Patriot PAC-3 interceptors.
Demand for Patriots is booming worldwide, largely because the world sees what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
“It’s a reflection of the fact that security in both of these critical theaters really is indivisible — inseparable,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. “Prime Minister Kishida was one of the ones who made this so clear, so eloquently when just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine he made the point that what was happening in Europe today could well happen in this region tomorrow.”
And as one final warning to adversaries in the Pacific, Austin said the U.S.-Japan relationship is “ironclad,” and the U.S. stands fully prepared to defend its allies with every tool in its arsenal, including nuclear weapons.
