CEBU, Philippines — The United States and Japan have agreed to establish a Japanese facility for the joint production of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, the Japanese defense chief said. It is the latest move by the allies, which have repeatedly expressed alarm over China's growing assertiveness in Asia. Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi made the announcement in a news conference Wednesday night in the central Philippine province of Cebu, where he met U.S.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the sidelines of an annual meeting of Southeast Asian defense chiefs and their major Asian and Western counterparts. Koizumi raised concern Thursday about China's increasing naval activity in southwestern Japan. He said that three Chinese destroyers and a coast guard ship together crossed the Osumi Strait south of the southern main island of Kyushu and headed east to the Pacific Ocean this week.
It was the first such fleet configuration his ministry has spotted, he said. Koizumi said he cited the incident as "an example illustrating the challenging security environment in the region" in his remark at a session Thursday. His ministry will keep watching the Chinese activity with high level of interest, he said.
Japan has been accelerating military buildup in southwestern Japan to deter China. The annual meetings aim to avert a major regional conflict and strengthen defense cooperation. On the sidelines of the meetings, however, the U.S. and China and their allies have often traded criticisms.
The missiles that will be produced as part of a joint effort called "Operation Supercharge" are essential for the F-35 fighter jets, Koizumi said. The two sides agreed to build a final assembly and inspection plant for the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM, in Japan, he said. The U.S.-made F-35s are one of the world's most advanced aircraft and are also used by the Japanese military.
During his brief meeting with Hegseth in Cebu, Koizumi said he "shared a sense of crisis … regarding the increasingly severe regional situation and we agreed to strengthen the deterrence and response capabilities of the Japan-U.S. alliance with greater speed and intensity than ever before." "We reaffirmed the importance of a free and open international order based on the rule of law, which rejects any attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo through the use of force, coercion or other means," Koizumi said. Hegseth renewed the Trump administration's repeated assurances of commitment to help deter aggression in the region in a separate meeting on Wednesday with ASEAN defense ministers, who were led by the host, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. Like Koizumi, Hegseth did not mention China by name in expressing his security concerns in the region.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
