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The ASDF’s drills with France will take place on July 19-20 in the airspace around Hyakuri Air Base in Ibaraki Prefecture, while those with both Germany and Spain will be held in the airspace around Chitose Air Base in Hokkaido, according to the ministry.
Both Germany and Spain will be sending Eurofighter Typhoons, while France will be fielding Rafale jets. They will be accompanied by several transport and aerial refueling aircraft as well as several hundred personnel. The ASDF will deploy F-2 fighters for its maneuvers with France and F-15s for the drills with Spain and Germany.
But that’s not all.
From July 22-25 the ASDF and the Luftwaffe will hold their first-ever bilateral exercise known as Nippon Skies, in a follow-up to the German air force’s first-ever visit to Japan in 2022.
A Luftwaffe spokesperson told The Japan Times that three of the eight Eurofighter Typhoons will stay at Chitose Air Base to take part in the joint drills, while the rest will fly on to Australia alongside the French and Spanish aircraft for the Pitch Black multilateral exercise. The Pitch Black drills will also include an ASDF contingent.
“The successive visits to the Indo-Pacific region by the armed forces of these countries are proof of their willingness and ability to engage in the Indo-Pacific region,” Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said at a news conference Tuesday.
In addition, he said, joint exercises in the vicinity of Japan with militaries from other countries “not only improve the Self-Defense Forces’ tactical skills, but also deepen cooperation with other countries and help realize a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
The upcoming training activities, which follow ASDF drills with a number of countries last year, highlight the expanding defense ties between Tokyo and key European partners as they align their strategic interests amid shared economic and security concerns.
France, Germany and Spain, all of which plan to strengthen their military engagement in the Indo-Pacific, are partners in the trilateral Future Combat Air System (FCAS), which envisions not only the development of a sixth-generation fighter aircraft but also unmanned aerial assets with a connected network across all warfighting domains.
The project’s goals are similar to those of the Global Combat Air Program between Japan, Britain and Italy, which is also working to develop a next-generation combat aircraft and related systems, but with a 2035 timeline.
Both Europe and Japan are concerned about what they view as mounting challenges to the international order, including the war in Ukraine, supply chain disruptions and security tensions in East Asia.
This has resulted in a number of European countries intensifying defense, diplomatic and economic security cooperation with Japan and other U.S. regional allies such as South Korea, Australia and the Philippines.
Given the Indo-Pacific’s growing economic and strategic importance for global peace and stability, Europeans have decided that they can no longer ignore the escalating security issues in the region. Tokyo, meanwhile, has sought to forge a united front of “like-minded” partners to deal with an “increasingly severe” security environment.
Like Tokyo, a number of European nations have embraced the argument that the security of the continent is “inseparable” from that of the Indo-Pacific.
The European Union has also expressed a deep interest in closer ties with the region, with Brussels reportedly seeking security and defense partnerships with Japan and South Korea — a move that could lead to broader joint development projects in the defense industry.
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