Tokyo — The US needed Japan’s help to cope with strategic challenges in Europe and Asia that were straining its defence industries, the US ambassador to Japan said on Monday as the countries began talks on military industrial co-operation.
“Our national security strategy calls for us to be able to handle one and a half theatres, that’s a major war and another one to a stand-off, and with both the Middle East, Ukraine, and keeping our deterrence credible in this region (East Asia) you can already see that we are in two plus,” Rahm Emanuel told reporters.
On Sunday, Japan and the US started their first talks in Tokyo on forging deeper defence industry collaboration under the US-Japan Forum on Defence Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition and Sustainment established in April by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US President Joe Biden.
Discussions on Tuesday between US under-secretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment William A LaPlante and Masaki Fukasawa, the head of Japan’s acquisition, technology, and logistics agency, will focus on naval repairs in Japan that could help free up US yards to build more warships.
“China has a major capacity we already know that will surpass us on new shipbuilding,” Emanuel said.
Other potential co-operation between Japan and the US includes aircraft repairs, missile production and military supply chain resilience, he said.
Japan and the US already build a missile defence interceptor together and Tokyo has also agreed to supply Patriot PAC3 air-defence missiles to the US.
Reuters