Japan is going full steam in expanding its military use of uncrewed autonomous platforms and countering China’s. One policy has got this effort underway, and three more due this year will give a better idea of the shape of the effort.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide 8 February victory has reshaped Japan’s domestic politics and put the Ministry of Defense on notice for significant reform and development.
Speaking on the lessons of Ukraine late last year, Takaichi called for the need to ‘fundamentally revise’ the national defence strategy and begin preparing for ‘new forms of warfare’ produced by autonomous weapons systems.
Japan’s 2026 defence budget paper initiated the effort. Published in December 2025, it signalled a major shift in this direction with US$640 million (A$930 million) earmarked for a massive new coastal defence system built around uncrewed equipment. Known as ‘Shield’ (for Synchronised, Hybrid, Integrated and Enhanced Littoral Defense), the concept reflects a layered coastal defence architecture designed to deliver a cheaper, asymmetrical capability suited to Japan’s maritime geography.
Shield incorporates the aerial, surface and underwater branches of the Japanese military with a focus on rapid replacement systems. These include systems from small attack uncrewed aerial vehicles as well as uncrewed surface and underwater vehicles for surveillance, target designation and direct attacks on enemy vessels. For the time being, the Shield vision is for deployment among the southern islands closer to Taiwan.
This initiative sits alongside a 9 trillion yen defence budget, with an additional 200 billion yen for drone acquisitions for Japan’s military by the end of 2027. Under current five-year projections, funding for uncrewed defence capabilities is set to increase tenfold from 100 billion yen to 1 trillion yen.
While drone development has skyrocketed globally, conflicts in Ukraine and Iran have created new impetus for uncrewed defence solutions. Comparatively cheap and easily replicable drone systems have eroded the vastly more expensive missile interception capabilities of Western nations.
In the Middle East, Iranian Shahed drones at perhaps US$35,000 apiece are forcing the United States and allies to expend stocks of costly interceptor missiles, raising questions about Washington’s ability to sustain its objectives. With interceptors such as Amraams and PAC-3 Patriot costing US$1.1 million and US$3 million, respectively, the imbalances are seen as unsustainable.
In Ukraine, the nation’s drone interceptors – costing between US$3,000 and US$5,000 – are now responsible for one in every three Russian aerial targets brought down. As the conflict in Iran has spread, the demand for Ukraine’s drones has jumped sharply.
Japan’s Shield proposes a response to this fast-moving arithmetic. In Tokyo, close watch is kept on China’s advances in autonomous weapon systems and on the Chinese air force’s new uncrewed-aircraft attack unit and deployments of uncrewed reconnaissance aircraft in the East China Sea.
According to former Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani, the rise of crewed and uncrewed Chinese flights has surged, driving a further increase in incursions into Japanese territory. In the last nine months of 2025, Japan scrambled its fighters 304 times to shadow Chinese aircraft approaching its territory. In the 2024–25 financial year, more than 30 events included Chinese uncrewed aircraft.
In the media, the costs to the public of responding to Chinese uncrewed aircraft have longed been questioned. Under operational procedures, Japan launches on average two F-15 jets for every incursion. Since each scramble costs up to 5 million yen, Chinese uncrewed aircraft, costing on average 70,000 yen per hour, impose an unbalanced and asymmetric cost on the nation.
For outside observers, the next six months will prove instructive of the shape that Shield takes. Japan’s new National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy and Defense Buildup Program are due this year and will show the direction for the country’s emerging doctrine of autonomous littoral defence.
In a January visit to Hawaii, California and Washington DC, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi met with drone company Neros, Palantir Technologies, RAND Corporation and satellite company Hawkeye360. These engagements point to Shield’s requirements: scalable drone production, AI-enabled decision support, data integration and multi-domain sensing.
Koizumi has also sought to elevate alliance mechanisms. At the 15 January Japan–US Defence Ministerial Meeting with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Koizumi called for acceleration of the next Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition and Sustainment (DICAS) plenary. Established in April 2024 under then prime minister Fumio Kishida and president Joe Biden, DICAS focuses on ship repair, aircraft maintenance, missile co-production and supply-chain resilience. However, given Shield’s trajectory, pressure is building to expand cooperation into autonomous systems.
Emphasis will be placed on moving beyond generic industrial cooperation to specific co-development, co-production and sustainment for uncrewed systems. This is because Shield will require collaboration on autonomy software, secure communications, data links, payloads, anti-jam navigation, undersea sensing, and maintenance ecosystems, among other systems.
Shield will also need to integrate into allied command networks and kill chains rather than operating solely within national systems.
Meanwhile, the ruling parties in Japan have proposed revisions to Japan’s Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology to strengthen country’s defence equipment production and technology base and ease rules on defence equipment transfers with the US. We can also expect the Ministry of Defense to reiterate its desire for greater technological disclosure and more mutually beneficial technology arrangements.
As experiences from Ukraine and Iran have shown, drone defence systems take time, creativity and partnership. For Japan, all three attributes will need to be developed quickly – and with greater self-reliance – as US attention is increasingly pulled elsewhere.
