By Guo Yilun
On May 27, the Japan Ground Self Defense Force (JGSDF) held its annual large-scale live-fire Fuji Firepower Review. It is reported that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were first deployed to attack ground targets in this year's exercise, demonstrating the real combat efficiency of AI-assisted UAV operational chains, which can rapidly pinpoint enemy troops, make response solutions according to threat assessment, and give combat instructions based on the intelligence gathered by intelligent analysis and identification of captured images.
Japan issued new versions of the nation's three key security documents at the end of last year, seeking to go beyond the "exclusively defense-oriented" principle within the framework of the pacifist Constitution. It attempts to prioritize the deployment of combat systems consisting of aerial, underwater, and maritime UAVs in its southwestern islands by vigorously developing new technologies such as unmanned equipment, artificial intelligence, new-generation information communication, digital transformation, and high-power energy.
In fact, Japan has continuously strengthened the troop deployment in the southwest in recent years, regarding the region as the forefront of the battlefield. The next step of building unmanned combat systems obviously aims at establishing intelligent, seamless, and low-cost forward lookout posts and island blockage networks by resorting to advanced technologies, in a bid to strengthen the construction of new types of combat forces featuring the combination of UAVs and artificial intelligence.
Japan's Defense Ministry has planned to expand the application of unmanned combat systems across land, sea, and air, deploying UAV troops in its full-spectrum to JASDF, JMSDF and JGSDF.
In the air domain, the Defense Buildup Program (DBP) proposed to procure utility attack UAVs and miniature attack UAVs that effectively retain various attack functions to enable them to search and identify personnel, vehicles, and naval vessels from the air and quickly strike the targets. In addition to importing offensive drones from Israel or the US, Japan's Defense Ministry will further step up efforts on independent in-house R&D in this field, with a specific goal of possessing hundreds of offensive drones. As to the development plan for the next-generation fighters, Japan has also envisioned the research of unmanned wing planes to conduct cooperative operations between manned aerial vehicles(MAVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs). To substantially improve the intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities over surrounding waters and airspace, Japan has introduced the MQ-9B SeaGuardian UAVs from the US, which have formally been put into actual combat deployment.
In the underwater domain, the unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) developed by Japan's Defense Ministry are scheduled to be commissioned by 2025. It is learned that this type of equipment can automatically evade obstacles and detect naval mines and can navigate continually underwater for one week long. Mainly lurking in deep water, these devices can probe submarines and surface vehicles through sonars and automatically track opponent ships with the aid of AI technology. It is worth noting that the Japanese Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) is also accelerating the development of models that can lay and clear away naval mines, which can prevent opponents from "attacking its southwestern islands from the sea" and clear the "maritime blockade" by naval mines.
In the sea surface domain, Japan is building a new-generation 30FFM multi-role frigate specially built with an unmanned combat system, which can fulfill torpedo search and anti-torpedo tasks by means of unmanned surface ships, unmanned underwater vehicles, and self-propelled anti-torpedo ammunitions onboard. Furthermore, judging from the public bidding performance requirements released by Japan's Defense Ministry, its unmanned patrol boats have a planned displacement of about 1,900 tons and a total length of 90 meters. These kinds of large-size unmanned ships will be able to carry loads with multiple functions.
The fact that Japan has been accelerating its unmanned combat capability building and new-type force deployment in the southwest will inevitably stir up the security situation of surrounding regions. This once again proves that Japan has become one of the major factors undermining regional peace and stability, which deserves high vigilance from regional countries.
(The author is from the Air Force Research Institute of the PLA)
