Japan bets on combat drones as its military shrinks and China's navy grows

Japan's cabinet adopted a 598-page defense white paper on Tuesday that puts combat drones at the center of its next military build, citing the war in Ukraine and a shrinking pool of recruits as the two pressures reshaping the country's doctrine. The document, which the government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi released with a cartoon cover and translated video clips in Japanese, English, and Chinese, calls combat drones essential to what it describes as "new ways of warfare," a term the paper uses for combat shaped by unmanned systems and artificial intelligence.

Japan's population is aging and contracting, and the white paper itself flags that the country cannot field the soldiers a conventional build-up would require. Uncrewed aircraft, the argument goes, are the substitute for personnel the demographics no longer supply. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi made the tempo the point in early July. "Speed is key," he said, framing the rapid pace of drone procurement as the difference between deterrence and irrelevance.

The Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, or ATLA, the Japanese Defense Ministry's procurement and research arm, picked four drone makers out of 38 applicants for a fast-track development program. The finalists are scheduled to move to Japan navy testing in early August, ahead of a final selection. The pool is crowded. Toshiba said Friday it would jointly develop combat drones with the Japanese startup Pro Drone, joining a field of similar announcements from larger defense primes.

The white paper reiterates that China is Japan's biggest strategic challenge, and flags the growing presence and frequency of Chinese warships in the Pacific, including activity around Taiwan and near Japan's southwestern islands, as a major concern. Japan has been deploying long-range cruise missiles as a deterrence, and has strengthened forces on those islands against the possibility of a Taiwan conflict, with Russia and North Korea adding to the threat picture. The drone decision is layered on top of that posture, not in place of it.

The industrial base is the harder problem. Japan's commercial drone market is dominated by Chinese imports, a fact the white paper does not address directly but which experts flag as the hard limit on any "fully homemade" combat-drone program. Building a drone fleet that is uncrewed is one problem; building one that is also un-Chinese is the harder one, and the Toshiba–Pro Drone partnership is one early answer.

The test schedule will tell the reader how fast the doctrine is moving. ATLA's four finalists go to navy testing in early August, with a final maker selection to follow, and the white paper is the political vehicle Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government is using to court public support for the spending and recruitment the program assumes. Japan's drone bet is not a question of whether to modernize. It is the doctrine the numbers allow.