Japan is getting less squeamish about cheap drones it can afford to lose

Japan's defense establishment is starting to say the quiet part out loud: some drones are supposed to be cheap enough to lose.

That is the real story behind AirKamuy, a Japanese startup building fixed-wing drones from cardboard. In a post on X this week, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force is already using the company's aircraft as training targets and argued that closer work with defense startups is indispensable if Japan wants to make heavier use of unmanned systems. The point is less the material than the procurement logic. A drone that is cheap, quick to assemble, and expendable changes how often a military can train with it, how casually commanders can risk it, and how seriously startups get treated inside a defense bureaucracy.

The cardboard hook is real, but it also distorts the story if you stare at it too long. This is not confirmed evidence that Japan has deployed a cardboard strike drone in combat. Koizumi's public statement covers target use, not battlefield attack missions. And while 404 Media reported that the company has drawn attention for possible "suicide" drone applications, AirKamuy's own public materials describe a broader menu: target drones, reconnaissance, transport, swarm use, and possible one-way attack roles, according to a June company post.

What makes the story interesting is the attrition math. Expensive drones invite peacetime habits: conserve inventory, protect the airframe, limit training, think twice before sending one into a risky mission. Cheap drones do the opposite. AirKamuy told Newswitch that the AirKamuy 150 could cost about 100,000 yen, or roughly $700, if production reaches more than 1,000 units. Other interviews put the current price closer to 300,000 yen, or about $2,100, with the company saying scale could drive that lower, according to Jitsugyo no Nihon Forum and KEPPLE. The exact number matters less than the direction of travel. If the airframe is cheap enough to treat as disposable, the military starts planning around volume and loss instead of preservation.

That logic is already visible in the product pitch. AirKamuy says the AirKamuy 150 is Japan's first fixed-wing unmanned aircraft built mainly from cardboard, according to the company's product page. Newswitch reported that it can be assembled without tools in under five minutes and carry 1.5 kilograms. Jitsugyo no Nihon Forum reported a top speed of 120 kilometers per hour and flight endurance of about 1.5 hours. Those are not miracle numbers. They are utilitarian numbers, which is almost the point. A training target does not need glamour. A one-way aircraft does not need to come home.

Koizumi's endorsement also says something about Japan's politics of defense tech. In the same X post, he said deeper collaboration with startups would be indispensable if the Self-Defense Forces want to become the world's heaviest users of unmanned assets including drones. That is a notable thing for a senior minister to say in public. Japan has spent years debating defense budgets, counterstrike capability, and military normalization in broad constitutional language. Here the normalization shows up in miniature: a minister praising a startup whose cheap aircraft are already useful enough for the navy to shoot at in training.

There is still a lot we do not know. The strongest publicly verified military-use claim is the target-drone role. AirKamuy's broader positioning around patrol, transport, swarms, and possible strike use still leans heavily on the company's own materials and founder interviews. Jitsugyo no Nihon Forum reported that CEO Takumi Yamaguchi said AirKamuy does not currently hold the permissions needed to handle weapons manufacturing. That matters. It keeps the story grounded. For now, the company has a live military adjacency and a vivid vision of cheap expendable aviation, not public proof of an armed deployment program.

Still, even target use is not trivial. Militaries do not need to believe a startup has built a wonder weapon before they start absorbing its cost structure. If AirKamuy can supply aircraft that are fast to assemble, cheap to replace, and good enough to lose, then the deeper shift is not about cardboard. It is about a defense establishment getting more comfortable with expendability, with startups, and with the idea that in a drone-saturated era the smart machine may be the one nobody expects to survive.