日本正在加速再武裝
david chou
為應對來自週邊三個潛在敵國之威脅, 為協同美國保衛第一島鏈與台灣, 日本正在加速再武裝
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日本的再武裝攸關我台灣族人的存亡絕續 [我們無需理會在台支那人.在台共匪.台奸的反應與反對], 因此, 我要請我的LKK老鄉親有耐心地讀本欄的訊息與資料, 若您覺得太長, 不妨分段讀.
我先請大家閱讀一則來自POLITICO的訊息:
POLITICO National Security Daily
By Phelim Kine & Giselle R. Ewing
April 24, 2026
Japan has been pushing for years to expand its military’s offensive capabilities. The Iran war appears to be turbo-charging that effort.
The major barrier for Japan has long been its post-WWII “peace constitution,” [高市早苗首相的內閣已準備推動及啟動修憲] which precludes it from “the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” The country has been finding ways to stretch that restriction for years, and is now pressing its limits. In the past eight days the government of Japanese Prime Minister SANAE TAKAICHI has pushed for changes to Japan’s National Security Strategy to extend naval operations to regional sea lane defense, talked up tighter NATO ties with visiting coalition representatives and lifted curbs on arms exports . Those moves come as Beijing makes increasingly aggressive territorial claims, from the disputed Senkaku islands to the Japanese island of Okinawa .
“A lot of Japanese view the Iran conflict as U.S. attention drifting away from their concerns about China and drifting back towards the Middle East,” said KURT TONG , who served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo in the Obama administration, and who regularly talks to senior Japanese officials.
It also compounds Tokyo’s worries that President DONALD TRUMP ’s America First foreign policy — including its skepticism of traditional alliances such as NATO — means it can’t rely on the U.S. as much for defense.
“Japan has gotten the memo that the United States wants it to step up as a defense-oriented peer and not as a protectorate,” KEN WEINSTEIN , who served as U.S. ambassador-designate to Japan in the first Trump administration, referring to conversations he’s had with senior Japanese officials. “There's a definite fear of U.S. isolationism and of an America that looks to home first.”
The Iran war has made those worries more concrete. The Defense Department informed Tokyo last month that depleted U.S. munition stocks will delay delivery of some of the 400 Tomahawk missiles Japan ordered in 2023, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported last week .
The Defense Department referred a query about the Tomahawks to the State Department. State referred NatSec Daily back to DOD.
Trump also ran into the limits of Japan’s restrictions on its military last month, when Takaichi declined Trump’s request that Tokyo send forces to help secure the Strait of Hormuz due to constitutional restrictions.
The White House says it welcomes Japan’s moves to bolster its defensive capabilities. “President Trump has encouraged all of our allies to take greater responsibility for their own defense,” White House spokesperson ANNA KELLY told NatSec Daily.
But the U.S. may find that it is encouraging its long-time partner in the region to a more arms-length relationship.
“This is a trend line of Japan trying to create multi-layered defense relationships beyond the U.S.,” said YUKI TATSUMI , former special assistant for political affairs at the Japanese embassy in Washington. “In this unpredictable U.S. leadership era this is to safeguard Japan’s own interests.” The Japanese embassy in Washington declined to comment.
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接下來請大家讀日本時報的一篇社論:
“Japan’s counterstrike move reflects rising regional challenges”
The SDF's [自衛隊的] recent missile deployments signal a new era in national defense strategy
By The Japan Times Editorial Board
Apr. 3, 2026
This week has been a watershed in Japan’s defense modernization. The Self-Defense Forces deployed long-range missiles to a military base, the first time that the country has adopted offensive strike capabilities. This is a crucial step in the evolution of Japan’s military posture and reflects changes within and outside the country. While necessary, it demands a new strategic mindset, one that is anticipated by the new national security documents that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has promised, but is in fact much more.
Japan has for some time debated the acquisition and deployment of “strike capabilities,” most typically long-range missiles that can hit adversaries from a considerable distance. These weapons can be used to hit enemy bases at home or those forces when they have been forward deployed, even though they remain some distance from Japan. The government agreed to do so in 2022, and that determination was made clear in the National Defense Strategy published that year.
This week, the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) deployed at Camp Kengun in Kumamoto long-range missiles that can reach targets up to 1,000 km away. That range will allow them to hit bases in mainland China. They also would be able to hit almost any target within North Korea. At the same time, Japan deployed hyper velocity gliding projectiles (HVGP) to Camp Fuji near Gotemba in Shizuoka Prefecture. HVGPs are launched from the ground and can travel hundreds of kilometers at supersonic speeds while flying in irregular trajectories, which makes them hard to intercept. As Jesse Johnson explained in his analysis this week, additional deployments are expected.
The week before, modification of the Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Chokai was finished, making it the first vessel in the MSDF fleet capable of firing the U.S.-made Tomahawk missile, which has a range of around 1,600 km. The vessel will undergo additional tests and its crew will continue to train before it is deemed mission capable, which is scheduled for the fall. All eight of Japan’s Aegis-equipped destroyers are set to be equipped with Tomahawks. Finally, the Air Self-Defense Force last month received its first Norwegian-made Joint Strike Missile, which have a range of about 500 km and will be mounted on ASDF F-35As.
The acquisition of a counterstrike capability is a profound shift in Japan’s defense capabilities. Since the end of World War II, Japan has had an exclusively defense-oriented policy, meaning that the country would only respond to attacks by enemies. This reflected the Constitution’s renunciation in Article 9 of the use of war as an instrument of state policy and the subsequent denial of possession of the means to do so, offensive weapons most prominently among them.
While that position was accepted by politicians and the public, strategists and legal counsel have countered that even offensive weapons can be defensive in nature when they are intended to reinforce deterrence. The extended range of these missiles can threaten an adversary’s ability to wage war, holding at risk its command and control facilities or weapons' stockpiles.
Possession of the ability to deny a country the means to attack Japan or inflict severe punishment is, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi explained this week, “an initiative of paramount importance for strengthening Japan’s deterrence and response capabilities, as the country faces the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II.”
Prudent defense planning demands that Japan be ready for the new threats that have emerged. China is a more capable adversary and poses myriad challenges to our national interests. Its capabilities have improved along every axis of national power and in every domain. Beijing’s influence is expanding, and while that reflects efforts at diplomacy and development aid, it is backstopped by a military that has enjoyed ever-expanding defense budgets and government attention. While China prefers to use the carrot, it does not hesitate to brandish the stick when it feels that is needed, as the Philippines well knows.
North Korea is another threat. Pyongyang continues to prioritize its military modernization effort, developing missiles and the platforms to deploy them. Its nuclear program continues unabated. Japan rightly calls the North’s growing capabilities “a grave and imminent threat” to regional peace and safety.
All the while, the United States, Japan’s only treaty ally, has called on Tokyo to do more for its own defense and to assume a higher regional security profile. The U.S. press for great allied contributions reflects the deteriorating security environment, along with recognition that U.S. military preeminence is being challenged.
The U.S. can still prevail in a conflict, but the likelihood of that outcome, and thus the quality of deterrence, is strengthened when its allies are more capable as well. While no U.S. president likes to acknowledge this fact, the success of the coalition of like-minded nations of which Japan is a part depends on those contributions. Japan must do its part.
That call is welcomed by conservative Japanese prime ministers, Takaichi proudly among them. Like her mentor, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi wants Japan to do more. She has been a vocal proponent of increasing the defense budget and, even more significantly, insists that the three key documents that guide defense policy and posture be updated to adequately respond to this moment. We wait to see if those revisions truly meet the moment.
Acquisition of these new capabilities will create challenges of their own. Their presence will make them a target for enemies, with the potential to create an escalatory spiral as governments ponder whether to use a capability or lose it to an adversary’s preemptive strike.
Equally important, Japan does not currently have the means to target those new weapons or assess the damage that is done when they are used. It will continue to rely on the United States for critical data when it hopes to use them. Japan seeks to acquire that capability, but it will take billions of yen and considerable time to develop and deploy a satellite network that can do the job.
There are also more prosaic issues, such as a lack of storage facilities for the new missiles and a dearth of opportunities to train, especially the exchange of information that occurs when these weapons are used. The latter is especially important since any decision to use them will occur in confused and chaotic situations when reliable information will be hard to find and time pressures are mounting.
Much attention has focused on this hardware. That is understandable. But the most important developments are those that shape the thinking of political and military decision-makers. Investments in new weapons systems are meaningless without a new mindset that guides their deployment. There must be a strategy and doctrine that determine the use of these new capabilities, one that reflects the new circumstances in Japan and the world that surrounds it.
[to be continue]
David Chou
Founder
Formosa Statehood Movement
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Appendix I
Cambridge Elements
Series: Elements in Politics and Society in East Asia
[摘錄] “Japan as a Global Military Power”
New Capabilities, Alliance Integration, Bilateralism-Plus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2022
Information
Series: Elements in Politics and Society in East Asia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108975025[Opens in a new window]
Online ISBN: 9781108975025
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 15 September 2022
Summary
Japan is emerging as a more prominent global and regional military power, defying traditional categorisations of a minimalist contribution to the US-Japan alliance, maintaining anti-militarism, seeking an internationalist role, or carving out more strategic autonomy. Instead, this Element argues that Japan has fundamentally shifted its military posture over the last three decades and traversed into a new categorisation of a more capable military power and integrated US ally. This results from Japan's recognition of its fundamentally changing strategic environment that requires a new grand strategy and military doctrines. The shift is traced across the national security strategy components of Japan Self-Defence Forces' capabilities, US-Japan alliance integration, and international security cooperation. The Element argues that all these components are subordinated inevitably to the objectives of homeland security and re-strengthening the US-Japan alliance, and thus Japan's development as international security partner outside the ambit of the bilateral alliance remains stunted. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
4.4 First Island Chain Defence and Integrating Strike Capabilities
Japan’s southwestern island defence capabilities and doctrine, as outlined in Section 3, also appear increasingly designed to integrate with and proactively support US regional military strategy for first island chain defence and including the defence of Taiwan. Japan’s principal role in supporting the United States in a regional contingency remains to provide bases for US power projection and logistical rear area support. But many Japanese policymakers, even if wishing to obfuscate the reality and maintain a degree of strategic ambiguity and hedging, have long known that the United States’s use of its bases in Japan to defend Taiwan would inevitably mean China seeking to strike these to hamper the US freedom of action and so draw Japan into a conflict. More recently, as noted above, Japanese policymakers have acknowledged that China’s growing military potential to dominate Taiwan and in turn the maritime space around Japan and even threaten its southwestern islands mean that Japan can no longer distance itself from a conflict over Taiwan and is in effect in the very frontline along with the United States.
Deployments of the JSDF have thus now started to match this new calculation and to work in tandem with US strategy and deployments. The United States’s 2018 National Defence Strategy and 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy seek to negate China’s A2/AD approach and attempts to impose fait accompli control on the first island chain in the Asia-Pacific through realigning certain US forward-deployed forces to the second island chain to enhance their survivability and enable long-range counterstrikes and force surges to then prevail in any conflict. At the same time, these strategies advocate maintaining sufficient forces in the first island chain for contact with, blunting, degrading, and thus denying, any rapid advances of PLA forces (Department of Defense 2018: 6–7, 2019: 18, 20–4; Reference Townshend, Thomas-Noone and StewardTownshend, Thomas-Noone and Steward 2019: 22). The expectation is that such US forces may prove sufficiently resilient to endure an initial Chinese A2/AD assault but will also involve deployments from and greater interoperability with the forces of regional allies. Japan is clearly expected in US thinking, as the key bilateral ally in the region, with the most capable military, and interests in Taiwan’s security, to anchor the topmost end of the first island chain for the United States (Reference Mahnken, Sharp, Fabian and KouretsosMahnken, Sharp, Fabian and Kouretsos 2019: 41–2). In turn, it appears that the JSDF’s southwestern island deployments, or ‘wall strategy’, emphasising survivability, ISR, the ability to close off surrounding sea passages to People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels, and to then call for further support from the ARDB, MSDF, ASDF, and US forces, is in practice an integral part of this larger US first island chain and Taiwan defence strategy (Reference TakeiTakei 2021: 6; Reference Harold, Bansho, Hornung, Isobe and SimcockHarold, Bansho, Hornung, Isobe, Simcock 2018: 9–12; Reference SacksSacks 2022: 10–11). Japan and the United States were reported in late 2021 to be working on a joint operational plan to enable the USMC to establish an attack base in the southwest islands in a Taiwan contingency and to be supported by the JSDF (Japan Times 2021d). The US-Japan SCC in 2022 went some way to explicitly acknowledging this convergence of US and Japanese operational planning and forces for a Taiwan contingency, stating that the two states were making: ‘robust progress … on bilateral planning for contingencies … to increase joint/shared use of US and Japanese facilities, including efforts to strengthen JSDF posture in areas including its southwestern islands’ (MOFA 2022a: 2).
If Japan and US doctrine and capabilities are increasingly conjoined and blurred in terms of respective defensive and offensive responsibilities, then the ‘shield’ and ‘spear’ division may become even less distinct in the case of Japan’s acquisition of a strike capability. Japan’s interest in its own strike option might be linked to the assumption that the objective is not only to substitute for any reduced resolve or deployed capability of the United States to provide offensive power but also to then establish greater autonomy away from the alliance. Although the autonomy and hedging arguments might still carry some weight with policymakers, the dominant motivation for Japan in acquiring a strike capability is once again not to divest from the alliance but to further strengthen and invest in its credibility for deterrence. The calculation of Japan’s strategic thinkers appears to be that if US deterrence were to function less readily in grey-zone contingencies and involving the southwestern islands due to these being of possibly insufficient importance to trigger an immediate US intervention and seen as primarily Japanese responsibilities, or if US forces were preoccupied in responding to other contingencies, then a Japanese strike capability would be used to supplement US capabilities and fill in gaps at the lower conventional end of the deterrence escalation ladder. Japan’s willingness to mobilise a strike capability would demonstrate its resolve as an ally, prevent China from fracturing alliance unity, and make it more likely that the United States would see the utility of cooperating with Japan to counter Chinese threats (Reference IidaIida 2021). Japan would thus not be looking to use its counterstrike systems, or in effect its own offensive spear, to break out of the US-Japan alliance framework, but rather to buttress the alliance and encase its smaller spear in the service of the larger spear of the United States (Reference Murano, Tatsumi and KennedyMurano 2020b: 68–9). Moreover, it is apparent that for any Japanese strike capability to function effectively, even though the JSDF is acquiring steadily the necessary capability, it would still need to draw on the United States for much of the information-gathering, targeting, and electronic warfare infrastructure, for learning the necessary doctrine, and for establishing a clear structure for coordinating Japanese capabilities with those of the United States (Reference MuranoMurano 2020a; Reference TakahashiTakahashi 2006: 91–2; Reference HornungHornung 2022). Furthermore, US strategic thinkers appear increasingly comfortable with the possibility that a Japanese strike capability does not necessarily prophesise Japan diverging from cooperation with the United States but signals in fact opportunities for greater bilateral integration and burden-sharing (Reference KlingerKlinger 2021: 14; Reference Schoff and SongSchoff and Song 2017). Indeed, the US-Japan SCC in January 2022 acknowledged that Japanese ‘capabilities to counter missile threats’, or in other words a strike option, should be aligned and coordinated within broader alliance strategy (MOFA 2022a: 2).