Tokyo — Japan has moved to shore up its defences on the Pacific side with the creation of a 10‑member Pacific defence initiative office on April 1, 2026, and plans to fold new Pacific‑facing measures into a slated revision of the country’s three key national security documents within the year. Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi framed the push as an urgent response to a widening “vacuum” in Japan’s Pacific surveillance and deterrence capabilities during a visit to Iwoto (Iwo Jima) on March 28.
Housed inside the Defence Ministry’s Bureau of Defence Buildup Planning — the unit responsible for the five‑year Defence Buildup Programme that sets procurement quantities and budgets — the new office will conduct cross‑cutting reviews of the Self‑Defense Forces’ posture across the vast maritime and airspace areas on Japan’s Pacific flank and feed recommendations into the upcoming security document revisions. “Strengthening our defence posture across the vast maritime and airspace areas on the Pacific side is an urgent task,” Koizumi said, adding that “large swaths of the Pacific side are effectively a vacuum in our defences.”
The shift responds to what Tokyo says are growing Chinese military activities in the wider Pacific. In June, two Chinese aircraft carriers operated simultaneously in the Pacific and transited Japan’s exclusive economic zone while carrier‑based aircraft conducted roughly 1,000 takeoffs and landings — an operation that included the first advance east of the Second Island Chain, the Defence Ministry noted. Those events heightened concerns that Japan’s intelligence‑gathering, early warning and surveillance reach over the Pacific is limited.
Concrete steps announced by ministry sources include starting surveys within the current fiscal year to deploy a mobile early‑warning and control radar on Chichijima in the Ogasawara island chain south of Tokyo. Officials are also weighing enhancements to radar functions on Iwoto and on Minami‑Torishima, Japan’s easternmost island about 1,800 kilometres from Honshu. On Iwoto, surveys will examine developing port facilities and runways to bolster the island’s airbase functions, and there is a proposal to permanently station SDF fighter jets there to allow rapid responses to incursions by Chinese and other aircraft.
The new Pacific focus complements earlier plans to strengthen radar coverage elsewhere: the ministry has already been prioritising radar sites on the Sea of Japan coast to counter North Korean missiles and around the East China Sea to respond to China’s maritime expansion, with moves to deploy mobile early‑warning radars on Amami Oshima and Kita‑Daitojima under consideration.
Defence officials acknowledge significant hurdles. The ministry has warned the initiatives face challenges over effectiveness, cost and personnel, and technical or logistical constraints — Iwoto, for example, is volcanically active, complicating basing and construction plans. Ministry sources said the Pacific office will have to balance operational gains against those practical limits as it refines options for inclusion in the Defence Buildup Programme and the two accompanying national security documents to be revised this year.
Tokyo’s latest move adds another layer to a regional trend of increased security investment amid global tensions, as Pacific states and partners reassess surveillance and deterrence capabilities. The new office is intended to coordinate Japan’s internal planning and procurement to narrow identified gaps over the coming months and to give policymakers an evidence base for decisions on radar deployments, base upgrades and potential permanent aircraft stationing on remote Pacific outposts.
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