Japan has decided to abandon the postwar pacifist shackles and is accelerating its industrial rearmament at an unprecedented pace since 1945. Tokyo bets on hard power —hypersonic missiles, amphibious forces, light aircraft carriers, and stealth fighters— to counter the Chinese threat in the Indo-Pacific. Japan’s defence budget is already around 2% of GDP, and the constitutional reinterpretation that began with Shinzo Abe now yields to a counterattack doctrine.
The transformation is not only doctrinal: the defense industrial base is moving from artisanal workshops to the rhythm of mass production. Thirty years of shrinkage have left Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki, or IHI without the scale needed. That’s why Tokyo is injecting public capital into hundreds of contracts to rebuild a national supply chain that can sustain a long campaign and not just limited exercises. According to a detailed analysis published in Foreign Affairs this week, the objective is to raise in less than a decade an industry capable of exporting missiles, next-generation radars, and escort ships designed for a high-intensity scenario.
The Japanese defense industry: from artisanal production to NATO standard
Until recently, Japanese armament programs were measured in dozens of units. Now they are counted in hundreds. The naval sector accelerates the construction of Mogami multi-mission frigates and plans a second series with greater displacement and offensive capability. Mitsubishi has reactivated entire production lines to manufacture in three years what it used to do in ten. And the Type 12 guided-missile artillery —converted from coastal defense system to long-range cruise missile— is already testing its first improved prototypes with stealth technology and a range that exceeds 1,000 kilometers. Tokyo calls that capability «counterstrike in depth». Beijing reads it as the definitive renunciation of pacifism.
The most ambitious bet is on hypersonic missiles. Japan is developing a hypersonic glide vehicle (HVGP) that will enter service around 2028 and a scramjet-powered hypersonic missile by 2030. At the same time, it is investing in submarine-launched cruise missiles and in integrating the U.S. Tomahawks into its AEGIS destroyers. The budget jump is supported by it: military R&D spending has risen from representing 2% of the defense budget in 2015 to surpassing 6% in 2026, according to SIPRI data. Japan is becoming a missile power with second-strike capability, something unthinkable just over a decade ago.
Expeditionary Forces: the muscle that changes the insular board
The new hard power of Japan not only floats and flies, it also lands. The creation of an Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARDB) equipped with AAV-7 amphibious armored vehicles and MV-22 Osprey helicopters marks a radical shift: Japan is equipped to retake islands by force. Amphibious assault ships and the Izumo-class helicopter destroyers —modified to operate the stealth fighter F-35B— configure an expeditionary force capable of projecting power from the East China Sea to the Luzon Strait. The light aircraft carrier Kaga has already completed tests with F-35B; the Izumo will begin them next autumn. Together, they offer an offensive profile that until now was only possessed by the US Navy in the Western Pacific.
Behind the build-up of amphibious capabilities lies the Ukraine lesson and direct observation of Chinese exercises around Taiwan: a purely static defense does not deter. That is why Tokyo has decided that its conventional deterrence must include the ability to strike enemy launch bases and to deny, through the credible threat of an amphibious assault, any attempt by Beijing to occupy the Senkaku/Diaoyu or islets in the Ryukyu arc. It is a doctrinal shift that makes Japan’s posture equal to that of a mid-sized global military power.
The speed of rearmament also has a bureaucratic read. The Japanese Ministry of Defense has moved from planning to execution: acquisition timelines have been shortened, Treasury oversight over large contracts has been removed, and a unified procurement agency with military and civilian staff has been created. The industrial fabric, however, remains fragmented. Only a handful of mid-sized companies feed the main programs and the lack of skilled labor in naval welding or electronic warfare has become a strategic bottleneck. Tokyo knows this and has begun allocating specific funds to dual professional training in shipyards and electronic design centers.
Balance of Power
The militarization of Japan alters the balance of forces in the Indo-Pacific in ways that Brussels—and Madrid—cannot ignore. The Washington-Tokyo axis is strengthened, but the Trump administration has made clear that the American umbrella comes at a price: it demands allies capable of fighting, not just hosting bases. Japan is buying that ticket. Beijing responds by multiplying its missile forces on the eastern coast and testing the DF-27 hypersonic with a trajectory aimed at the southern islands of Japan. The escalation is symmetrical and dangerous, but it also offers Washington a safety valve: a armed and autonomous Japan reduces direct pressure on the Seventh Fleet in a Taiwan crisis scenario.
For Spain, the Japanese rearmament has consequences mainly naval and regulatory. The Spanish Navy maintains an almost permanent presence in the Indo-Pacific through rotations of the replenishment ship Patiño or the frigates integrated in the US Navy battle groups. Tokyo’s capacity to secure sea lanes between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, through which 30% of European external trade transits, is a stability multiplier that Madrid watches with interest. In addition, the Spanish delegation to NATO continues to closely monitor the growing interoperability between Japanese forces and allied standards: Japan already participates as an observer in Alliance exercises and its doctrine is increasingly aligned with the NATO-predicated multi-domain warfare.
The political backstory is not minor. President Sánchez, who has just returned from a tour of South Korea and Singapore, trusts that the Japanese example will help legitimize before his own electorate the escalation of defense spending committed with Brussels and Washington. Sources from the Spanish government in Madrid consulted by this newsroom indicate that the public discourse will shift from the ‘commitment to peace’ toward the ‘cohesive defense of the international order’, in line with the talking points Tokyo uses to explain its own metamorphosis. The paradox is evident: the country that renounced war in its constitution is setting the pace for how a democratic state re-arms itself when geography tightens. And in the Spanish Ministry of Defense there are already those taking notes.
The five-year horizon places Japan as the fourth military budget worldwide, behind the United States, China, and India. By then, its new hypersonic missiles will cover targets along the entire Chinese coast and its F-35Bs will operate from about twenty dispersed bases, including improvised runways on southern islands. Beijing will respond with more muscle; the risk of an unintentional escalation between the two giants is real. But Tokyo’s strategic reading is clear: without its own hard power, reliance on American extended deterrence was a high-risk bet. Now Japan bets, for the first time in eighty years, on its own card.
Japanese conventional deterrence no longer rests solely on the Seventh Fleet: Tokyo is building a counterattack power that redraws the security of the Indo-Pacific.
And there lies the nuance. Japan’s rearmament is not a mere purchase of equipment nor a short-term reaction: it is the deepest strategic decision Tokyo has taken since the Allied occupation. The next review of the Defense Cooperation Guidelines with Washington, scheduled for this summer, will be the first test of how far Japan is willing to go.
