Upcoming Japanese Military Exercises

On Oct. 24, the Japanese government announced a major exercise intended to increase its ability to protect its remote southwestern islands. Some 34,000 troops from air, land and naval units are scheduled to take part in Japan's live-fire exercise, which will be held Nov. 1-18. It appears the exercises will include amphibious landings on the remote island of Okidaito-jima, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of the main Okinawa Island. Similar amphibious landings scheduled during another large-scale exercise last year were reportedly canceled at the last moment in response to Chinese complaints.

Meanwhile, China is also staging its own large-scale exercises across the region. Over the past few years the Chinese have sought to improve their combat effectiveness and training to match their increasingly modern military equipment. They have focused on exercises to improve coordination between their different military commands and services. China is also increasing its military capability in part to help bolster its claim on various disputed islands in the region, such as the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese) and the Spratly Islands, for military reasons and to gain access to the suspected wealth of natural resources around them. The latest announced Chinese drills involve the Maneuver 5 exercise, in which vessels from all Chinese navy fleets will pass through the so-called first island chain into the Western Pacific, where they are scheduled to take part in the People's Liberation Army Navy's largest unscripted exercise to date.

For Japan's upcoming exercise, Tokyo announced that it would for the first time deploy land-based Type 88 surface-to-ship missiles to Miyako-jima and on the southern tip of Okinawa's main island. Though the missiles are not scheduled to fire during the exercises, their deployment is important because stationing batteries of Type 88 missiles in such a way would effectively put the entire passage between Okinawa-jima and Miyako-jima under the coverage of Japanese land-based surface-to-ship missiles. The Japanese deny that the deployment is aimed at any specific party, but given that the Chinese navy is increasingly using the same passage through the first island chain and into the Pacific, the deployment is sure to send a strong message to Beijing.

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