Japan and the US are conducting joint military exercises with China as a hypothetical enemy for the first time, Japanese media on Sunday cited Tokyo officials as saying.
The Japan Self-Defense Forces and the US military set a possible Taiwan contingency as the main scenario for their highest-level military exercise Keen Edge, which began on Thursday last week and is scheduled to end on Thursday, Kyodo News reported.
Keen Edge is a biennial command post training drill in which Japanese and US military employ computer simulations to practice responses in the event of a crisis or contingency, the US Indo-Pacific Command said.
Photo: AFP
Japanese General Yoshihide Yoshida, the head of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, told a news conference on Jan. 25 that Japan and the US “did not envision a particular country or region” for the exercise, the Japan Times reported.
However, Kyodo News cited “multiple government officials” as saying that China was the hypothetical enemy.
Compared with past exercises, which used tentative names for hypothetical enemies, the current exercise is conducted under a much more concrete assumption, it said.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense is believed to have classified the scenario as a specially designated secret protected by Japan’s State Secrecy Law, it said.
Amid growing concerns that China would invade Taiwan within the next few years, naming a hypothetical enemy indicated a strong sense of urgency shared by Japan and the US, it said.
In previous exercises, Japan and the US used maps that slightly differed from the topography of actual countries to “avoid a backlash in the event the plans were leaked,” but switched to unaltered maps in the current exercise, the Japan Times reported.
Japan and the US have drawn up several joint operation plans in preparation for possible contingencies, with a draft envisioning a Taiwan contingency being completed at the end of last year, Kyodo News said.
The two sides are said to finalize the drafted plan by the end of this year based on the results of the current exercise, it said.
Troops are expected to carry out the plan during the field training exercise Keen Sword next year to verify its efficacy, it said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat