Overview
- The biennial Keen Sword field exercise began Monday with an opening ceremony on Ishigaki Island and will run through Oct. 29, bringing together roughly 45,000 Japan Self-Defense Force personnel and about 11,000 U.S. service members alongside forces from seven partner countries.
- Japan moved its new Type-25 long-range surface-to-ship missiles out of their garrison to a Kyushu training area for the first time as part of the exercise while officials confirmed no live-fire of the missiles is planned.
- The U.S. Marine Corps forward deployed two new systems, NMESIS and MADIS, to Yonaguni Island for the first time to practice ship interdiction and short-range air defense near Japan’s southwestern approaches.
- Japanese fighters were scrambled on the opening day after Chinese reconnaissance and attack drones and a Y-9 intelligence aircraft transited near Okinawa, an operational development that highlighted rising air and unmanned activity in the area.
- Training across air and missile defense, maritime operations, logistics, casualty evacuation, space and cyber is being used to test allied interoperability and to show collective deterrence while raising local political sensitivity about U.S. forces and regional signaling to China.