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| An F-35B hovers before landing |
TOKYO, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- The United States beefing up its military presence in Japan with the first overseas deployment of its state-of-the art F-35 stealth fighter jets to the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture has drawn the ire of locals and comes at a time when regional nerves are already frayed.
The United States has, in the past, made no secret about its plans to pivot a significant portion of its military assets to the Asia Pacific region, but ahead of the inauguration on Friday of President-elect Donald Trump, the arrival Wednesday of the two stealth fighters, as part of a broader plan to assign 16 similar fighters to the base, observers said, is "untimely".
While the future direction of U.S. foreign diplomacy remains unclear, tensions in the immediate region here are less than amiable, owing to Japan's own ambitions to reassert itself militarily in the region, at a time when Japan is at odds with its closets neighbors over its misperceptions of history and territorial disputes.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has recently returned from a whirlwind tour of Pacific Rim nations during which the hawkish leader embarked on a fair amount of military and maritime-linked rabble-rousing, which runs contrary to the image Abe tends to project internationally as the "sorry, not sorry" spin doctor for Japan's deeds in World War II.
He tends to come across as a forward-thinking statesman, who has promised to bring about economic reform to Japan and is known to curry favor from smaller nations with his "earnest" smile and deep pockets for "peaceful" ODA.
Yet under Abe, defense spending here has spiked for a fifth year and along with the U.S.'s F-35's being stationed here, Japan's Ministry of Defense (MOD) plans to purchase at least six Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning stealth fighter jets and has stated the acquisition is aimed at "intending to help bolster Japan's Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) achieving superior air-combat capability."
The MOD here has previously stated that the stealth fighter, the Pentagon's most expensive weapons system in history, can be configured for air-to-air engagements, as well as air-to-ground and air-to-sea engagements. It has also referred to the fact that developments have been underway for the fighter to carry next-generation weaponry, including the possibility of a solid state laser and a High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW), which is a hypersonic missile.
Coupled with the fact that the fifth-generation, multirole, stealth fighter jets have been selected by Japan's MOD as its future mainstay fighter, as the jet offers superior stealth capabilities, second only to that of the U.S. F-22 Raptor, with a radar cross-section roughly equal to the size of a metal golf ball, making it largely undetectable to radars, it comes as no surprise that its arrival here on Wednesday ruffled a few feathers.
Read the full story at Xinhua
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PacificSentinel: Wow, the Propaganda level in this story is through the roof!