Sending Combat Troops to Exercise, Japan Leaves WWII Ghosts Behind

This year’s US-Philippines Balikatan Exercise provides plenty of evidence Japan is outdistancing the ghosts of World War II and subsequent decades of faux pacifism.

Japan is deploying a large, multi-service force to participate in Balikatan. And it is not hiding behind an “HA/DR” (humanitarian assistance / disaster relief) fig-leaf, nor just sending observers or a small unit that hovers on the edges of the training activities.

Rather, the Japanese are going to train for combat.

The Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) is sending 1,400 personnel and essentially deploying an amphibious task force (two amphibious ships and a destroyer) along with a large detachment of ground troops and their hardware.  This isn’t all that different from a US Marine / US Navy amphibious group.

It’s taking anti-ship missiles and air and missile defense systems along.  And it will be firing the Type 88 surface-to-ship missile as part of a sink exercise against an old ship.