Tensions between China and Taiwan have been on the rise in recent years — particularly since Chinese President Xi Jinping revealed his intent to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army would be prepared and equipped to “unify” (or invade) its smaller neighbor by 2027. Although Beijing sees the island as a piece of its territory, Taipei has been under the rule of its own separate government for roughly 75 years.

The security situation in the Indo-Pacific seems more uncertain this week, after Taiwan national security officials raised alarm that they’re detecting a large fleet of warships, high-altitude surveillance balloons and other markers of potential future aggression they associate with China’s military.

“We have remained focused on the [People’s Republic of China’s] activity for quite some time. That’s why the PRC has been our pacing challenge for the last four years. We’ve talked about their coercive actions in the region. And certainly, this latest activity is something that we will continue to monitor and make sure that that nobody does anything to change the status quo in the [Taiwan Strait],” Austin said during a press briefing to close out a multi-day trip to Japan, which will mark his final visit to the Indo-Pacific as the U.S. defense chief.

The secretary highlighted joint pursuits that America and Japan executed on during his tenure, including an ongoing push to collaboratively upgrade their militaries’ command-and-control frameworks and expanding their shared operational responsibilities.

Notably, the Taiwan Strait is considered one of the world’s most critical waterways for global shipping, as heaps of valuable trade assets pass through it every day. Beijing so far does not appear to have made it clear whether the capabilities its surging near the strait this week are part of a training exercise, military drill — or some other, more threatening scheme.

Responding to DefenseScoop’s questions in Japan Wednesday, Austin didn’t say if he’s spoken to his Taiwanese counterparts about the still-evolving incident, or if his team has any indications of China’s reasoning for the deployments near the island this week.

“Our policy hasn’t changed. We’ll continue to do what we can to help Taiwan acquire the means to defend itself. Again, that work continues on. But this latest activity — we’ll continue to monitor it and see what happens,” he said.

Austin also expressed confidence that the U.S. military will continue to have the capacity and focus to deter China and work with its allies to promote peace around the Indo-Pacific, even as conflicts around the Middle East and in Ukraine continue to expand.

“Throughout [the last four years], the PRC has been our pacing challenge. And we have done a number of things that — globally — can help our partners and allies,” he told DefenseScoop. “A combination of what we’ve done to help Ukraine defend itself and put more pressure on Russia, to help Israel do what it’s done, has made Russia weaker and Iran weaker as well. And so that has had an impact.”

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Those bilateral engagements followed stops earlier that day at both U.S. Forces Japan headquarters at Yokota Air Base, and separately the Yokohama North Docks, where Austin heard directly from military personnel about maturing efforts to modernize the alliance’s command-and-control capabilities.

They also came as the two allies work on refining requirements to reconstitute USFJ into a joint force headquarters.

“As the security situation in the region is increasingly severe, I would like to continue to move forward with important initiatives of the alliance and cooperating our efforts to strengthen alliance capabilities to deter and respond, as well as to mitigate the impacts on local communities,” Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told Austin and his team during the open-press portion of their bilateral meeting.

Austin also emphasized how the two nations are operating in a clear-eyed manner regarding the challenges to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region and other areas of the world.

“That includes coercive behavior by the People’s Republic of China in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and elsewhere in a region. It includes Russia’s reckless war of choice in Ukraine, and it includes [North Korea’s] support for Moscow’s war, as well as its other destabilizing and provocative activities,” he said. “But we’re meeting these challenges with confidence and resolve, and we remain committed to advancing our historic trilateral cooperation with [the] Republic of Korea.”

As the defense leaders alluded to, their meetings this week unfolded as Syria continues to erupt in political chaos, South Korea confronts backlash and works to recuperate from its president’s recent, temporary declaration of martial law, and conflicts continue to play out both in Ukraine and around Israel.

While the main portions of the Pentagon chief’s engagements were closed to the press on Tuesday, senior U.S. defense officials briefed a small group of journalists traveling in Austin’s delegation on the progress and implications of the deepening U.S.-Japan military partnership.

“The department has been working to realize the vision that Secretary Austin outlined in July” at a 2+2 dialogue in Tokyo, one senior official said.

There, American and Japanese national security officials solidified a plan to revamp their alliance’s command and control — or C2 — capabilities, including by enabling more collaboration on next-generation technologies within their defense industries and by expanding joint, cross-domain missions.

“The United States and Japan are on track to deliver that vision, as [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] continues to convene working groups with Japanese counterparts to build out alliance coordination procedures and other operational measures for enhanced bilateral cooperation. There have been several such working groups so far,” the senior defense official said.

They added that, at the same time, America is also moving to reshape USFJ into a joint force headquarters by revamping its resources and facilities to expand and enable more cooperative missions and responsibilities.

“We are in a good position to implement these requirements in the months ahead, ensuring that the JFHQ is in a strong position to operate effectively with Japan and that the alliance can respond in peacetime and contingencies,” according to the senior defense official.

In their view, “Japan has been investing more than ever in its own capabilities.”

They pointed to how, in particular, the island nation has been moving to take on more roles and missions in the alliance and the broader region — including by standing up its own joint operations and command center that should open up sometime early next spring.

“And in the context of that, we made an alliance decision to upgrade U.S. Forces Japan, which has largely been in the business of managing the alliance itself, but not an operational command,” the senior U.S. defense official said.

They committed to sharing more information on the technical aspects of this pivot in the near future.

“But currently, the U.S. Forces Japan commander is dual-hatted as the 5th Air Force commander — and the decision that Secretary Austin made this summer as an alliance decision is to split those and to have a standalone [USFJ] commander that would be in command of this upgraded command, and one of the principal responsibilities of that will to be linking up with Japan’s new joint operational command in a way that we have not done before in the U.S.-Japan alliance,” the official said.

Additionally, they pointed out that the original language lawmakers proposed for the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (the House-Senate negotiated version of the NDAA was released Saturday) incorporates a reporting requirement that if passed would mandate Defense Department personnel to inform Congress members about the progress that’s been made since the nations first agreed to boost their military partnerships.

“That’s just another sign and symbol of the bipartisan congressional interest and support that we see on this issue,” the senior defense official said.

During the official bilateral dialogues with Nakatani and Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Tuesday, Austin repeatedly emphasized that — despite intensifying warfare in multiple regions around the world — he believes that the U.S.-Japan alliance is presently stronger than ever.

“We share a vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, and I’m proud of how much we’ve accomplished over the past four years. We’ve announced major improvements to our force posture, advanced groundbreaking defense industrial agreements and taken steps to upgrade our command and control, and we’ve worked more closely than ever with our partners across this region in support of stability, deterrence and peace,” the Pentagon chief said.

In his opening remarks with Austin, which reporters were permitted to observe ahead of the closed-door meeting, Ishiba said the global conflict landscape is changing “very quickly, on a weekly basis” — and that current events now playing out in Syria and South Korea were difficult to imagine or predict not that long ago.

“A century from now, we will consider what’s happening in 2024 as something historic. So, we need to be accountable for today’s world, as well as the world of tomorrow’s generations,” he said.

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“And so, we want to see this region, this area, remain open to freedom of navigation and the ability to fly the skies and international airways whenever we want to. We want to see that remain, and so we’re going to continue to work with our allies and partners to ensure that we can do that — and yes, you play a critical role in that, and in sending that message,” he said.

Yokosuka is the first of several military bases Austin and his team are set to tour in Japan this week, on what will ultimately be his 13th and final trip to the Indo-Pacific during his leadership tenure as America’s defense chief. After motorcading to Hardy Barracks, he and his team arrived on the Naval base in Black Hawk helicopters.

During closed-press meetings inside the aircraft carrier, he engaged with senior U.S. Naval Forces Japan leaders — as well as some of the top-performing sailors on the vessel.

Then, he took the stage on the flight deck and addressed what defense officials said were up to approximately 1,800 service members.

“I know this is a very complex endeavor, but I want you to know that I appreciate the sacrifices that you and your families make, and we’re going to continue to do everything we can to help you make moves easier and enable you to focus on what you do each and every day better,” Austin told the crowd.

Since it was docked at the Naval base last month, USS George Washington is currently the only forward-deployed U.S. aircraft carrier anywhere in the world. In this context, it’s also considered the first time that the Navy’s forward-deployed carrier air wing is equipped with fifth-generation aircraft — the stealthy F-35C.

“That is a very, very capable platform. And so, again, I think any U.S. Naval ship deployed anywhere is a statement of the U.S.’ commitment. And certainly, when you send a carrier battle group, it is a strong statement of the U.S.’ commitment,” Austin told DefenseScoop in a short press gaggle after finishing his address to the sailors.

“USS Washington is extremely important,” he added.

When asked about his team’s latest assessment of whether China’s military is presently on track to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027 — a stated goal of Beijing’s leadership — Austin noted that there’s been a lot of speculation lately about whether Chinese President Xi Jinping “will decide to do one thing or another.”

“I would just say from my vantage point — at this point in time — I don’t think an attack [on Taiwan] is either imminent or unavoidable. So, again, our goal is to make sure that we continue to work with likeminded partners and allies to ensure that we maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific. And we’ve been pretty successful at that,” the secretary told DefenseScoop.

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Here, he’ll spend the next three days engaging with U.S. troops and Japanese leaders about ongoing joint command-and-control upgrades the two militaries are pursuing, as well as a range of other nascent cooperative efforts designed to expand and modernize their shared arsenals of warfighting assets.

During an 11-hour flight overseas from California, a senior U.S. defense official traveling in Austin’s delegation briefed a small group of reporters on the demonstrations and activities the secretary and his team are set to observe and participate in at multiple military installations around the island nation.

“Throughout the next three days, we’re going to see a lot of ‘firsts’ in Japan,” the senior defense official said.

It might be his last visit to the close U.S. treaty ally as secretary, but this trip also marks Austin’s fourth official time in Japan while steering DOD.

In the senior defense official’s view, “it’s fitting that the secretary would travel again to Japan at the end of this year because his first overseas trip as secretary in March 2021 was to the Indo-Pacific — and his first foreign stop on that trip was Japan.”

On Monday, Austin will head to Yokosuka Naval Base and tour the USS George Washington, which has been docked there since last month and is the only forward-deployed U.S. aircraft carrier worldwide at this time.

According to the senior official, it’s also the first time, in this context, that the Navy’s forward-deployed carrier air wing includes fifth-generation aircraft, the stealthy F-35C.

“So, this really marks a very significant milestone for our force posture efforts in Japan. And importantly, it showcases just how we are continuously modernizing the alliance’s capabilities, especially since we’ve started in 2021,” they said.

Next up, on Tuesday, the secretary will head to Yokota Air Base, where U.S. Forces Japan is now headquartered.  

“He’s actually going to get a progress report on how we are doing on command and control, or C2, and the upgrades that they’re actually making underway,” the senior defense official explained.

At a 2+2 dialogue in Tokyo this summer, top U.S. and Japanese national security officials solidified a plan to strategically update their alliance’s C2 capabilities, largely by deepening defense industry and advanced technology cooperation, and enhancing cross-domain operations.

“We have to get this right — but we also have to do it the right way. So, I think Tuesday’s briefing is going to give [Austin] a chance to really take stock on what’s been happening, what’s progressed today, what’s expected of this ongoing effort,” the senior defense official said.

Further, Japan is currently developing its military’s own, first-ever Joint Operations Center, with aims to officially stand it up in March 2025. Austin and his counterparts are looking to discuss changes America is making to U.S. Forces Japan to ensure they can eventually link up with that new joint operational command in a way that they have not been able to before.

From there, Austin and the team will head to Yokohama North Dock to meet directly with the U.S. Army’s 5th Composite Watercraft Company.

“This is significant because this company was actually activated in February of this year. It’s not only the first time this is deployed — now, it’s the first time [any of the] companies deployed outside the United States,” the senior defense official told reporters.

And then to close out Tuesday’s packed schedule of events, Austin is set to attend an office call with Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, and then a working dinner with Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani.

“These engagements are going to give the secretary the opportunity to really take stock of the progress that we’ve made together over the years, thank the two of them, really, for the partnership, and underscore the importance of the alliance as a cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” the official noted.

They and others have suggested to DefenseScoop that China’s intensifying employment of political, economic and military coercion to essentially reshape the international order in the Indo-Pacific — for its own benefit — is considered a major motivation for the U.S. and Japan’s steadily strengthening alliance in the region.

Finally, on Wednesday, Austin will conclude the trip after traveling to Camp Asaka to observe the multi-day military exercise Yama Sakura unfolding in real-time.

“This exercise has taken place every year since 1982, but this is the first time that we’re actually incorporating more and formal Australian participation, which is something that Secretary Austin and his counterparts in Australia and Japan announced a few weeks ago in Darwin,” the senior defense official said.

Over recent months, leaders within the trilateral security alliance between Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. have been hosting nascent discussions with their Japanese counterparts about cooperating on a project-by-project basis under AUKUS Pillar 2, which entails the co-development of disruptive warfighting technologies across six focus areas.

In response to questions from DefenseScoop on Sunday regarding what capability areas may be prioritized first with Japan, the senior defense official confirmed consultations are ongoing, but declined to identify the specific technologies in question for nearest-term acceleration.

They committed to sharing more information after the trip to Tokyo ends.

“Importantly, we continue to work with Japan on deepening our trilateral and multilateral security partnerships — whether that’s with the Republic of Korea, Australia, the Philippines and others,” the senior defense official repeatedly emphasized during the briefing.

Notably, ahead of departing for this trip, DOD planners told reporters who were invited that there was a possibility that the secretary and his crew would also visit South Korea along the way. That changed after South Korea‘s President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3 — and subsequently lifted it hours later after massive public outcry and lawmakers unanimously rejected the decree.

“When Secretary Austin meets with his counterparts, they often spend a good deal of time comparing assessments of major events in the region. And the trilateral relationship between the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea has been a top tier priority for the Biden administration from the very start,” the senior defense official said in response to questions from DefenseScoop about whether the secretary planned to discuss the chaos and still-unfolding fallout in South Korea with his Japanese partners.

“And I think there is every reason to expect that all parties involved will remain quite committed — and certainly between Washington and Tokyo — quite committed to carrying on that progress,” they said.

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America’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles, and Japanese Minister of Defense Nakatani Gen detailed their latest cooperation agenda in a press briefing immediately following the fourteenth Trilateral Defense Ministers’ Meeting (TDMM) Nov. 17, where they’d solidified these aims.

“We’re excited to build advanced capabilities with Japan and Australia,” Austin told reporters there.

“We’re moving forward with our trilateral research, development, test and evaluation projects arrangement focusing on composite aerospace materials and autonomous systems. In the same vein, we’re deepening our discussions on cooperative combat aircraft and autonomy, and we’re also discussing opportunities to boost cooperation with Japan on AUKUS Pillar 2,” he said.

Broadly, the senior officials vowed to enhance their nations’ defense cooperation pursuits across four focus areas: expanding trilateral operational cooperation; building advanced capabilities together; planning together; and demonstrating presence in the region.

Among a range of fresh announcements, they confirmed new goals to cooperate on establishing a networked air-and-missile defense architecture designed to counter threats intensifying across the Indo-Pacific, and agreed to deepen collaboration with regard to trilateral training, exercises and exchanges.

They also launched a new plan for “Trilateral Defense Consultations” to more concretely align policy and operational objectives between America’s military services, the Japan Self Defense Forces, and the Australian Defence Force.

“There actually has been a real history and record of us working closely together. But what we are announcing today gives expression to the fact that — as three countries — we now seek to do this in a more and increasingly coordinated way. And that will be a benefit to our capability. We believe it will be the benefit to the collective security of the Indo-Pacific, and we believe it will make a significant contribution to the global rules-based order,” Marles said.

The trilateral partners also expressed concerns about intensifying, destabilizing actions being carried out by adversaries in the region — including what they called “dangerous conduct” and coercion that they attribute to China.

“The security environment is very severe right now, and very complex. We need to cooperate closely, from peacetime to contingency,” Nakatani said.

In terms of new plans for joint technology acceleration in the near term, Austin noted that through the AUKUS alliance, the U.S., U.K. and Australia are working together on Pillar 2 tech to “provide real capability to the warfighter as quickly as we possibly can.”

“We expect that Japan will join AUKUS Pillar 2 at some point in the not-too-distant future to work on specific projects that have yet to be named,” the defense secretary said.

“But again, there are just so many things that we can work together on and are working together on — whether it’s you know quantum capability, whether it’s [collaborative combat aircraft or CCA], or what you would describe as man-unmanned teaming aircraft, and just a number of other things that include long-range strike, and so many other things that I believe our work is going to kind of pay significant dividends to the warfighter here going forward,” Austin told DefenseScoop.

Ahead of the trilateral meeting, the defense leaders participated in a troop engagement with Australian soldiers and U.S. Marines rotationally based in Darwin — and were shown tanks, drones and other assets they are developing and deploying.

At one point, Australian Army Sgt. Jake Fauser briefed the officials on some uncrewed aerial systems and radar capabilities being leveraged for detection and reconnaissance operations. He notably answered follow-up questions from Austin regarding the range and reach of the various assets.

On the sidelines of the event, Fauser told DefenseScoop about some of the drones on display.

“For our close-range reconnaissance we have the Black Hornet, which can move between that sort of zero-to-two-kilometer radius. In our intermediate we have our Parrot drone, which [operators can move up to four kilometers] — and then we have our Wasp capability that can punch from out to five [kilometers]. And we’re in the process of getting the Puma being a new long-range drone which can increase our capability out to 40 kilometers,” Fauser said.

In his view as a soldier, deepening partnerships in this way is boosting Australia’s national stability and security.

“It has been an excellent experience. Last year, my platoon was attached to an American combat team. Being able to experience the different ways that the Australian Army does things with the U.S. Marine Corps and learning off each other, being able to learn off each other, and then we’d be able to cover each other’s gaps in a future conflict, if the need is there,” Fauser told DefenseScoop.

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That large-scale modernization affair — Autonomous Warrior 2024 — marks AUKUS’ signature event this year and is part of the alliance’s new Maritime Big Play series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises, two senior defense officials told a small group of reporters on a call Wednesday.

“Maritime Big Play allows AUKUS partners to practice fielding and maintaining thousands of uncrewed systems, gaining valuable experience operating in coalitions to solve realistic operational problems, such as improving undersea situational awareness,” said Madeline Mortelmans, acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities. 

The AUKUS alliance is structured around two pillars. 

While the first of those encompasses the co-development of a nuclear-powered submarine force for Australia, Pillar 2 focuses on the co-creation and deployments of emerging and disruptive military technologies.

Via Pillar 2, Mortelmans noted, AUKUS members are “implementing a fundamental shift to more closely integrate our systems and break down barriers to collaboration at every stage and in every part of our system.”

Broadly, the MBP series is designed to push forward the Pillar 2 objective to rapidly translate cutting-edge capabilities into practical, asymmetric assets delivered quickly to service members in the field. 

Through it, the international partners aim to collaboratively test and refine the alliance’s capacity to jointly operate uncrewed systems at sea, transmit and process intelligence and reconnaissance data from all three nations, and supply real-time maritime domain awareness to strengthen decision-making. 

“What we’ve been doing with this experimentation campaign is to ensure that when different gear shows up in the fight and into theater, it can be included seamlessly to provide common operating pictures and common control systems, and to ensure effects as and when we choose to have them as a coalition,” a senior defense official who joined Mortelmans but spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters on Wednesday. 

DefenseScoop asked the two officials whether any of the autonomous or other combat capabilities were identified by AUKUS participants as a tool that would make sense for more rapid fielding and use in military operations in the near term.

“Some of them already are,” the senior defense official said. “There are some systems — uncrewed surface vessels in Australia  — that have been put out on the ocean. And some of the things that we saw during this experimentation campaign was data coming back from those systems in real-time to maintain a common operating picture.”

They further told DefenseScoop: “Part of doing the Maritime Big Play is to see the realm of what’s available and to make those kinds of decisions. But at this point, we haven’t even completed the exercise, so no decisions have been taken to acquire or rapidly accelerate any system.” 

On the call, the two senior defense officials opted not to explicitly name any of the technology brands or companies that made the sensors, platforms, drones, or network and communications systems the U.S. brought to Autonomous Warrior 2024.

However, in an email from Australia shortly afterwards, Pentagon spokesperson Army Maj. Pete Nguyen shed more light on the exact prototypes and technologies America demonstrated during the event.

The list he provided includes, among others:

• High Altitude Balloons (HABs) that “augment the space domain by providing resilient communications in a denied environment from the stratosphere by carrying a range of mission capable payloads” — from Aerostar, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
• Greenough Advanced Rescue Craft (GARC), which are “low-cost attritable [small uncrewed  surface vehicles or sUSVs] that can deploy independently or as a formation … and provide an uncrewed means to respond to Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD)” — from MAPC, in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Sea Stalker sUSV that’s “designed to serve in multiple maritime missions to include reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence collection” — from Swift Ships, a small business based in Morgan City, Louisiana.
• Triton “multi-model Autonomous Underwater and Surface Vessel capable of persistent operation in a contested environment with threat detection and evasion capabilities” — from Ocean Aero, a small business in Gulfport, Mississippi.
• A “Government-Owned, Non-Proprietary Common Control System” that gives “U.S. Navy uncrewed vehicles hardware and software that works across several different systems” and helps process data from sensor payloads.

“This is only the first in our series of experiments and demonstrations. Over time, Maritime Big Play will grow and evolve to reflect emerging technologies, new systems and new operational requirements,” Mortelmans told reporters Wednesday.

Notably, during that call she also mentioned that members of the Japanese military joined this round of Maritime Big Play experimentation as “observers.”

AUKUS leaders have made it clear that they are open to expanding the trilateral security partnership to include other nations — solely under Pillar 2, not Pillar 1 — to jointly strengthen the interoperability of their maritime drone systems. 

“Planning for the next exercise is underway. So the full details of what [Japan’s] participation will be in the future hasn’t yet been determined, but I think that they will move from being an observer to being a participant in the activity. And what a participant means could be bringing Japanese systems and platforms participating in that command-and-control architecture. There’s a wide range of opportunities and we’re really eager to explore those,” the senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

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The GPI program looks to develop a system that can intercept and defeat incoming hypersonics while they are flying through the edges of the Earth’s atmosphere, also known as the glide phase. The missiles will be fired from Aegis-equipped U.S. Navy destroyers and the Aegis Ashore system.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency — which is leading the program in partnership with Japan’s Ministry of Defense — expects Northrop Grumman’s selection to result in follow-on development and production, according to the agency.

“Today’s decision represents a turning point for hypersonic glide phase defense,” MDA Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said in a statement. “I’m very proud of the entire team including our industry partners, for all the hard work to get to this point. It is also an honor to have Japan as our partner as we move forward on this critical counter-hypersonic capability.”

Hypersonic missile defense has been a modernization priority for the Pentagon, as key adversaries such as China and Russia advance development of their own systems. The weapons are able to reach speeds of Mach 5 or greater and maneuver through the Earth’s atmosphere, making it difficult for traditional air defense systems to intercept them.

Washington and Tokyo signed an official GPI cooperative development project arrangement for the program in May, which tasked Japan to lead development of rocket motors and propulsion components for GPI, according to the Defense Department.

Northrop Grumman beat out RTX for the continued development work. Both companies received other transaction agreements (OTAs) for the program in 2022 after Lockheed Martin was booted from the effort. In 2023, the agency transitioned both Northrop and RTX’s designs for the GPI program to the “technology development phase” — equivalent to a Milestone A decision.

The agency requested $182 million for GPI in its fiscal 2025 budget request. It plans for the missiles to reach initial operational capability by the end of 2029 and full operational capability by the 2030s.

Under its existing OTA contract, Northrop Grumman will continue to refine GPI’s preliminary design; demonstrate system performance in hypersonic environments ahead of the program’s preliminary design review; conduct company-led flight experiments; and leverage digital engineering tools to accelerate the design process, the company said in a release.

Northrop’s GPI design features advanced “seeker for threat tracking and hit-to-kill accuracy, a re-ignitable upper stage engine used for threat containment and a dual engagement mode to engage threats across a wide range of altitudes,” according to the contractor.

“GPI adds mission critical standoff to warfighters in scenarios where distance creates an advantage. Tailorable to a multitude of mission requirements, Northrop Grumman’s revolutionary solution is designed to perform in the evolving threat landscape,” Wendy Williams, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and manager of launch and missile defense systems, said in a statement.

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“We’re bringing together … some of our closest non-NATO partners to have a discussion around issues like resilience and cyber, disinformation, technology and the like,” a senior administration official said July 5. 

President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and many of their domestic colleagues and foreign counterparts are set to take part in this historic, three-day summit, which kicks off Tuesday and will commemorate NATO’s 75th anniversary. 

Broadly, the military alliance hosts these periodic meet-ups as opportunities for heads of state and other government leaders of member countries to connect in one place on key policy priorities — and ultimately agree upon and lay out strategic plans to guide their latest activities. This week’s gathering will be the first NATO summit held in Washington since 1999. 

This one will unfold against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine sparked by Russia’s invasion.

Top aims “include ensuring the implementation of new NATO plans for credible deterrence and defense, enhancing long-term support for Ukraine and fostering its future NATO membership,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters last week.

“During the summit, Secretary Austin will be engaged in discussions to ramp up transatlantic defense industrial production, ensure adequate defense investments from allies and the deepening of practical cooperation between NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners to include Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea,” he added.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity at another discussion last week, a senior White House official also pointed to that increased focus on the Indo-Pacific.

“This particular grouping of the ‘IP4,’ as we call them in NATO lingo — Australia, Japan, New Zealand, ROK — these are some of our closest partners that we work with in the region,” the official explained.

While NATO first signed formal agreements with the Indo-Pacific 4 in the early 2010s, this partnership was elevated through the inaugural participation of those countries’ leaders in the alliance’s 2022 summit, held in Madrid. The NATO and IP4 partners reaffirmed their ties at the conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year.

“I will say that we’ve got some new projects that we’re going to be talking about at the summit with our Indo-Pacific partners on resilience. So resilience in the region, supporting Ukraine, as I mentioned, countering disinformation, cyber — and then also on tech cooperation and emerging technologies,” the senior administration official said.

America’s docket for the meeting, according to that official, also involves plans to discuss China’s intensifying support for Russia’s defense industrial base.

“With something like 90 percent of Russia’s semiconductors coming from the [People’s Republic of China], 70 percent of its nitrocellulose, which is used for propellants — and a lot of its optics, machine tools, etc. — all of this not only fueling Russia’s war against Ukraine but also creating a long-term challenge for European security that, obviously, our allies recognize. And so we will have, I think, strong language on this to address,” the senior official said.

On the sidelines of the summit, they confirmed, Biden will host a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and nearly two dozen allies and partners who’ve signed bilateral security agreements with the war-torn nation.

Among other reveals and plans alongside its NATO allies, the U.S. is also poised to announce new steps to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses and other military capabilities in the near term.

“Together, the Washington summit will send a strong signal to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that if he thinks he can outlast the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine, he’s dead wrong. We’re also going to send an important message to the rest of the world, including through our partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, as we stand together united and in support of democratic values,” the senior administration official told reporters.

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Zero trust is a cybersecurity concept and framework that assumes networks are already compromised and require constant monitoring and authentication to protect critical info. Department of Defense components are expected to move to that model by 2027, and bringing overseas allies into the fold could be critical for interoperability.

“There’s a great proof of concept going on in [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] right now. Their multinational mission force network has gone 100% zero trust, if you will … We’re going to actually exercise this with our multinational partners,” Rear Adm. Stephen Donald, deputy commander of U.S. 10th Fleet, said Monday at the Association of Old Crows annual symposium.

The effort will be part of the next iteration of Keen Edge, which is slated for early 2024. Keen Edge is a biennial exercise that traditionally has involved U.S. and Japanese forces, but Australia is being added as part of a broader push for enhanced trilateral military cooperation.

“Keen Edge 24 (KE24), historically a bilateral Japan Joint Staff (JJS) and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) command post exercise, will now include the participation of Australia. KE24 will commence on 31 Jan – 7 Feb in various locations throughout the region. KE24 is designed to increase our integrated joint operational capability, refine command and control procedures, and improve interoperability among the participating countries to respond to a variety of crises and contingencies in the Indo-Pacific region,” Indo-Pacom said in a statement to DefenseScoop on Tuesday.

Under the planned construct for the event, “the [international] partner is only allowed into that set of data that they are cleared for [and] that they are authorized for. And it’s all controlled by a built-from-the-ground-up, zero-trust network. We’re gonna see how well that works,” Donald said.

“Right now, you know, it’s a login, multi-authentication factor-based network that then … layers in the appropriate encryption mechanisms so that everything from point A to point B is encrypted. You get a virtual desktop that you can view all the data in. You don’t get necessarily to print stuff out. I think we’re still working through some of that. But you get access to the data … and onboarding seems to be relatively easy through this sort of portal approach,” he added.

Donald sees potential opportunities to expand cooperation over time.

“I think the longer-term piece is, how do we come together across all of our partnerships and build standards together, like zero trust, that we’re able to incorporate into our weapon systems natively? I think that’s going to be a longer road. But we’ll see how this initiative plays out,” he added.

The Pentagon is pursuing a warfighting construct called Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) to connect the various sensors, shooters and data streams of the U.S. military services and their international partners, under a more unified network. However, there are security and interoperability challenges associated with that.

Assured command and control, battlespace awareness, and managing cyber and space capabilities will be critical in the future, Donald noted. Allies and partners will need to be part of that equation.

“It is an incredible problem. But I think we have some … technology solutions before us — things like zero trust. Really architecting that well seems to be a solid approach. The other approach is … taking some of our legacy systems and making them as secure and trusted as possible — and then onboarding that,” Donald said. “I think with zero trust, we can really earnestly start sort of a … bring-your-own-device sort of setup for partnerships.”

“We have to figure out if we can get this right,” he added. “Next year … we’ll have probably more information because this will have been rolled out. We’ll use it in a couple multinational exercises in the Pacific Rim, and we’ll have some key lessons learned.”

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Current and former leaders from the three nations broadly discussed how and why they’re pursuing this and other joint collaboration on unmanned aerial systems and other emerging combat technologies at the ComDef 2023 conference, which took place nearby in Arlington, Virginia.

“The geo-strategic circumstances in the Indo-Pacific are changing more rapidly than we anticipated even a few years ago. And that has meant that we have had to do more together — more with the U.S. as our major military ally — then we’ll have other partnerships in the region, particularly with countries like Japan. And so, what’s happening is as China continues to rise, the region is adjusting to that. It’s adjusting to the economic power of China and it’s adjusting to the military power of China,” Australia’s former Ambassador to the U.S. Arthur Sinodinos said at the event. 

Each of the nations share unique and expanding military partnerships with one another, which are largely based on and influenced by their common interests in the Indo-Pacific region. For instance, four prototype, medium and large U.S. Navy drones recently transited the Pacific Ocean from their homeport in California to 7th Fleet headquarters in Japan — integrating with other platforms and Japan-based units, along the way — as part of the Integrated Battle Problem 23.2 exercise.

In a new fact sheet detailing many elements of America’s and Australia’s envisioned “next-generation of innovation and partnership,” officials confirmed that the allies “welcomed additional efforts to increase trilateral cooperation with Japan, including Australia’s future participation for the first time in the YAMA SAKURA exercise in 2023 and KEEN EDGE exercise in 2024, both in Japan.” They also noted that they’re now considering other new trilateral activities with the Japanese military specifically associated with unmanned aerial systems.

“Our cooperation will enhance interoperability and accelerate technology transfer in the rapidly emerging field of collaborative combat aircraft and autonomy,” officials wrote.

They also further spotlighted the U.S. and Australia’s commitment to jointly develop and operate collaborative combat aircraft, also known as CCA drones.

Over the next five years, the U.S. Air Force plans to spend more than $6 billion on its CCA initiatives as it pursues robotic wingmen for next-gen fighter jets and other manned aircraft. And it’s working with the Navy to ensure there’s connection and a common architecture with the sea service’s CCA efforts. Australia is also paving the way for its own robo-jets, and informing America’s quest.

In response to questions from DefenseScoop on Wednesday, White House and Pentagon officials did not provide further information about what the deepened, trilateral cooperation on drones might entail — or if it would all unfold via the U.S. military’s existing CCA projects.

“Although we have no additional details or information to provide at this time, we look forward to future trilateral and bilateral cooperation with our Australian and Japanese allies — and continuing to ensure the development of critical technologies and capabilities that support our shared security objectives,” Defense Department spokesperson Jeff Jurgensen told DefenseScoop.

During his keynote at ComDef 2023, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante told the audience to expect further international discussions and agreements promoting technology acceleration and integration between the United States and its partners in the months to come.

“You’re going to see more of those — whether it’s with Japan, whether it’s with Australia or with European countries — you’re going to see more co-production, co-development and co-sustainment,” he said. 

In a separate keynote at the event, Kyosuke Matsumoto — director general for the Department of Technology Strategy, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency that’s under Japan’s Ministry of Defense — also noted that his nation aims to advance cooperation with the United States regarding research and development for drones. A focus is particularly being placed on coordinating communications, data flows and sensors. 

“All systems need to be interoperable,” he said.

Updated on Oct. 26, 2023 at 2:10 PM: This story has been updated to include comments from Defense Department spokesperson Jeff Jurgensen.

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