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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“The drone struck [Rumalyn Landing Zone] at about 5 p.m. EST [on Friday], late into the evening in Syria, and caused damage to one set of facilities,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during an off-camera briefing. 

He largely declined to provide the latest details about the drone’s maker or origin in response to reporters’ questions, noting that the incident review is ongoing. 

But Ryder said U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East and is leading the assessment, have at this point “credited swift and effective preemptive measures as limiting the drone’s effect.”

“We have a significant amount of air defense capability. I’m not going to go into the specifics in terms of where that’s located and how it’s employed. Certainly, we are going to continue to do everything we can to ensure that U.S. forces are protected no matter where they’re serving,” Ryder said.

He told DefenseScoop that Pentagon leadership has no plans to announce new measures for boosting surveillance or air defense assets in that specific location, following the attack.

“As a matter of course, commanders are always assessing the situation, always looking at how we can make sure that we’re protecting our forces and, most importantly, conducting our mission,” he said.

About 900 American troops are currently operating in Syria to support local forces and partners working to counter any possible resurgences of the Islamic State terrorist organization.

This latest one-way drone attack there comes against the backdrop of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran-backed militia groups around the broader region, and amid intensifying concerns that Israel’s war in Gaza will morph into a wider conflict in the Middle East.

So far, “no group has claimed responsibility for the [Aug. 9] attack,” a defense official told DefenseScoop on Monday.

Although initial reports stated that American troops were not wounded at Rumalyn Landing Zone, the official said on Monday that multiple U.S. and coalition personnel were treated for minor injuries, including smoke inhalation.

“Others are being examined for traumatic brain injuries. Out of an abundance of caution, several service members were transported to a separate location for further assessment and evaluation,” the official told DefenseScoop.

Centcom spokespersons did not respond on Monday to requests for further information about the attack or a timeline for the ongoing assessment, and White House officials referred questions back to the Defense Department.

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U.S. troops have been operating in Syria for several years as part of a coalition that is combating the terrorist group known as ISIS. They are now facing threats from loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones, suicide drones or one-way attack drones because they take out their targets by crashing into them. These types of weapons are also being used by both sides in the Ukraine-Russia war.

“This morning, three one-way attack drones attacked the At Tanf Garrison in Syria. Two of the drones were shot down by Coalition Forces while one struck the compound, injuring two members of the Syrian Free Army partner force who received medical treatment. No U.S. forces were injured,” according to a Centcom press release on Friday.

Centcom oversees U.S. military ops in the Middle East and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the city where U.S. Special Operations Command is also headquartered.

“Attacks of this kind are unacceptable – they place our troops and our partners at risk and jeopardize the fight against ISIS,” Centcom spokesperson Joe Buccino said in a statement.

Centcom did not identify who launched the assault or the manufacturer of the drones. It also did not identify what types of weapons were used to defeat two of the unmanned aerial vehicles.

In October, U.S. Defense officials announced plans to intensify their search for new counter-UAS technology to address the growing threat.

“My challenge working with, you know, our [combatant command] partners is, you know, how do we stop the one-way attack UASs that have grown from these quadcopter type threats … more to, you know, destructive loitering munitions” that are being used in Ukraine and elsewhere, said Army Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, director of the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO) and director of fires in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, said at the AUSA annual conference.

Gen. James Rainey, commanding general of Army Futures Command, told DefenseScoop that developing capabilities to defeat loitering munitions will be an ongoing priority.

“Not only is it a current problem, but we believe that as we start developing better capabilities, we’re going to have to be in a continuous improvement process” to keep up with threats, he said at the AUSA conference.

During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Army accepted risk in its air-and-missile defense portfolio as it prioritized other efforts, he said.

“We are now pursuing the growth of that at the max possible speed,” he said. “There’s going to be a need to continue to provide [soldiers] with new and better kit.”

In November, the JCO released a request for white papers on Sam.gov as it looks for solutions for defeating kamikaze drones. A tech demo was tentatively scheduled to take place this month, according to the document.

“The overarching government objective is to rapidly procure production representative, cost-effective detect, track, identify and defeat system(s) for Group 3 sUAS threats for the full threat flight envelope, including at a distance greater than or equal to 2 km in distance,” according to the notice.

Vendors are expected to be able to deliver first production articles within 30-90 days of contract award, export production articles to key allied and partner nations within 30-90 days of contract award and provide command-and-control functionality for detecting, tracking and defeating threats, according to the request for white papers.

“The Government currently anticipates that any USG efforts would be 10 USC 4022 prototype OTAs with the possibility for 10 USC 4022(f) follow-on production awards/transactions,” the notice said.

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