Space Force officials announced the creation of a new service component in Japan, as America's ally expands its own space operations and tensions with China continue to rise in the Pacific.
U.S. Space Forces Japan, the branch's sixth service component, was officially stood up Wednesday in a ceremony at Yokota Air Base. Lt. Gen. Stephen Jost, U.S. Forces Japan and 5th Air Force commander, said in a news release that the creation of the component comes as Japan's Ministry of Defense continues to grow its footprint in space.
"As we both continue to advance our space capabilities side-by-side, the establishment of United States Space Forces-Japan is the next step in growing our multidomain proficiency and our overall contribution to the defense of Japan and the region," Jost said.
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In recent years, the Space Force has stood up new elements with U.S. Space Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, the news release said.
Those moves come as the Department of the Air Force, which oversees the Space Force, has been reorganizing its funding, strategy and attention on major adversaries, namely Russia and China.
Japan is only the second specific foreign country where the service has stood up a subordinate component, the other being U.S. Space Forces-Korea, based at Osan Air Base in South Korea.
Victoria Samson, the chief director of space security and stability for the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, told Military.com in an interview Thursday that it's notable that Korea and Japan were the two countries chosen to host the service components to partner with their forces.
"I think it's also significant that it's the second country, place, where that's happening," Samson said. "I think it speaks to concerns that the U.S. has about China, let's be honest, and I think that tracks with how the U.S. military officials have been speaking about the next threat to the U.S. in space."
The Secure World Foundation detailed China's military power in its 2024 Global Counterspace Capabilities report. The open source analysis details that China has been developing direct-ascent anti-satellite, or ASAT, capabilities and is also potentially developing direct-energy weapons.
"Although official Chinese statements on space warfare and weapons have remained consistently aligned to the peaceful purposes of outer space, unofficially they have become more nuanced," the report states. "China has recently designated space as a military domain, and military writings state that the goal of space warfare and operations is to achieve space superiority using offensive and defensive means. ..."
Samson told Military.com that a notable aspect of standing up the Space Force components will be the U.S. and its ally nations utilizing one another's capabilities in the future.
But, notably, Japan's space program isn't as robust as the Department of Defense's, according to the Secure World Foundation's 2024 report.
"While Japan does not have any acknowledged offensive counterspace capabilities, it is exploring whether to develop them," the report said. "Japan does have a latent ASAT capability via its missile defense system but has never tested it in that capacity."
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