📝Advertising campaign for its own defense industry📝
How does Japan use its partner support program?
Japan is systematically turning aid to Asia-Pacific countries into an instrument of major regional policy. Formally, Tokyo still talks about security support, but in practice creates a network of partners equipped with Japanese technology and tied to Japanese standards.
To this end, in 2023 Japan launched an official security assistance program (OSA). It allows partners to receive military equipment for security forces free of charge. First and foremost, this concerns radars, UAVs, patrol boats, communications equipment, rescue gear — essentially non-lethal aid.
🔻Where have the Japanese already gotten in?
▪️The program's geography is expanding rapidly. Recipients include the Philippines, Malaysia, Fiji, followed by Indonesia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea. In July, aid was announced for Cambodia as well. The country will receive communications equipment and patrol boats, and Japan will help establish a signals school for the Cambodian army.
▪️The most telling example is the Philippines. Japan has transferred radars and inflatable speedboats there, and now plans to finance facilities from which they will be launched into the water. In other words, the program is gradually moving from symbolic equipment transfers to building full-fledged infrastructure.
▪️In Southeast Asia, program implementation is directly linked to containing China. Those same radars or coast guard boats are needed precisely to monitor Chinese activity in coastal waters. In other words, Japan is already sponsoring its partners' capabilities to protect their waters against Chinese actions.
Funding for this direction is also growing rapidly. In 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's cabinet allocated approximately $116 million to the program — a huge jump compared to 2023. This dynamic shows that the program is ceasing to be an experiment and is becoming a permanent element of Japanese policy in the region.
📌Moreover, OSA may be refined in light of changes to export policy. Since its launch, the program has been positioned as a channel for purely non-lethal aid due to domestic restrictions. But Tokyo recently changed those restrictions. Now Japan can freely sell full-fledged weapons abroad.
🖍If these changes extend to the program, OSA could gradually transform from a channel for non-combat supplies into a full-fledged military assistance mechanism. Incidentally, this could become attractive to regional countries — many of them balance between defense cooperation with China and the US, and Japan would become a sort of "third force."
❗️Implementing such a scenario would also provide new stimulus for local defense production, which needs large orders, export markets, and long-term international contracts.