Japan and Australia are deepening defense-industrial ties, with a focus on jointly developing and producing long-range missiles and drones, Australia’s defense chief said Wednesday, as concerns mount over strained U.S. weapon stockpiles driven by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said that the shifting geostrategic environment is driving the quasi-allies to rethink how they cooperate on arms production — moving beyond traditional procurement toward co-development and shared industrial capacity.
“To gain the levels of war stocks that our defense forces need … we are simply going to have to cooperate much more together in terms of co-production and co-sustainment,” Marles told The Japan Times in Tokyo ahead of a summit with his Japanese counterpart, Shinjiro Koizumi.