{"id":67141,"date":"2026-07-31T20:14:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T20:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/67141\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T20:14:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T20:14:34","slug":"why-japanese-stealth-fighters-over-australia-signal-a-strategic-pivot-against-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/67141\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Japanese stealth fighters over Australia signal a strategic pivot against China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japanese F-35A stealth fighters<\/a> are flying training missions over Australia for the first time in Exercise Pitch Black \u2013 part of a broader defence pivot that experts say could bolster US and allied resilience against Beijing in a Taiwan contingency.<\/p>\n

The multinational exercise, held every two years and featuring around 100 aircraft, runs from July 20 to August 7. It comes just days after Japanese, US and Australian F-35s trained together during the inaugural Southern Cross drills.<\/p>\n

Southern Cross also marked the first use of a new trilateral logistics arrangement for sharing fuel and equipment between the three air forces \u2013 a practical step towards sustaining coalition air power far from home bases.<\/p>\n

Together, the back-to-back drills and logistics arrangement point to a shift in allied air power, with northern Australia evolving into the rear area that underpins coalition air operations \u2013 a place where partners not only train together but also sustain operations, share logistics and increasingly build the industrial capacity needed for a prolonged conflict.<\/p>\n

Against the backdrop of Beijing\u2019s expanding missile reach to bases across the first island chain<\/a>, northern Australia allows coalition forces to refuel, rearm and relaunch aircraft while remaining farther from the potential conflict zone.<\/p>\n

Timothy Heath, head of defence research firm Perceptum, said such interoperability \u201ccan also improve the survivability of allied forces since they can relocate and operate from other bases more easily\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese F-35A stealth fighters are flying training missions over Australia for the first time in Exercise Pitch Black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[923,43632,549,6785,43636,43635,43633,25876,8,17,43631,9243,43630,13732,43634],"class_list":["post-67141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-australia","tag-australian-defence-minister-richard-marles","tag-beijing","tag-canberra","tag-darwin","tag-exercise-pitch-black","tag-f-a-stealth-fighters","tag-hudson-institute","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-masashi-murano","tag-national-defence-strategy","tag-perceptum","tag-reciprocal-access-agreement","tag-southern-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}