{"id":25376,"date":"2026-08-07T10:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T10:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/25376\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T10:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T10:17:10","slug":"is-japan-eyeing-ukraine-style-asymmetric-warfare-against-china-in-defence-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/25376\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Japan eyeing Ukraine-style asymmetric warfare against China in defence shift?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan\u2019s latest defence white paper\u2019s emphasis on adaptivity and scale of drones signals its intention to seek asymmetric capabilities against China<\/a> in the event of a conflict, while drawing lessons from Ukraine, according to experts.The 610-page document<\/a> released on Tuesday highlights the need to integrate unmanned systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies across the Japan Self-Defence Forces as Tokyo confronts an increasingly complex security environment.<\/p>\n

While Japan has invested in drones and AI for years, the white paper marks a notable shift in emphasis, framing autonomous systems not simply as capabilities under development but as an integral part of how Japan expects future conflicts to be fought.<\/p>\n

Rather than competing with the People\u2019s Liberation Army<\/a> platform for platform, Tokyo was seeking to exploit China\u2019s vulnerabilities through autonomous systems, long-range precision strike capabilities and faster innovation, defence analysts said.<\/p>\n

Christopher Hughes, an international politics professor at the University of Warwick, noted that Japan was drawing one overarching lesson from Ukraine: a smaller military can frustrate \u2013 and potentially exhaust \u2013 a much larger adversary through rapid technological innovation and relatively inexpensive capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s latest defence white paper\u2019s emphasis on adaptivity and scale of drones signals its intention to seek asymmetric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[109,34,39,8981,8978,3235,8977,8976,8983,8979,3662,26,8982,32,8980],"class_list":["post-25376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-ai","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-christopher-hughes","tag-east-china-sea","tag-japan","tag-japan-self-defence-forces","tag-michael-bosack","tag-peoples-liberation-army","tag-shield","tag-tokyo","tag-ukraine","tag-university-of-warwick","tag-us","tag-yurii-lutovinov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}