Marines with the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment used a Japanese Self-Defense Force C-2 cargo plane to transport the TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar, or G/ATOR to the island of Yonaguni on July 29.

Yonaguni is the last in a string of islands that are part of Okinawa, which is home to 18,000 and another 7,000 U.S. Air Force personnel, according to the Marine Corps.

Troops deployed the radar as part of training with enhanced sensing and targeting data between 12th MLR and the Japanese military during Exercise Resolute Dragon, the Marines said. The exercise served as a test of readiness between partner nation units and their technology.

This year’s iteration was the fourth in the exercise’s history and has seen 3,000 Marines and sailors from III Marine Expeditionary Force train alongside their Japanese counterparts.

Lt. Col. Joseph Mozzi, the regiment’s fire support coordinator, said the radar and transport capability “will significantly boost multi-domain operations and overall battlespace awareness,” that allows for full-scope detection and tracking of air, land and sea targets.

G/ATOR combines the capabilities of five legacy systems to provide air and ground surveillance, as well as weapons control, in a single piece of equipment, Defense News previously reported.

The multi-mission radar system initial contract was awarded to Northrop Grumman in 2019 for $958 million. The aim was to provide Marines with real-time, “360-degree situational awareness to identify and track missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft vehicles, rockets, mortars, and artillery fire,” Defense News reported.

The contract allowed for the Corps to procure up to 30 radar systems, which the service completed in fiscal year 2023.

In 2023, Northrop announced an enhancement upgrade to the radar system to extend its detection and tracking ranges.

In their most recent budget request for fiscal year 2025, the Corps asked for $4.2 billion in procurement for ground systems and another $3 billion for research and development, according to budget documents.

The G/ATOR upgrade effort is expected to cost $51.3 million total, according to budget documents.

The 12th MLR was re-designated out of the 12th Marine Regiment, an artillery unit, in November, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

It is the second of three planned MLRs that the Corps has slated for the Pacific region. The 3rd MLR was borne from the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment in March 2022 and calls Marine Corps Base Hawaii home.

The next littoral regiment is scheduled to launch in 2025 and be based out of Guam, filled by rotational units from the U.S. mainland, according to a 2023 Congressional Research Service report.

Once fully kitted out, the regiments will have their own naval ship interdiction system, a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle-mounted Naval Strike Missile; an MQ-9 Reaper drone; the G/ATOR radar system and a yet-to-be-determined shore-to-shore watercraft likely based on concepts being developed in the landing ship medium program, formerly called the light amphibious warships.

Regiments are expected to have between 1,800-2,000 Marines and Navy medical and support personnel and be able to operate as distinct, task-organized units as small as a handful of Marines or up to a battalion or larger.

During the exercise, U.S. pilots from the Alaska-based 525th Fighter Squadron joined aviators from the Philippine Air Force’s 5th Fighter Wing for low-altitude flyovers, air combat maneuvering, formation training, and, with help from a KC-135 Stratotanker, air-to-air refueling over the heavily contested South China Sea.

“This was the first time that F-22s, or any fifth-generation aircraft, have landed on and operated out of the Philippines,” Capt. Karl Schroeder, one of the Raptor pilots, said in a release. “This milestone with a regional ally aids in providing stability and security to the Indo-Pacific.”

Regional stability has become an increasingly glaring focus of the two militaries as threats continue to emerge out of Beijing. While the Philippine Constitution prohibits permanent basing of foreign troops, the two nations’ Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement does allow for an increased footprint of American forces by way of rotations to a handful of predetermined locations.

“The EDCA is a key pillar of the U.S.-Philippines alliance, which supports combined training, exercises, and interoperability between our forces,” DoD officials said in February. “Expansion of the EDCA will make our alliance stronger and more resilient, and will accelerate modernization of our combined military capabilities.”

The EDCA includes granting U.S. forces access to a number of military camps, one of which, Basa Air Base in Pampanga on the island of Luzon, just launched a $25 million renovation of its runway in preparation to be used as a hub for joint task force exercises and humanitarian assistance, USNI news first reported.

Four other identified sites currently slated to host U.S. rotations are Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base (Cebu), Antonio Bautista Air Base (Palawan), Fort Magsaysay (Nueva Ecija), and Lumbia Air Base (Cagayan de Oro). Additional locations that have not yet been identified are expected to be unveiled in the near future.

In a separate step toward countering Chinese aggression and propaganda, the Philippine Coast Guard announced on March 8 that it would begin publicly disclosing aggressive actions taken by China in the South China Sea.

Recently released footage depicted one such incident on Feb. 6, during which a ship belonging to the China Coast Guard aimed a military laser at a Philippine vessel, briefly blinding some crew members.

The string of announcements in recent months follows a period of tension between the U.S. and the Philippines, when former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to sever military relations with Washington and cozy up to China and Russia. Duterte’s successor, Ferdinand Marcos, has worked to thaw relations, even hosting Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

Vice Adm. Jon Hill, who leads the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, confirmed last week that the organization is considering cooperation with Japan to work on the Glide Phase Interceptor, or GPI, one of the agency’s top priorities.

“Right now we’re exploring the opportunity to just identify what those cooperative development areas would be,” Hill said at the McAleese & Associates conference in Washington.

The effort could take on similar attributes to the successful U.S.-Japan development of the Raytheon Technologies-manufactured SM-3 block IIA program, which the company is now building and the countries will field, Hill said.

“The easy way to go with Japan is to offer up [development of] propulsion stacks because they build the second stage and the third stage on the SM-3 block IIA today,” Hill explained. But this time Japan would like to get “a little more into, say, the front end of the missile” — the portion of the interceptor containing the warhead — he added, “so we’re looking for common parts.”

But the effort is complicated because two companies are competing to design the GPI — Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman. Each company won contracts to continue developing hypersonic weapons interceptors in an MDA-led competition in June 2022.

“The challenge is when you’ve got two [companies] in play, that means Japan has to sign up to do two different designs, knowing that one of them may be a throwaway,” Hill said. “They know one of them is going to go away downstream. I don’t know when that downselect will happen. It’s going to depend on how well they mature technically.”

Hill said during a press briefing at the March 15 conference that MDA has a team in Japan holding an executive steering council, which is essentially a technical interchange with the Japanese government that includes acquisition, technology and logistics officials.

Following the meeting, “we’ll come back, take a breather, then we’ll go back out [to Japan] and we’ll bring industry with us next time around so that we’re not speaking for industry.”

Ideally, Hill said, industry would willingly subcontract work to a Japanese company for agreed-upon components of the interceptor, but “if we can’t get to that, then we’ll do what we initially did in the SM-3 block IIA program, which is we directed the American company to go subcontract.”

Defeating a hypersonic weapon in its glide-phase of flight is a challenging technical problem, as the missiles can travel more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver in flight, making it hard to predict a missile’s trajectory.

The MDA is still early in the development process — “the mission solution analysis phase,” as Hill put it during a fiscal 2024 budget request briefing on March 13 at the Pentagon. “What we’re doing during this phase is determining what technologies do we need and how we can bring that together as a weapons system.”

The budget, he added, supports “a deployment or getting to that first article out there in the early [20]30s.”

MDA is asking for $209 million in FY24 to fund the ongoing GPI competition.

The interceptors will be designed to fit into the U.S. Navy’s current Aegis ballistic missile defense-equipped destroyers. The weapon will fire from the standard vertical launching system and be integrated with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System that detects, tracks, controls and engages hypersonic threats.

WASHINGTON — The first wave of defenses designed to counter complex missile threats against Guam will include radars, launchers, interceptors, and a command-and-control system, and they’ll be place on the island next year, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency director said this week.

The MDA asked for more than $800 million in its fiscal 2024 budget request, released Monday, to develop and begin constructing its architecture to defend Guam against a range of threats including ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles. Nearly half of that money would continue the design and development of the architecture.

Another $38.5 million would upgrade the MDA’s Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications program to support Guam’s defense.

The agency is investing in the architecture, but it is also partnered with the Army and Navy. The sea service will provide technology and capability from its Aegis weapon system and has jurisdiction over the land where the assets will be placed.

The Army is requesting $638 million in FY24 to supply its share of the equipment to Guam, but it will deliver three Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensors, or LTAMDS, and Patriot air-and-missile defense systems, as well as an assortment of Mid-Range Capability missile launchers and Indirect Fires Protection Capability launchers, or IFPC, along with the Northrop Grumman-built Integrated Battle Command System designed to connect the right sensors to the right shooters on the battlefield, according to the Army’s budget office.

The Army plans to procure five total LTAMDS in FY24; the other two will be test assets, the Army’s acquisition chief, Doug Bush, said this week.

While the MDA waits for the Army’s capability to arrive, it is adapting the Aegis system to work specifically on the challenging terrain of Guam, Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the agency’s director, said this week. The system will be differ from what is found on an Aegis ship and from the configuration of Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland, he said.

FY24 funding will cover the installation of four high-end, solid-state, mobile AN/TPY-6 radars, which are new sensors that use technology from the Long Range Discrimination Radar in Clear Space Force Base, Alaska, along the periphery of the island. These radars will provide a 360-degree capability to see threats, Hill said, which is a requirement coming straight from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The agency is grappling with the mechanical engineering required to take radars that would typically be positioned on a deckhouse of a ship or in a big facility like that in Alaska and put them in an erectable trailer so they can be moved around, Hill said March 15 at the McAleese & Associates conference.

MDA is also developing a command suite using Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications system technology that integrates IBCS and Aegis C2 for ballistic and hypersonic missile threat detection and tracking.

While the first stream of capability will get to the island in 2024, Hill said development will continue to evolve as technology becomes available. Hill stressed there will never be an initial operational capability for the architecture because capability will always evolve.

For example, once the MDA fields a hypersonic glide phase interceptor, it will get incorporated into the architecture. That effort is in a very early stage and won’t be delivered until the early 2030s, Hill said. For now, there is a capability to defeat hypersonic missiles in the terminal phase of flight using current radars and U.S. Navy capability.

Tough territory

The agency faces abundant challenges as it begins to build the architecture on Guam.

“The challenge right now is siting,” Hill said. “We have all the sites identified on the island, and today we know which are the Army sites, we know which are the MDA sites. It’s a Navy island.”

But, he said, there are environmental considerations. “When you think about what we have to do for environmental assessments, just to go land this gear, it puts time into the equation. … Guam is a tourist island.”

Clearing the sites is also difficult, including the need to clear bamboo and flatten land, Hill explained. “Guam has a boatload of expended ordnance on it from World War II,” so part of the effort includes digging down to ensure there’s no ordnance buried, he added.

Other challenging considerations include considering the electromagnetic interference that is possible on the island as well as what the effect land radars might have on, for example, air operations, including medevac helicopters coming to and from the area.

The agency has also committed to beautification as part of the installation on Guam. “We’re going to make launchers look beautiful, and we’re going to put big bubbles over the radars to keep them from looking so lethal because it is a tourist area,” Hill said.

Banking on the Army

Much of the architecture is also riding on Army capability that is in the development process. The service is close to approving full-rate production for IBCS after years of delay.

The Army’s LTAMDS has also struggled through development and has seen several schedule slips. Raytheon Technologies ran into problems building its first prototypes designed to replace the Patriot air defense radars. The LTAMDS program had to adjust the schedule based on system integration challenges and supply chain issues caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

As of last fall, the service was still aiming to deliver four of them by the end of 2023.

The MRC capability that will be fielded in 2023 has made more progress, and Lockheed Martin delivered the first Typhon launcher to the Army late last year, which uses a Navy MK41 Vertical Launching System that will fire both ground-launched SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The Army chose Leidos-owned Dynetics to build IFPC prototypes for an enduring system designed to counter both drone and cruise missile threats in 2021.

At the time of the award to Dynetics, the Army wanted the company to deliver prototypes by the fourth quarter of FY22 and a complete system that can integrate with IBCS by the third quarter of FY23.

Dynetics has been quiet about progress, but according to the FY24 Army budget request, the service plans to deliver IFPC to the first platoon at some point in the year. A production decision for IFPC is also due in FY24, according to FY23 budget documents.

For now, Guam has protection against threats that exist today, Hill said. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system is deployed on the island as well as Patriot systems, which protect against ballistic missile threats. Aegis ships are patrolling the area, but that is not a persistent solution.

Speaking in Singapore on Thursday at an event hosted by the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Asia branch, Adm. John Aquilino said he has not received a response to a standing request to speak with the commanders of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern and Southern Theater commands.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, in November agreed that it’s important for operational commanders to “have a conversation.”

“I have not yet received a response for a year-and-a-half to accept my request for a conversation,” he said. “I’ve not received a ‘no.’ I’ve not received a ‘wait, could we adjust?’ I’ve just received no answer.”

“We have continued to ask because I do think it is important. But it’s concerning to me I don’t have the ability to talk to someone, should there be a reason to talk,” he added.

Earlier this week, the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps also expressed concerns about a lack of communication in the region following reports that an American intelligence drone crashed after colliding with a Russian fighter over the Black Sea.

“This is probably my biggest worry, both there and in the Pacific, is an aggressive Russia or China pilot or vessel captain or something gets too close, doesn’t realize where they are, causes a collision, and it’s 2 in the morning and we’re trying to unpack this as fast as we can. I really worry about that,” Gen. David Berger said at the National Press Club.

“Even more challenging because right now on our side, on the [People’s Republic of China], normally we would have communications with the [People’s Liberation Army Navy], their military. It doesn’t exist right now, they won’t communicate with us. So the normal, sort of many channels that you have to quickly diffuse something — they’re gone. They’re not gone, but they’re suspended right now,” he added. “So I worry, I do.”

However, the lines of communications remain strong with other countries within and outside of the region, Aquilino explained, adding that he has the ability to quickly contact foreign counterparts and vice versa. He said he hopes to have the same option with China, “but today it doesn’t exist, and it is not for the lack of trying.”

Aquilino also touched on lessons both the U.S. and China could learn from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than a year ago.

“No. 1: The ability to execute complex combined arms actions to achieve your objectives is difficult,” he said. “Synchronizing all those effects across all those domains, supporting it through logistics chains to deliver an effective fighting force that can sustain over time is hard.”

He also stressed that conflict “costs blood,” and that short wars “do not happen anymore, if it ever did.”

The cost of battle would also far exceed any projections, and the decision to enter one should not be taken lightly, he added.

Aquilino also rejected the assertion by China’s new foreign minister that war was “inevitable,” saying that it was important that regional countries, including China, know the U.S. is not pursuing conflict.

Qin Gang had warned at the closing of China’s 20th National Congress in Beijing earlier this month that war with the U.S. is inevitable unless the latter “changes course.”

Defense News’ Megan Eckstein and Marine Corps Times’ Irene Loewenson contributed to this report.

“I can see three in the Pacific and then one other one. We have one in Europe and then one probably in a contingency-type place where it can go wherever it needs. So I think that’s how those five are going to play out,” Gen. James McConville said.

The service’s first MDTF was experimental, but since then the Army has operationalized its existing units and determined it will grow at least four more. The Army established that initial one at Joint Base Lewis-McChord around 2018. Indo-Pacific Command theater exercises helped inform the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations warfighting concept, which has now evolved into doctrine.

The Army then established another MDTF in Europe in 2021, and another last year in Hawaii.

The units are designed to operate across all domains — land, air, sea, space and cyberspace — and are equipped with the Army’s growing capabilities, including long-range precision fires.

The new unit is in high demand, and there is a lot of interest in where these task forces will go, McConville said. But the Army hasn’t committed to a location or a timeline for deploying its fourth MDTF, he added..

Having the majority of MDTF units in the Pacific aligns with the Army’s pivot to the region, as it has identified China as the country that poses the most enduring strategic challenge and is likely to reach military parity with U.S. forces by 2040, according to a whitepaper the chief published in 2021.

In recent years, the Army has placed less emphasis on a permanent MDTF in Alaska, after directly stating it wanted to do so in its strategy for the Arctic published in 2021.

“The Army’s decision to place an MDTF in Alaska is the first step in setting the conditions for success,” the strategy stated. “Multidomain formations, particularly those with extended ranges such as the [MDTF], have clear potential in the Arctic — an area of operations characterized by vast distances and where air and naval avenues of approach are critical.”

MDTFs will be agile and highly capable, McConville stressed at the conference. “We can move them very, very quickly to be at the point of need.”

The Defense Acquisition Program Administration, or DAPA, said the Defense Project Promotion Committee approved a $2.85 billion plan to buy more Lockheed Martin-made F-35A fighter jets. South Korea is to receive the aircraft by 2028.

DAPA did not state how many more F-35As the military will acquire under the latest plan, although South Korea received the U.S. State Department’s approval for 60 F-35As in 2013 and has already ordered 40.

The committee also gave approval for the first of a two-phase, $582.8 million plan to acquire the Raytheon Technologies-made SM-6 air defense missile to equip a second batch of KDX-III destroyers equipped with the Aegis weapons system. The missiles will be used for air defense and to counter ballistic missiles for the 8,200-ton ships, which currently operate the SM-2.

South Korea has three KDX-III destroyers from its first batch, which are also known as Sejong the Great-class ships, in service with its Navy. The ROKS Jeongjo the Great, which will be the lead ship of the second batch, was launched in July 2022 and is expected to enter service in 2024.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry also confirmed it still wants to develop an aircraft carrier. The local SBS news outlet reported that the ministry responded to inquiries from a parliamentarian that it will soon start feasibility studies into the prospects of building a 50,000-ton design.

The ministry had told Jung Sung-ho, who sits on the parliament’s National Defense Committee, that it would also be possible to develop a carrierborne variant of the KF-21 fighter, locally made by Korean Aerospace Industries, within a decade if the government allocates sufficient funding.

South Korea previously floated the idea of developing a 30,000-ton class carrier for operating the F-35B, the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. But a larger ship from which the KF-21 could operate means the military can conduct flight operations using catapults for aircraft launches and arrested landings.

This would be a more complex and expensive system than F-35B carrier operations, and it is expected the ministry will make a decision by the end of this year about whether to proceed with the program and which option it will pursue.

South Korea is technically still at war with its nuclear-armed neighbor, North Korea, having only signed an armistice agreement. The North has continued to develop its ballistic and cruise missile programs, and frequently test-fires these into the waters around the Korean Peninsula.

The Northrop Grumman-made high-altitude, long-endurance UAV was sighted at Changi Air Base (East) on multiple occasions from January onward, and Defense News has obtained a photograph of it being towed at the base.

The image was taken from a commercial airliner during takeoff in late February from Singapore’s Changi International Airport, which shares a runway with the base.

This is the first known operational deployment of the Global Hawk to Singapore, although it has previously visited the island nation for air shows in 2018 and 2022.

Singapore’s Defence Ministry confirmed in a statement to Defense News that the country “facilitated the short-term deployment of an RQ-4 Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, as part of the 1990 Memorandum of Understanding Regarding United States Use of Facilities in Singapore.”

The ministry provided no further details of the deployment, and the U.S. Air Force referred questions about the deployment to Pacific Air Forces, an American command in the region. Neither Pacific Air Forces nor the U.S. Embassy in Singapore has responded to questions about the deployment.

However, sources in Singapore have told Defense News the unmanned aircraft arrived in January and was still operating from the island in early March, and that it has flown missions almost exclusively at night during the deployment.

The Global Hawk’s long endurance, which the U.S. Air Force says is in excess of 34 hours, means it can take off at night and stay in the air during daylight hours before landing again the next evening.

The deployment also coincided with the presence of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Nimitz and the amphibious assault ship Makin Island — as well as and their respective strike groups — in the South China Sea. Both of those ships and several of their escorting vessels visited Singapore’s Changi Naval Base during this period.

In addition to hosting a U.S. Navy logistics facility, Singapore is a security partner of the United States. A 1990 memorandum signed by both countries — and renewed in 2019 — allows American forces to access Singapore’s air and naval bases on a rotational basis. This has seen the southeast Asian nation host rotational deployments of U.S. Navy littoral combat ships and P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.

Singapore has separate agreements for its Air Force jet and helicopter detachments to train in the continental United States and conduct rotational air combat training in Guam.

Stephen Losey in Washington contributed to this report.

The service will accept delivery of the first leased stern-landing vessel and kick off the first phase of experimentation this month, Lt. Col. Tim Smith, the logistics combat element branch head at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab’s science and technology division, told reporters last week.

This stern-landing vessel, or SLV, is an offshore support vessel from Hornbeck Offshore Services, which signed a contract to lease the ship to the Marine Corps and allow for significant modifications. To recreate the type of capability the force thinks it needs in its Landing Ship Medium, the Corps is adding to Hornbeck’s vessel a large ramp, a reinforced deck, landing legs, protection for the propellers and rudders, and more.

The Landing Ship Medium was formerly known as the Light Amphibious Warship, which included the ability to beach itself so Marine Corps vehicles and supplies can roll directly onto shore.

During this first phase of testing, “we’re going to find out how does the SLV actually work in some benign conditions” and gradually move into tougher surf conditions, Smith said.

“Do we have to use the jacking legs? What’s the impact to the beaches that we’re working? What is the impact of the ramp? Does it really do everything it says it’s going to do?” Smith added, noting the Marines would use the first 12 weeks to focus on the SLV’s fundamental performance.

The Corps will take nearly every vehicle in its inventory and move them on and off the beached SLV via the ramp, he said. And the team at the warfighting lab will write and repeatedly update manuals that govern how to use the vessel, he added.

The purpose of this first 12-week, limited technical analysis is to ensure that, when the vessel is turned over to operational forces, they can safely experiment with it.

This first phase will also inform the process for leasing additional SLVs. The Marine Corps has money to lease two more, Smith said, but has not begun seeking out potential vessels, which the service would likely receive for testing in 2024.

Based on the initial phase of testing with this first vessel, the service may find it doesn’t need the jacking legs and therefore wouldn’t pay to add them to subsequent prototypes, for example.

After the first 12 weeks of testing, the SLV will move to the second phase.

Once deemed safe, the vessel will be transferred to the warfighting lab’s experiments division, which will begin limited operations with the fleet, including the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment.

The vessel will head to California and deeper into the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command theater for exercises and operations. Smith said the SLV would be heavily involved in future Marine littoral regiment experimentation, mobility and logistics assessments, as well as efforts to refine tactics and concepts of employment.

Smith said the SLV’s third phase would look at further uses for the vessel in the larger context of Navy-Marine Corps operations, and the fourth phase would look at joint force applications. “Does it play well with Army vehicles? Does it play well with potential Air Force use?” Smith said.

During these latter phases, additional capability gaps and ideas for future programs of record may emerge, leaders say.

Jeff Tomczac, the deputy director of the science and technology division at the warfighting lab, said the Marines are clear on their requirement for the Landing Ship Medium, which is needed to move people and equipment in the Pacific region. But this experimentation will also “define other gaps and shortfalls that we have not identified at this time that will eventually turn into future warfighting requirements, that will eventually turn into future programs of record,” he added.

Smith said this first SLV would carry regular gas and aviation gas, allowing it to potentially refuel surface craft like the Combat Rubber Raiding Craft and the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or future underwater and aerial drones.

Smith also noted that the second or third leased SLV could receive modifications to feature a flight deck that enables vertical replenishments and ship-to-shore logistics supported by a rotary-wing drone.

Northrop Grumman, which makes the airborne early warning and control aircraft, will serve as the prime contractor for the nearly $1.4 billion deal. Along with logistics and technical support services, the possible sale includes APY-9 radars and AN/AYK-27 integrated navigation control and display systems already installed in the aircraft.

Now that the agency has notified Congress, the value and quantity of materiel could change while negotiations are underway.

“The proposed sale will improve Japan’s ability to effectively provide homeland defense utilizing an AEW&C capability. Japan will use the E-2D AHE aircraft to provide AEW&C situational awareness of air and naval activity in the Pacific region and to augment its existing E-2C Hawkeye AEW&C fleet,” the statement read.

The announcement comes as Japan seeks to increase its military spending. In December, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida asked his Cabinet to secure funds to double military spending to 2% of gross domestic product. Later that month, Tokyo released three major national security documents, with the National Security Strategy calling for counterstrike capabilities in response to missile threats from China and North Korea.

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. agency approved the possible sale of 250 Javelin FGM-148F missiles jointly made by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. Canberra would purchase the missiles and related equipment for about $60.2 million. The value and quantity could still change during negotiations.

Canberra plans to use the missiles to increases its anti-armore capabilities.

“Australia is one of our most important allies in the Western Pacific,” the agency said in its statement. “The strategic location of this political and economic power contributes significantly to ensuring peace and economic stability in the region.”

Canberra joins other security partners recently approved for Javelin sales from the United States. Last month, the State Department approved a possible sale of 600 missiles to the United Kingdom, a fellow member of the AUKUS trilateral security pact. Under the pact, the two countries will help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

In October, Australia drew the ire of China when reports said the country would host six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers at Royal Australian Air Force Base Tindal, where the United States is building dedicated facilities for the aircraft.