Keen Sword 27 Week One: Japanese, U.S., and Partners Train on Anti-Ship Operations, Aircraft Maintenance, Drones, Mass Casualty Care, and Airfield Damage Repair

TOKYO, Japan – Security forces from Japan, the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Philippines, and New Zealand have been participating in the Keen Sword 27 in Japan for the past week. Approximately halfway through this biennial combined training exercise, more than 56,000 allied and partner forces have already engaged in a wide range of training activities on the ground, at sea, in the air, in space, and in cyberspace.

Japan Self-Defense Forces and U.S. military forces conducted a large-scale anti-ship training that integrated their full range of sea, air, land, space, and cyber capabilities to defend against an inbound maritime threat. This highly complex exercise involved Japanese and U.S. forces synchronizing both their defense hardware and their command and control decision-making to accelerate their combined ability to defeat threats from hostile ships.

F-35 Lightning II maintainers from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, U.S. Air Force, and Royal Australian Air Force held a subject matter exchange to discuss best practices on keeping this cutting edge, fifth generation fighter flying. Lt. Gen. Joel Carrey, U.S. 5th Air Force commander, was on hand to receive a briefing on the F-35 from these international subject matter experts.

Keen Sword 27 has featured several unmanned systems in combined training activities at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. These include the Typhoon unmanned surface vessel, which conducted a naval interception demonstration at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. The roughly 11-foot long, jet-powered boat can sustain speeds above 50 knots and is capable of a wide range of national security missions, including cargo delivery and maritime surveillance. Additionally, exercise participants used the Honey Badger X8, a small, first-person view drone, sporting a high-powered camera, to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Japanese Self-Defense Forces teamed with their U.S. Navy and Marine Corps partners to conduct mass casualty training at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. Combat care specialists from both nations are presented with a wide range of simulated battlefield injuries, which they must assess and triage, provide field medical care for, and safely evacuate the wounded to higher level facilities for continued care. Critical care at the point of injury is essential to saving lives and ensuring continuity of operations in combat.

At four different bases across the country, Japanese and U.S. engineering units conducted airfield damage repair training. This involves assessing damage to runways, clearing debris, filling craters with quick-set cement, and ultimately restoring flight line functionality. The goal is to make the airfield safe and operational as quickly as possible. In just a few days, combined Japanese and U.S. teams aim to fill hundreds of craters, in some cases working on shifts around the clock. Coordination and communication between partner nations is essential to enable swift flight line restoration and ensure continuous air operations during a combat or natural disaster situation.

Keen Sword is a routine, biennial, bilateral field training exercise with multinational participation, designed to increase readiness and interoperability between the U.S. military and Japan Self-Defense Forces while strengthening the ironclad U.S.-Japan Alliance.

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