 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My name is Jim Schof. I'm a senior fellow here in the Asia program, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to our program today on Japan's Revised National Defense Program Guidelines or NDPG. You're going to hear NDPG and probably a whole lot of other acronyms a lot today. Before we begin our program, I want to take a moment to thank our co-host, co-organizer, really the organization responsible for bringing this program together, the Saskapa Peace Foundation USA, or SPFUSA, to use another acronym. Jim Zumwalt and his team there, Sayuri Uromay, who's my counterpart in putting this program together, and she did a lot of the work to make today possible, and there will be a publication that comes out of not only this event today, but the work that our panelists and participants will be providing. Japan first prepared a national defense program outline, they called it then, in 1977, 1978. It didn't revise it for almost 20 years after that, but the end of the Cold War created quite a change for Japan, and then with constant change in the post-Cold War environment, revision of the guidelines became a much more common occurrence, maybe every 10 years, and then more recently, almost every five years, or thereabouts. It's coincided this time with Japan's production or drafting of a midterm defense plan, which is really its procurement plan for five years, and so the coming together of this defense strategy with its budget and procurement plan is really an important moment for Japan's defense policy, and I think also obviously for the U.S.-Japan alliance. Now the title of this program, we added the concept of a third post-Cold War era, with the idea in my mind at least that the immediate post-Cold War era was this moment of American primacy. You really had a very different security environment with interventions in Kosovo and other parts around the world, this idea of peacekeeping and multilateral coalitions to help maintain stability and prosperity around the world. It changed drastically in the 9-11 attacks in the 2001 and kind of the era of the war on terror or extensive conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan which I guess I would consider kind of a second post-Cold War era, and it's quite possible that we're entering a third era now characterized by a return to long-term strategic competition and rivalry in Asia in particular and with a military dimension. So I think Japan's assessment or reassessment of its defense policy at this time is particularly important. So we'll divide up the morning into two parts today. We're going to start by looking at some of the operational aspects of Japan's new policies and then the second panel will look at the policy implications and in particular with an alliance focus at that point. At this moment I'd like to turn the microphone over to the CEO of SPF-USA, Jim Zumwalt, who's a great friend and a great partner to work with. You all know him for his long career in the State Department. Ambassador Zumwalt, I give you this. Thank you and welcome everyone. We're delighted to see you all here and it's great to see how much interest there is in Japan's security policy and U.S.-Japan alliance issues. Just very briefly, Sasakawa USA is an organization dedicated to promoting a strong U.S.-Japan relationship through improving mutual understanding by programs such as this. So we're delighted to partner with Carnegie and our goal today, hopefully, is to help educate an American audience about Japan's new guidelines and also what they mean for the alliance and what are the opportunities that we have to further strengthen our relationship. So without further ado, I'll turn things back over to Jim so we can get started on today's panel. Thank you very much. I'd like to add I'm a moderator. Okay, so we're going to begin with our first panel. Let me introduce our panelists. Again, Sasakawa was really critical in helping to recruit some terrific people to help us look at this. And on my immediate left is retired Lieutenant General Isobe, Koichi Isobe. He's served in the ground self-defense forces in Japan for 35 years. He's now a resident fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center and a senior fellow to the Asia Pacific Initiative in Tokyo. He is a real leader. In Japan, I had the pleasure of first meeting him back in 2007. I think when you were Vice Commander of the New Central Readiness Force, so a brand new force that the ground self-defense forces were putting together and General Isobe was chosen to help lead that team. He also served twice in the Joint Staff Office once, I think, as the J5 and then also as Vice Chief of Staff at the Joint Staff Office. So he's seen the defense establishment from a couple of different vantage points. Thank you for coming down from Harvard. And then also from Boston today, Eric Hagenbottom, my far left. It's great to have Eric here. He's a principal research scientist at MIT's Center for International Studies. A real authority on regional security issues comes at this with both an expertise in China and in Japan. Also worked as a senior political scientist for several years at RAND and authored many of their kind of seminal works on these issues as well. So it's great to have Eric with us. Thank you for coming down. And then Yuki Tatsumi, whom I think most of you know pretty well, not far from here in D.C., she's the co-director of East Asia Program and the director of the Japan Program, the Stimson Center. I think she's one of the most talented and trusted analysts on Japanese security affairs and defense institutions. I have a pretty doggiered copy of your book on Japan's Defense Institute Laws and organizations. So it's great to have Yuki with us. We're going to have two presentations essentially to begin. I'm going to begin with General Isobe since this is a Japanese product that we're looking at. And then Yuki will serve kind of as a discussant and commentator after that. And that will launch us into a little bit of a discussion up here before we turn it over to the audience. So General Isobe, let me give you the floor. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Koichi Isobe. Akemashite omedozaimasu. Happy New Year. And I'm very much delighted to be here. And it is a very honor to me to be here. Thank you very much, both the Canadian government and the Sasakawa USA. Thank you very much. I would like to talk about the operational aspect of this guidelines and from a free perspective. One of the key challenges we are facing now and it's facing now and how the guidelines are addressed to the challenges. And finally, my personal recommendations to implement these guidelines. So first, on August 29, last year, Prime Minister Abe held the first meeting of the advisory panel on the defense guidelines, national defense program guidelines. And he said, quote, the security environment of Japan is becoming severe and increasingly uncertain at a pace faster than was expected five years ago. We need to identify an ideal form of defense capabilities rather than developing them along the current path, unquote. So let me try to interpret Prime Minister Abe's words becoming severe and increasingly uncertain in my words. So look at the maps like the most prominent feature of Japan's geography is that Japan occupies the 3,500 kilometers or 2,200 miles arc shaped island chain of the east coast of the Eurasian continent. And this 2,200 miles means that from the northern tip of the main state to the key west. So you can imagine how wide the geographical expansion is. The Japanese archipelago is strategically situated in the position or line that controls exits toward the Pacific Ocean from the Eurasian continent. Based on this geographical feature, historically Japan has always paid attention to free geostatic strategic forms. The north, the Korean peninsula and the southwestern islands. Since the major restoration, Japan's strategy has focused on one strategic form while others are holding. Japan has been interacting with neighboring countries using a bilateral relationship. However, since the 2010s, all three fronts have become increasingly tense, simultaneously. Japan has never experienced such a situation before. And the second challenge is new emerging threats in non-traditional domains. One is the space and the cyber or electronic magnetic threats. These threats have specific features, invisible, borderless instance, grave impact on daily social life. Cyber attacks directed at the critical infrastructure, supply chains, IoT and fintech including cryptocurrencies have occurred daily, both inside and outside Japan. The government of Japan cyber security strategy, it's a document, points out serious impacts may occur, not only for government bodies and critical infrastructure operators, but for other business and even industrial individuals. In addition to these challenges, it is appropriate to point out the third challenge. It is diverse natural disasters, it's a mega earthquake and the typhoon is becoming stronger and stronger. And in 2011, the world witnessed the huge earthquake and unprecedented waves of tsunami in eastern Japan. Actually, statistics shows that 20% of worldwide earthquakes with 6.0 reached a scale or above occur in Japan and 7% of active volcanoes of the world exist in Japan. A response to these natural disasters is one of the major roles of the self defense. So let me show you this one. The people in Japan share a similar view toward the exponentially increasing military tensions surrounding Japan. The latest public opinion survey of 2018 marks the highest 86 point, which means 86% of the responders think that Japan might be involved in an armed conflict in the future. And during the 20th century, such concern had been around 50% or so, but has gradually increased to 80% or more in the 21st century. Second, how well does the new proposed guideline addresses those issues? I think the new guidelines has three basic ideas, principles, in how Japan should respond to these challenges. One is from temporal perspective, the guideline stresses seamless response to any crisis or contingencies. In other words, Japan would respond to challenges from peacetime to gray zone and then to conflict. Second, from spatial perspective, Japan would respond to not only traditional domains, but also new emerging domains. Furthermore, the self defense force would respond to these challenges in a manner of cross domain operations. Third, the guideline attaches importance on the whole government approach. These three features vividly highlight the new guidelines. Let me show you another one slide. This chart shows the comparison of the previous guidelines and the new guidelines of the world's joint space, cyber or operation, referred in the guidelines. These diagrams clearly indicate that the number of worlds, space and cyber, referred in the new guidelines, become three-fourth compared to the previous one. So what the key priorities for implementation for the new guidelines? I think I have three pillars from my perspective. One is a further improvement of the joint operational posture. And the second is a strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance. And third is strengthen the southwestern islands defense posture. The first one, further improve the joint operational posture. This is mainly the establishment of the permanent or regular or standard joint headquarters. From an operational perspective, it is a little bit disappointing that the guidelines does not touch upon the establishment of the permanent joint headquarters. It simply notes to study how to integrate operations in the future. Based on the lessons learned from the Great East and Japan disaster of 2011, it is obvious that the self-defense force needed a permanent joint headquarters. At present, the Japanese joint chief interacts with three counterparts of the U.S. military leaders. Pentagon's joint chief, Hawaii's Indo-Pakum commander, and Yokota's U.S. FJ, U.S. force of Japan's commander. And when crisis occur, it is almost impossible for him to discuss and respond to both political, military, and operational issues simultaneously. If the PGHQ were established in the self-defense force, it could become a real counterpart of the U.S. Indo-Pacific command from operational perspective. So the second issue challenges, recommendations is the strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance. Four points. One, there's the FJ, U.S. should strengthen the operational linkage with the U.S.-Indo-Pakum command. As noted before, the SDF command and control structure should be aligned to the one of Indo-Pakum. Second, the development of bilateral operation plans in every possible scenario, ranging from peacetime to graze-on to conflict. This is critical for both prevention and bilateral actions, and eventually for the stability of the Northeast Asia. Third point is, as the self-defense force is going to introduce many U.S. weapons systems, such as EZSR show, F35B, Global War, et cetera. So drastic improvement of interoperability is urgent, especially in the areas of command and control. Fourth point, the self-defense force and the Indo-Pakum can work more closely together toward forming a regional cooperative effort, such as coordinated operations in East and South China Seas, capacity-building efforts in Indo-Pacific region, and deepening the relationship with like-minded countries such as Australia and India. My third recommendation is the strengthen the Southwestern Islands defense. The government of Japan should develop an overall strategy how to secure the Southwestern Island chain. As the guidelines stresses the importance of the whole government approach and the seamless approach in securing the Southwestern Islands sovereignty, the government needs to strengthen these kinds of approaches. The guidelines reiterates, quote, the government shall make integrated efforts with not only the Minister of Defense and the Self-Defense Force, but also with relevant agencies, local organization, and private organizations, and shall build up a defense system that integrates the capability of Japan, unquote. It is high time for the government to develop comprehensive Southwestern Islands security strategy, inviting not only the MOD or self-defense force, but also other relevant agencies, such as the Coast Guard and the police. This effort would surely enhance the seamless response to provocations. To ensure the defense posture of this region, collaboration with the U.S. forces is also encouraged, such as bilateral patrol and exercises. Second point is the Self-Defense Force is going to introduce various weapons systems, as mentioned before, and also including adding, such as UAV and UEV, surface-to-surface missile system, and many things. So to align these various weapons systems into a same direction or same objective, the Self-Defense Force, especially the joint staff, shall develop a doctrine to deter and fight in this theater. In this theater, furthermore joint operational posture is indispensable for the Southwestern Islands defense. Lastly, as pointed out in the guideline, those areas of resiliency of defense instructors, rapid runway recovery capabilities, and designating alternative military airfields, securing lines of communication to remote islands, stockpiling ammunition is critically important for the sustainable operations. So this concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, General Isabe. That's a terrific way to get us started and I will give you a full overview. Eric, let me give you a chance to follow that up. Great. Thanks, Jim. And the other Jim and Carnegie and the Saskawa Foundation for convening this, Sayuri-san. That was a terrific overview we got from General Isabe. I'll provide a U.S. perspective on the NDPG, but let me emphasize here that this is an American view. It's absolutely not the American view. In fact, I would guess I'm in the minority on some of the points that I'll make today. I'll also not speak, as General Isabe did, sort of according to the sequence of the document or necessarily what gets most ink in the document. Rather, I'll just highlight some of the aspects that might otherwise be missed. I'd start by saying that in many ways I found the 2018 documents, so it's the NDPG, it's also the mid-term defense plan as well as the budget for next year. I found these documents dramatic, perhaps startling. They contained a number of significant adjustments as well as a few conspicuous holes. In my comments, I'll divide my time into three parts. First, I'll discuss some of the strategic challenges facing Japan, primarily the high-end military problem on which the NDPG does seem to focus. Second, I'll spend the bulk of my time highlighting some select aspects of these documents, some strengths and weaknesses. And third, outline some outstanding questions or points that we might consider in Q&A or going forward. Starting with the military challenge, I don't know if we have the slides up. Okay, I won't use the slides. That's fine. I sent some. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't specify. Starting with the military challenge, the guidelines highlight in particular dramatic improvements to Chinese conventional military capabilities. So for the first time, this document places the China challenge or the China threat above North Korea. So I'll focus on that in my comments. China today spends about three and a half times as much as Japan on its military. That's a big change. As late as 2000, Japan was spending more than China on its military. So an enormous, very rapid change in terms of military spending. And the Chinese capabilities are catching up to those budget figures. So China launched six destroyers in 2018 compared to, I think, two for the United States and one for Japan. And these are very large ships. In fact, some of them are larger than U.S. destroyers. Secondly, Japan and China do contest territory, the Senkaku Islands as well as the boundary line, the midpoint line between the two, the maritime boundary line. That aside, the two could also be drawn into other regional conflicts over, for example, Taiwan or the South China Sea, given that the U.S. bases in Japan and their possible participation in other regional conflicts. Third, the U.S. and Japan enjoy important military advantages, at least in the qualitative sense. But geography works against the alliance in many ways. U.S. reinforcements are thousands of miles away. Hawaii alone is 4,000 miles from Japan. And within the theater, some of Japan's outer islands are not only small, but they're closer to China than they are to major bases in Japan. So if you look at Yaki is something on the order of 400 kilometers from China, but it's 500 miles, I'm sorry, 500 kilometers from Okinawa and fully 1,000 from Kyushu. And that puts it within a range of China's major bases. And then fourth, these islands, especially the outer islands, but all of Japan are within range of numerous and highly accurate Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles. So China's been modernizing the full range of capabilities and has modern and substantial capabilities in all domains. But this missile threat is particularly significant and severe. Not only are they large in number, but they're highly accurate. So where does that leave us with the NDPG and the midterm defense plan in terms of Japan's response? Again, I'll not walk through it point by point. But as far as positive elements, I'd highlight some of the things that General Yusobe just talked about. First of all, there's a real focus on resilience, the ability to absorb attack and continue to operate. If there were a conflict, Japanese forces would comprise the bulk of the allied forces forward deployed and they would be subject to attack. So in a protracted fight, of course, the US forces would flow forward, but it would take them weeks to get there and they'd be dependent on having functioning infrastructure and a viable ally, a viable force in being when they got there. So the NDPG outlines three elements of resilience, dispersion, recovery, and redundancy or substitution. It outlines a number of specific points, more munitions to keep the fight going, mobility and the ability to plug gaps in the lines that might emerge. The use of more facilities, including civilian ones, the use of what they call Stoval aircraft, these are short landing and takeoff aircraft. The F-35B is discussed in the documents and forward positioning and hardening of supplies, particularly again in the southwest island chain, far from even Japanese reinforcement or support. The second element of the document that I'd highlight is in maritime lift. Again, we could look at this as an element of resilience, but it's probably worth some specific mention. There are new types of, new classes of ships, new classes of transport in the document, LSVs and LCUs. And Japan also intends to strengthen what amounts to a civilian reserve fleet financed by private finance initiatives. So it's a combined sort of civilian government effort. These would be civilian ships in peace time, but could be mobilized. And I think in a way that signifies my next point, which is focus on cost effectiveness and a mixed sort of high-low strategy here. So really, I think for the first time, we see focus on getting the most for their budget. It doesn't apply to all areas of the document. I think there's some significant exceptions, but there is a lot more emphasis on this document overall. It recognizes that Japan can't outspend its potential adversaries. Just give a few examples here again of this mixed high-low strategy. The Navy will continue to produce high-end Aegis-equipped destroyers, but it will supplement this with much cheaper multi-purpose, so-called compact hull ships. It really frigates. And it's also introducing a new class of 1,000 ton, very small, ships, which may take up some of the slack or some of the burden of this so-called gray zone conflict and allow the main force to focus on high-end problems and training and readiness. Fourth aspect of the document that I think deserves highlighting is just across the board improvements to air and maritime capabilities. Some highlights there. There's an expansion of the number of F-35s to be purchased. Now they're intending to replace the entire, that part of the F-15 fleet, which cannot be updated, modernized, so it'll be about 100 F-15s that will be replaced with F-35s. They're also making a very substantial purchase of E-2Ds, airborne warning command and control aircraft, doubling the size of the tanker fleet with the additional or additional airborne tankers. There's a caveat, I think, to all of this. This needs to be kept in perspective. China is modernizing its force and increasing the size of its military inventories. Japan is effectively modernizing its forces selectively, but can't really afford to expand them in any substantial way. Alright, let me just make a few comments about what's missing or what might be particularly prominent questions that emerge from the document. First, I just can't emphasize enough generally so-based main point that the document does disappoint on the issue of jointness. There's rhetorical emphasis, as we saw from generally so-based slides, on jointness in the document and two small joint elements are established, cyber and maritime lift. But overall, jointless is not adequately discussed and neither is there a standing or permanent joint command, as some thought there might be, but there's not also a joint planning office in the joint staff office, which some thought there would be. This is obviously a big problem. Not only do each of the services have a different number of sort of theaters. Japan is divided into different commands. Each of the services has a different number of commands and they actually bisect each other fairly neatly. So that was one of my slides, but in any case it's an interesting situation. It looks almost intentional. None of this is addressed in the document. A second issue and here with apologies to General Isobe, I'm a ground force officer, at least in History in the Reserves as ground force officer, but I will say a second prominent issue with the NDPG is what I would call this continuing Japan's imperial army. That is, it's the army's dominance within Japan's military system. The Ground Self Defense Force, the overall budget is something like 68%. For 2019, the overall, the ground force budget is 68% larger than that of the Air Force. It's 50 plus percent larger than that of that Navy, which just to me doesn't make sense for maritime, for an island state, for an archipelagic state facing primarily air and maritime threats. Why is this an issue? Apart from the obvious, the GSDF consistently gets what it wants, including fairly expensive and new toys while the other services often have to make, I think, inadequate compromises. So the F-15 fleet is being modernized, but even those jets which are undergoing modernization are just being upgraded in their mechanical radar. They are not getting phased radar, which are pretty much the rigor of most air forces. So Japan's fourth generation jets will not be as modern as the Chinese fourth generation aircraft that they might be facing. I guess the second point on this is just that the GSDF also seems to have an outsized say in military strategy and concepts of operation. So we see this in the emphasis in these documents and other documents as well in retaking captured islands and maybe less than is deserved on achieving air and maritime superiority. So these get lip service, they're certainly mentioned but those are prerequisites to any effort to recapture lost islands and I think they're much more important and should come first. Finally, the most important set of questions surrounding the documents is the number and type of offensive systems that are Japan is pursuing. And I guess this, when I said these documents are somewhat startling up, this is primarily what I was referring to. First of all, there is a major emphasis on standoff strike. We knew that would be the case. Japan is purchasing a Norwegian missile ground and maritime attack missile with a range of about 550 kilometers. It's also purchasing a U.S. JASM, ER extended range with a range of about 900 kilometers, the LRAZM, a maritime strike missile. There's also a hypersonic boost glide system in the document that looks an awful lot like a ballistic missile during the launch phase. Say that again, it looks a lot like a ballistic missile that's fairly dramatic in the launch phase. And then down the road a hypersonic cruise missile propelled by a scramjet as well, assuming they can do that technically. It's also, as generally so be discussed, there's a very heavy emphasis in the document overall on cyber and space. Of course it's a good thing. Included in each of those categories is offensive capabilities. So there's offensive cyber mentioned in the document. There will also be offensive space. My translation of that particular sentence, to assure proper function of space systems and an ability to disrupt adversary command control once Japan will strengthen its ability to secure advantage in the use of space. So again, in the use of space. Again I think that's a fairly dramatic statement and a fairly dramatic development. And then finally the conversion of DDHs, these helicopter carriers into sometimes aircraft carriers. Japan may place F-35Bs onto NUMO class destroyers sometimes. Okay, so why is this an issue? These are all discussed in terms of the defense of the islands. And I'm certainly not suggesting that Japan has any intent or capability to wage offensive war. But they're clearly operationally offensive systems. Some of the capabilities are clearly designed to attack adversary bases and facilities not, for example, adversary positions on occupied islands. The longest range Chinese air defense systems have a range of 400 kilometers and that's against high flying aircraft. Against low flying aircraft it might be about 100 kilometers. And again the JASMIR is a system with a range of 1000 kilometers. It's three times as expensive as cruise missiles with shorter range say 300 or 400 kilometers. The U.S. has presumably approved these systems or most of these systems, certainly the ones that come from the United States. But U.S. policy makers to include senior U.S. military officials will now in an emergency have to concern themselves with escalator potential of course Japan will too. This all depends on the circumstances and the specific targets. But nevertheless escalation becomes a bigger issue. And apart from the escalation issue there are new coordination requirements here especially on the space and cyber side. Those are two areas where secrecy is rather extreme and our ability to share information is very limited. Our national interests and the use of offensive cyber in space may not always align. And again sharing that granular information on specific say vulnerabilities or exploits in the case of cyber will be difficult. So you can imagine cases where say one side is exploiting a vulnerability to gather intelligence on an adversary system and may not want that system attacked. But it may not be able to communicate that to its ally. Finally there are some questions about the center of gravity in Japanese military strategy. I'll leave that for Q&A. Just close with a few thoughts to reiterate first there's a lot to celebrate in the documents Japan is clearly much more serious about generating real military capabilities and using its funds, using its limited defense resources to maximum effect. Secondly there are some outstanding problems particularly in the area of jointness as well as a whole number of questions that really haven't been terribly well addressed I don't think in the media. Third we should probably also address flaws on the US side this is a meeting about Japan so I haven't done that here but we should certainly acknowledge that the US has its voyables and flaws with regard to strategy and concepts. On the other hand we really shouldn't give anyone a pass here given the challenges that the alliance faces. And then finally as we think about our options for responding to the various military challenges that we do face in addition to operational efficacy which I spent most of my time on and also think about crisis stability. Thank you Eric that's a very sophisticated analysis and I apologize for the lack of slides that was my misunderstanding but those slides we can put up on the event page of the website so they'll be available to access to everybody. Sorry for the delay on that front. You've already stimulated a whole lot of questions for me between our first two presentations but Yuki you get the first chance to kind of follow up and weigh in here. Thank you Jim and good morning everyone. I would like to also thank Carnegie and Sasakawa Youth Foundation USA for giving me this opportunity. It's always exciting to come back here to speak about the issues that I deeply care about. At the same time it's a little bit intimidating to follow after where these are two really excellent presentations but what I think I will end up doing is pile on to the list of questions that Jim already had accumulated so we will have a lot to talk about in Q&A. So just to sit in a context National Defense Program guidelines and the midterm defense program those two set of documents are supposed to be read together as a package. The way I describe it to my American friends about NDPG is it's quasi quadrennial defense review-ish document. I would say ish because QDR is really more about setting the strategic context and talk about layout the framework within which national defense strategy and military strategies are formed whereas NDPG does a little bit of both. It talks a little bit about policy and then kind of try to set the overall defense posture framework under that. And midterm defense program is really very close. Again a five year defense plan document ish document that is essentially an acquisition target over the next four to five years. So that's why these two documents one on the more heavy on a policy and the other one very very heavy on the acquisition side need to be read together to get the full flavor of it but only a handful of us will either enjoy doing it or have the time to do it and I'm not going to go through all these documents and granular details about what those are. But couple of the thing is it is very customary for NDPG to come up with its own coined phrase for the image vision of the defense force that the document aspires to and in this time it is I think what can be translated as a joint mobile defense force is probably the accurate translation that I come up with because I haven't seen yet on the MOD website English translation of the document. That's why everybody was kind of wondering about it. Couple of the repeated theme comes through very strongly from this document. General Isobe already touched upon it. It's sustainability resiliency and comprehensive and also optimization which talks greatly about cost efficiency or cost effectiveness that Erica talked spend time on. And three features which may not necessarily get a lot of media attention but the one that I personally noticed particularly interesting was first is this got a little bit of attention because of the implications of the implications to the standing policy. But identification of space and cyberspace and electronic magnetic waves as the future areas of a focused investment. Secondly I think this NDPG is really the first document that openly acknowledged that the true transformation is required for self defense forces to have a truly effective and fightable force. Thirdly this document is I think also in the first and identifying a couple of the capability or capacity as the joint assets. Maritime transport is one and I believe the space was the other. And both General Isobe and Eric talked about the lack of a kind of a deep dive or further discussion on the jointness but I would also suggest that maritime transport or ground self defense forces taking over the operation of Ijisa shore. Those can actually be the effectively the forcing function of further jointness and that's how actually Japan's self defense forces jointness has always progressed that it's not based on the law, it's not based on the internal guideline, it's really that service getting these specific new missions that force them to go joint. And I would see that this may not happen a short term but over time I can see those new functions or new acquisitions that are identified under these two documents can serve as additional forcing functions toward jointness. It still does not resolve the operational issues that General Isobe highlighted but it is something to be to consider. Eric talked greatly about the challenges that he sees in the NDPG from operational perspective but let me pile on a little bit more which is actually really critical when you really think through how to operationalize this great vision that has been much celebrated in this document. This is nothing new. Budget, I keep saying budget, budget, budget is the critical area of challenge that I see. Budget is a budget increase that Japan has seen under Prime Minister Abe. It has taken an uptick but it's still very incremental and the size of the new acquisitions that the new midterm defense program outlines, I don't think this incremental budget increase will catch up keep up the pace with the actual financial resource requirements to bring this all about and Japan has always had the problem when it comes to these acquisition and execution of this midterm defense program. What's known in Japanese is basically passing the buck to the further fiscal years. So first and second fiscal years of that's covered under midterm defense program, they try to stay within that but then basically all the remaining balance is kind of like a credit card. You pay what you can but then at some point you have to pay the balance and the balance tends to get much bigger than the actual budget can sustain. And Japan has crotically had that problem in the defense acquisition. I can see that only Japan is already happening with this new list of acquisition and the already existing standing acquisition that Japan is already grappling with including acquisition of 24 F35A, Osprey, E2D, so on so forth. These are really high priced items so it really has to be resourced a little bit more robustly but I just don't see that at all. And what's particularly problematic is as we all know Prime Minister Abe has been probably the very strong one of the strongest advocates for robust Japanese defense force. He's a very strong leadership style, made a lot of the things what was considered impossible to happen. But in the middle of this midterm defense program execution, his time in the office will end. So we will be in like a middle of like E2 beginning of the year three of the defense program when Prime Minister Abe gets taken over by his successor. So depending on the personality and leadership style and the political environment that Japan faces at that time government may have, government battle to defend these budget figures can be extremely uphill battle. So I would just highlight that but then why is this important? Because when the budget battle happens, their budget battle is primarily driven by their sense of urgency to keep the budget for acquisition. So what gets bartered down is intangible but yet critical to keep the readiness of this force. Which is personnel related cost, education and training repair and maintenance, purchase of the spare parts and purchase a lot of the smaller items that often doesn't get the attention. So I would just throw that out as one big problem that I see. And then also looking down the road, I really think that the post-Abe political environment can either make it easier or harder to execute the some vision that's laid out here. So without going into, I'm happy to go into more granular details during the Q&A but I'll just stop at that. That's great, thank you, that's excellent. I think we have a good picture now of how important this step is, albeit maybe it's incremental or evolutionary, it's still quite an important step in commitment that Japan is making. Some very positive, kind of encouraging aspects to it, especially from an alliance context and grappling with some of the challenges that Japan faces, but not without its own challenges, shortcomings and possible second guessing. We can do a little Monday morning quarterback armchair criticism here. But I'd like to begin the discussion in a lot of different directions, we can go in but I'm going to pick four basic questions to start off and this is open for anybody here. I'll do them one at a time. But the first is kind of a basic question about you've all followed these NDPGs in the past and generally so you've experienced it kind of internally how would you describe the track record in the past or the impact of a new revised NDPG in terms of how that ends up impacting on operations, capabilities, etc. What should we, what's the track record on the importance in real terms over the next few years for this kind of a track record may not on accurate way to describe it but I think for example I think in 1995 NDPG put ballistic missile defense front and center of Japan's investment and policy priority and that forced a lot of things, a lot of internal changes. Top of that list was jointness and we all kind of criticized about how jointness lacks attention in this times NDPG but I also have to point out that Japan has been at this jointness business only for 20 years whereas like we in the United States have been at it since the passage of the Goldwater nickel so of course it is kind of easier for us to criticize like what's missing, what's not. Japan is really at it for a shorter period of time but then without these forcing function which is called legislation it managed to come quite a long way since this whole notion of jointness started. Of course there's still area that needs and requires improvement but so I would probably highlight something like that like BMD, introduction of BMD into in the 1995 NDPG and also 2013 NDPG actually started this process of shift in defense posture from what has been predicated upon countering the mass land invasion from the north into the defense of the remote islands or island chain which again also forced a lot of changes in operational operational concept the way that especially the ground force thinks of themselves in terms of how they move in the times of contingency and you can see that in the real in a real world where traditionally you know Japan's ground-state defense force had obviously a lot to do with army but this introduction of amphibious capability really pushed forward ground-state defense forces cooperation with Marine Corps on the US side and now I would say they probably have my army colleague really pissed off at me when I say this but I think Japanese ground-state force has probably more training together dialogue together in terms of their capabilities and such with Marines than army in Japan so those are some of the I guess impact that this NDPG like past NDPG has no no that's what we want to begin to get at much a great question and before that I'd like to tell a bit about the fact of the ground-state I'm not a representative of the ground-state defense force but I was in the ground-state force but also served in twice at the joint staff I think I have a little bit and about the ground-state defense force I think transforming drastically right now during the Cold War it has very heavy forces they had 1200 tanks and artillery but now they are reducing it to 300 tanks and 300 artillery pieces means almost equivalent to the one armored division all the big island chains we will have only 300 but that's a feature 2200 miles the ground forces should be deployed areas effectively because of the funding to the emergencies and the natural disasters okay so finish my explanation of the ground-state force and actually the defense guidelines I had been involved in this development process for almost every guideline 2003 program and policies in 2013 I have seen the guidelines and I have been involved and the very peculiar unique characteristics of this guideline is that the guideline was developed after the establishment of the national security national security secretariat was established in January 2014 and the former guideline was established just one month ago, one month before so I think it is important for the government to process of this guideline how to what extent the national security secretariat was involved and so this is my observation very personal but I think this guideline is quite different from the ones so this guideline is like guiding insular and the minister of defense so the important thing is how to implement the guideline thanks that is a great question let me just start with my answer by saying that the Japanese planning process and all of the guidelines are probably followed better than their counterparts on the U.S. side there tend to be more stops and starts on the U.S. side there are more actors heavily involved in the U.S. side especially in Congress, for example, with their own interests also my second point is just that these things can be updated along the way in the Japanese case as well so I went back after reading the two major documents in the budget I went back and I read the 2018 budget in fact I found a number of things I thought were new in the NDPG were in fact already in the budget for 2018 so But in any case, this one too can be amended and we all hope that there'll be more specific concrete measures for jointness down the road, for example. Then the two other points that have already been made, I just want to footstomp those. First of all, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that the NSC had the lead on this document. So this was Mr. Yachi, you know, as head of the NSC and his three subordinates from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the different staff office and the MOD. This is important because it represents a new potential avenue and I think in this case, one that was seized for central control anyway. We don't have jointness within the military, but this is sort of a central political leading organ that can be used to achieve greater coherence overall in the defense effort. Lots of questions there about how effective that will be, particularly going forward once Prime Minister Abe leaves office, but in any case, an important development. And then finally, maybe relatedly, you know, perhaps on the downside, again, as I went through the document too, I had a similar concern to Yuki's that can they actually fund all this going forward. So, you know, it's a very ambitious document and it's not clear to me that it can all be funded. Thanks. So for the sake of time, I'm going to cut one of my questions so I'm down to just two more. But it builds a little bit on this question about affordability and also sticking with our operational theme. There's a big commitment to F-35 in this NDPG and midterm defense plan. Additional 105 F-35s to be purchased, 40 or so of those will be these F-35Bs, the Stovall type that can really utilize the different smaller runways and maybe localities throughout the island chain that I could see some real operational benefit in terms of flexibility there, but also this idea of being able to use them on these helicopter destroyers in a kind of a quasi-aircraft carrier mode when needed. So my question goes to what do you think about this big bet on the F-35s in terms of budget? They're right now buying about six a year for $130 million apiece. Even if you ramp that up to 10 or 12 a year at $110 million, if you can get to that point, that's a 10, 12 year, $10 billion commitment. A significant chunk of Japan's aircraft acquisition budget will be dedicated to F-35B type. In terms of the role that the fighter plays in Japan's defense strategy, I'm curious about your thoughts from a budget perspective or an operational perspective. I'm surprised to see this large number and it's just really kind of makes sense to make Japan's fighter fleet be as capable as possible. It's a fantastic question. I haven't thought enough about it, but I will say I was surprised just because of the number and the cost, but from a different perspective I think it does make sense. First of all, I think the most important, the most pressing high-end challenge that Japan does face is this integrated air and missile threat. It's a ballistic missile threat. Again, these are very highly accurate ballistic missiles. There's a cruise missile threat and then there's actually an aircraft threat here as well. These can be combined in various ways, but China now operates 850 fourth generation aircraft and that number at least in recent years have been going up, I think, close to 100 aircraft per year. China operates something like 280-odd combat aircraft, maybe 250 fourth-gen aircraft. As I said, some of those are actually, you know, they're really baseline fourth-generation aircraft whereas some of China's are sort of fourth-gen plus. This is a pressing problem. The F-35 fills a number of functions, obviously air defense against air attacks. It also provides the cruise missile defense. I mentioned ballistic and cruise missiles. There are many more cruise missiles than there are ballistic missiles in China's inventory. So these put up to screen against cruise missile threat. They're highly capable aircraft. You know, it's been controversial in the U.S. It is controversial. I'll add a couple of caveats here or question marks. You know, they're very expensive. We also don't really know yet how much they're going to cost to maintain. Some numbers have been bandied about, but it's unclear to me how firm those are. These could be a lot more expensive to maintain than we've heard to date. The other issue is basing. So F-35 in particular makes sense, as Jim said, because they can operate off shorter runways, maybe off some of these smaller runways in Japan. If Japan can disperse its forces at the outset of a conflict, they'll be a lot more secure against the air and missile threat. But it needs to do that. Otherwise, these things are just targets sitting on runways. So it really, really needs to work the resilience problem. The U.S. Air Force has exactly the same problem. I think it's found religion now. So it went from sort of testing some new operational concepts, dispersed operational concepts. These were experimental a few years ago. Now they finally have a name that might stick ace Agile Combat Employment. And this is actually doctrine now, at least in the Pacific and Paycom Air Force. But Japan will certainly have to make them survivable. And again, now F-35B, I do think that's one that makes particularly both operating off the smaller air bases down in the south and off the carriers. There's been a lot of attention to the carrier as an offensive capability, and I did have that in my list. But actually, I think that in some ways is the least offensive capability of the ones that I mentioned, because these things can't sit behind the island chain and provide an additional layer of air defense on bases that are difficult. You know, they're moving bases. They're hard to find and hard to destroy. They're not invulnerable. But I think it makes sense as an extra layer of air defense. From the operational perspective, F-35B is a great thing to counter with the Navy. But the issue is that the, as Yuki-san criticizes the science, that the budget, extra defense, self-defense forces are purchasing many new weapons systems equipment. How can we, budget is the most important. Let me quickly throw an additional zinger at this, which is that we're already surprised and try to figure out how to fund the additional purchase of the F-35. They're not in this mid-term defense program, but then probably the one follow-on. What Japan is going to do for the replacement combat aircraft to succeed F-2 fighter will come into play also. And that, with the two consecutive acquisition of the system, that's primarily going to be for military sales. So Japanese industrial, a very little industrial Japanese participation platform is probably out of the question for many people in Japan, especially in the government and in that industry for the health of the Japanese industrial base. Then what does that mean to the cost for this, what ultimately be F-2 replacement? My bet is it will be, it will be just as if not more expensive than F-35, that they're buying, because we still don't know about the exportability of that replacement aircraft. So I'll just throw it in as an additional zinger. Increase the borrowing limit there on the credit card. A lot of interesting issues. I'm going to turn to the audience in just a minute so prepare your questions we have until 1030 for this session. I want to sneak in and this is a sneaky difficult question to answer quickly, but I wonder if my panel can address this idea at least briefly. It's been mentioned this idea of disruption capability in the cyber realm and the space realm. Essentially it's the concept of using some limited offensive capability or an ability to disrupt an enemy's capacity to hurt you as a legitimate defensive means, but it raises these questions. Eric brought up the issue of price of stability and escalation. So I want to ask just briefly, what are some of your key thoughts or areas of recommendation or things you'll be looking for in the context of how does the Japanese system, as it's currently constructed, address this idea of giving authority to employ some of these tools? So first there's kind of developing the tools, but how do they get integrated into an operational kind of practical concept? Do you have some thoughts about how feasible or challenging that? Or space or electromagnetic? Some of these areas where the term kind of disruption, at least the English term, I don't know what the Japanese term was, but that's a relatively new part of Japan's now kind of operational talent or management in terms of how do you manage giving the authority to, yes, go ahead and do that, or will, do you think commanders in the field will have the flexibility to deal with that as they seem necessary to protect themselves? There are very detailed rules about engagement, air-to-air engagement or naval air engagement about when the use of force is delegated to the onsite commander versus has to be authorized from a central point. This idea of disruption in these new domains seems to me to be a relatively challenging area. That's a great question. It's a tough question. I'd say it's a question that's under debate today, not just in Japan, I'm sure, but in the United States as well. So under the U.S. system, which I don't understand thoroughly, but I'll say under the U.S. system, as I do understand it, for example, cyber is very tightly centrally controlled. There are senior officers in the other branches and services, theater level, folks who believe that operational control should be more integrated into the major joint commands, for example, and sort of parsed out at the operational level. But today it's held centrally, I think largely for reasons of coordination, some of the things that I talked about, we don't want to step on our own feet in the cyber realm. It's quite easy to do. In both domains, you have serious escalation issues. That may be another reason that they're tightly held centrally directed. Just to speak to that for one moment, since Jim raised it, it's an issue that's gotten a lot of ink. On the cyber side, initially some folks thought it's non-lethal in many cases, in most cases. So maybe it's less escalatory. It's a measure you can take that doesn't kill someone, but sends a signal, et cetera. But I think there's a lot of concern about escalation in the cyber domain. Depending on what you do, first of all, it can be difficult to differentiate an operational cyber attack from a strategic cyber attack. Just from gaming, you can see that people often misunderstand signals that are sent, especially if they're not verbalized. If you just do something, I think these are often misunderstood. Then also, on the operational side, they can compromise a range of capabilities that may be regarded as critical threats. For example, if you undertake a cyber attack, obviously, if it affects command and control that could impinge on nuclear capabilities, that would be an extraordinarily serious measure. I think there are a number of reasons why these capabilities might be held at the central level. I'm sure this discussion is starting in Japan, but probably somebody knows more about where they are on that discussion. Thank you very much, and it's a very, very difficult question to answer. So I'm wondering whether my answer is directly answering to Jim's question. But I think that military defence and the self-defence force has mainly focused on the protection of self-defence force infrastructure. But Japan is a logically very advanced society, by the train, Shinkansen system, power supply chain, financial services, there are many assets to protect from the cyber attacks. And the new guideline advocates that the whole government approach, not only Minister of Defence, but all relevant agencies should, I don't know to what extent, from now on, the self-defence force or Ministry of Defence would respond to the new cyber threats outside the self-defence force. So I think this is the issue for us all, not only the government, but also the all institutions, companies in Japan. And the two things is very important. One is the cyber or space, expertise is very important. And we need such an expertise very much. And I think it is very competitive to get such an outside. And the legal basis also should be I can just follow up on a couple of those points. Japan's cyber capabilities are very small at this point. So I think the new unit right now, it's something on the order of 150 personnel and they're upping that to something on the order of 180. It's a very small capability. As far as the offensive capability, it'll be much smaller. Obviously, US cyber command sits on top of the NSA, which is vast and has all kinds of capabilities and those two work very closely on the US side. And I can't tell you off the top of my head, well, I don't know what the budget is. It's a black budget, but it's an enormous budget with, you know, an enormous organization. So Japan starting from a very small base, it's offensive capability. Again, I think we ought to ask questions. And we ought to think about escalatory implications. But but it's also important if you're talking about cyber defense, you have to know what the offense is capable of. So this this is a means of improving Japan's cyber defense as well to understand what kind of offensive tools are out there. On the space side, I'll just say a couple of things. In both areas, there's more emphasis on the capability itself than on necessarily offensive capability. So there's more emphasis on cyber defense and space support to other forces to terrestrial forces than there is on say, offensive space, that's just the offensive part is just mentioned in the documents. Space is very, very expensive. And even in the US military system, it's often criticized as, you know, an endless money sink for the United States. Japan wants to develop a fairly broad array of capabilities to make those survivable against counter measures against counter space capabilities. That's going to cost a huge amount of money. I'm talking about global positioning, communications, some kind of early warning system for launch. Anyways, there's a wide range of capabilities. And to make those survivable systems, it's unclear how much money that's going to be. But if space situational awareness alone is something like 1.9 or 2 billion, kind of money we're talking about. It quickly two points on space. One of the one of the main challenges Japan is going to face is a lot of the space assets that Japan currently has, it's outside of the Ministry of Defense. But that's why it's so important that this NDPG was created as a created with the lead on National Security Secretariat, not MOD. And this whole emphasis on the whole of government approaches repeatedly comes up in the document because some of these assets or potential capacity does sit outside the Ministry of Defense and Defense Forces. And when it comes to cyber, I think I would watch what kind of debate, internal debate within Japanese government will evolve as Tokyo needs to really prepare for Tokyo Olympics. They are trying to make sure that all these critical infrastructure can be secure or how to track those cyberspace against those against the threat against those critical systems to make sure that Olympic can be successfully conducted and completed. So in that realm, within that effort, this issue ought to come up, like how to detect when to detect what's the line of communication or chain of command is going to be, who authorizes what action to whom. Some of that probably will be star being debated as Japan prepares for the Olympics, or at least I would hope so. Thank you. Okay, sorry, I haven't left a whole lot of time for questions, but we do have some time. And I'd like to do like lightning round. We'll take a couple of questions and then let our panel address what they like. When you raise your hand, I call you, please let us know who you are, wait for microphone and and ask your question. I have a gentleman here. And then I'll go to Adam. Steve Winters, independent consultant. I direct this to General Isobe. Thank you so much for being here. Professor Nye was also down here from Harvard not so long ago with and with Rich Armitage rolling out the latest edition of their report. And during their discussion, they it was suggested by some of the other authors there that the the the formation of certain joint operational commands between the US forces and the Japanese Defense Forces would lead to an increased awareness or increased jointness among the Japanese forces, because of course they will be coordinating with the US doctrine, which is very strongly towards joint force operations. So do you go along with that idea that that that might be a productive effect of that? Thank you very much for a wonderful panel. My name is Adam Liff. I teach at Indiana University. I also have an affiliation at the Brookings Institution. I know time shorts will keep this extremely concise. In your estimation, what are the prospects for greater cooperation between MSDF and JCG going forward, especially given the deepening gray zone challenge in East China Sea? That was something that was not mentioned very much. And also what are the prospects for US F 35 bees operating from Japanese DDHs? That was something that was teased in the media in the run up to the actual release of the NDPG. So I just like to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you. The last piece US F 35 bees interest in interoperability, possibly operating off of Japanese DDHs. Thank you. The question earlier was MSDF Maritime Self Defense Force and Japan Coast Guard cooperation. So that's our second question. Thank you. Thank you all for a wonderful discussion. My name is Ben Rimmeland. I'm a research associate at CSIS. My question is about a very niche capability of the new cooperative engagement capability that has been introduced on the Maya class series of destroyers and is being discussed as included as a feature on the E2Ds that the Air Self Defense Forces set to purchase. What's your view of this capability? Do you think that it's a major step up in information sharing between the US and Japan? And going forward, do you see the potential for other relatively cheap technologies like CEC to facilitate greater information sharing and allow Japan more ready strike targeting capability in the future? Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. So generally, so be I'll let you start and then I'll let anybody else in the panel take up whatever question they want to take up there, press whatever you like. Operations and the Japan Coast Guard and the JMSS Corporation. So this is my experience during the operation Tomodachi. And I definitely standing joint headquarters in the self defense force, but also we witnessed that the difficulties that the US forces Japan headquarters difficulties to lead the all three full services commander command because of the no authority there. I think Indo Pecom has such authority. So how to integrate these two forces? So I think out with the Indo Pecom with this issue, how about having the capability of a joint operation capability in the port areas? This is my and about the Coast Guard and the JMSS I think we need to add a police force here. And the guidelines says that interagency coordination is very important. So I just able to take it that the overall security strategy of South Western Islands. It's very important. Question and USF 35B. First of all, since generally so be won't plug his own book and I hope I'm not revealing anything he doesn't want revealed, but he has a he has a terrific manuscript that hopefully will be forth coming soon as a book on the on the disaster 311 and he makes a very, very eloquent case for for jointness. So I think he's he's been a true leader on this front. All right, to address some of these questions, as far as US and and Japan combined command, I think that's as far as an actual combined command. I think that's still prohibited under the Japanese Constitution. But if the US had a joint sub unified command of its own in in Japan, if it actually were planning on operating a conflict in a crisis from from Japan itself, that would allow it to plug in with the Japanese self defense forces much more effectively. And I think it would encourage jointness on the Japanese side as well. There are many reasons to do this, not just the coordination issue, but I think now with the prospect of the degradation in in in any conflict of our bandwidth and our ability to communicate between Acom and Hawaii and and and our forward deployed forces. There are operational reasons as well. Some of the other questions, do you think we'll see US F 35s on the Izumo class? I think the answer is probably yes. It's interesting. I believe we've seen US V 22s on not the Izumo class, but on the Hugo class, which was kind of intriguing. So both these aircraft generate a lot of heat. The decks have to be, you know, you have to make the deck capable of handling those two aircraft. And I think they still need to do some of that work to make sure that the Izumo can take the F 35B with the Hugo. I think they put some additional decking down. So this is possible to handle in a variety of ways. The Izumo really, I think was designed with the F 35B in mind, honestly. So the elevators can take the F 35B. This shouldn't be a problem, but I think in the meantime, we will certainly see tests using US F 35B on the cooperative engagement capability question. Yes, absolutely very important for this integrated air and missile defense for any air integrated air missile defense campaign. You know, relatively inexpensive. I think it's a way to network some of the legacy systems and get the most out of them. While obviously, you know, most of the new capabilities like the F 35 and some of these new missile systems that are being introduced. Very quickly on the 35B on Izumo situation, I will not be surprised if they start testing that out in some of those joint training that they do. That's how Osprey landed on the Hugo. So I would I can definitely see that happening, not maybe not next year, but then maybe a couple of years down the road. As Japan gets more serious about actually this current NDPG says about 40 of the 105 that they're going to buy, maybe may become B. But then depending on the situation, they there could be a decision to up that number. Zero some way, so less a and then more B. But then they can't make the decision without testing those out. And it will be it will make more sense to test it with the one that's currently flying, which is great. Thank you. Time for one more question. But if not, we can wrap things up and we also have a great panel coming up our second panel. Sure, sir. I have a microphone here. I'm Andre so I'm a partner and director for Vietnam Southeast Asia and Washington for the Interstate Traveller Company. We're focused on a hydrogen superhighway. Now my question is this great panel, but I just wondered is I read sometimes I'm getting some kind of inputs from various people about Okinawa. And and so my question is and these inputs are sometimes not benign. I mean, they're they're saying join a demonstration at the Japanese Embassy or something to take the part of Okinawa or something. My question is simply, is this a complication in in our Japanese American cooperation going forward on all the issues you've been talking about? Is it a complicating or just a minor here? Well, we could do an entire program on that that issue. And but it's a I mean, it's a very relevant question in a couple of ways. I'll just say, you know, first of all, you have this whole idea of increasing jointness and interoperability. And the idea of more integrated basing and where in Okinawa is the one place where we have less integrated basing than we do in almost all the rest of Japan, the United States and the Japanese self defense forces share and have rights to share facilities quite liberally. There's some consideration of maybe there's ways to do that in Okinawa would that help with some of the issues related to tension with the concentration of US bases there. So there's a whole area of discussion there. Then, of course, you have if there is some kind of accident or incident related to US bases in Okinawa that has a major impact on the stability and the sustainability of US Japan security cooperation. So there are a lot of relevant issues on that front. For the sake of time, I might not be able to get into to do it justice, but I don't know if anybody else wants to add. Let's let's hold that thought actually. And then the second panel may want to take up some of these things. So we're going to we have a great panel, including former Vice Minister Nishi Masanori Nishi from Japan Ministries of Defense, with us Caleb Redden from the U.S. Department of Defense and Kathleen Hicks from CSIS and former high level official at U.S. Department of Defense to talk about how to policy implications on the US Japan Alliance dynamics related to the new NDPG. So we're going to take a short break and resume at 10.45 sharp. But in the meantime, and I will turn it over to Sayuri Rome who will lead the next panel. But I really want to thank my panelists for wonderful discussion, great preparation, and I really learned a lot today. So thank you. Please join me. Thank you.