The Importance Of Veer Guardian

The political confidence required to place high-end Japanese aircraft and personnel on Indian soil is itself a data point.
It indicates a level of trust that would have been difficult to imagine when India-Japan defence ties were largely symbolic, explains Varun Arya.

When Japanese F-2 fighters arrived at Jodhpur for Exercise Veer Guardian 26, they carried more than fuel, weapons and equipment. They carried a strategic message.

For the first time, Japan's Air Self-Defense Force sent fighter aircraft to India for a bilateral air-combat exercise. The deployment is significant not merely because of the aircraft involved, but because of what it says about the country operating them.

Japan is becoming more capable of exercising military power beyond its immediate territory.

When Japanese F-2 fighters flew from Okinawa through Thailand to Jodhpur, supported by a US tanker, the route itself became part of the story.

It demonstrated that Japan is learning to move high-end combat aircraft across the Indo-Pacific, sustain them at distance, and operate with partners far beyond the Japanese archipelago.

That transformation has been underway for more than a decade. Defence spending has risen sharply. Japan is acquiring longer-range missiles, expanding its F-35 fleet, investing in unmanned systems, strengthening space and cyber capabilities, and developing what its defence establishment calls counterstrike capabilities.

The country's FY2027 defence budget request has reached a record 8.9 trillion yen. Japan has also moved toward its 2022 goal of defence-related spending equivalent to roughly 2% of GDP in FY2027.

The more important question is no longer whether Japan is strengthening its military. It clearly is. The question is what kind of military power Japan is becoming -- and what that transformation means for India and the Quad.

The numbers behind Japan's transformation

Japan's 2022 National Security Strategy established a goal of bringing defence-related spending to around 2% of GDP in FY2027.

The FY2027 defence request alone is approximately 8.9 trillion yen -- the largest ever -- and focuses heavily on artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, stand-off weapons, integrated air and missile defence, space, cyber, and the ability to sustain operations over a prolonged conflict.

The weapons programmes are equally revealing. Japan is acquiring and integrating longer-range Type 12 anti-ship missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles while expanding its F-35 fleet and developing a broader family of stand-off weapons.

The purpose is not simply to protect individual Japanese bases or islands. It is to create the ability to detect, track and, under Japan's stated interpretation of its constitution and laws, counter an attack from greater distances.

Japan is also moving rapidly into unmanned warfare. The ministry of defence allocated 100.1 billion yen in FY2026 for unmanned systems, with the aim of establishing its SHIELD concept -- Synchronized, Hybrid, Integrated and Enhanced Littoral Defense -- by FY2027.

The concept envisages networks of unmanned aircraft, surface vessels and underwater systems operating across Japan's littoral environment.

These figures turn 'Japan is getting stronger' from a qualitative impression into an evidence-based assessment. The transformation can be summarised in three words: Range, integration and persistence.

Japan is acquiring the ability to see farther, strike farther, operate across multiple domains and sustain military activity for longer periods.

That is a qualitatively different posture from the one that dominated Japanese defence thinking for much of the post-war period.

From Article 9 to Counterstrike Capability

Describing this transformation simply as 'Japanese rearmament' risks missing an important distinction. Article 9 of Japan's constitution has not been formally amended.

Instead, the transformation has occurred through political decisions, reinterpretations, legislation and changes in defence doctrine within Japan's democratic constitutional framework.

The turning point came with the 2014 reinterpretation of the constitution and the security legislation enacted in 2015, which expanded the circumstances in which Japan could exercise the right of collective self-defence.

The next major step came in December 2022, when Japan adopted its National Security Strategy, National Defence Strategy and Defense Buildup Program.

Together, the three documents represented perhaps the most significant transformation of Japanese defence policy in decades.

They introduced the concept of counterstrike capability while retaining the government's position that such capability could only be exercised under the conditions of Japan's constitutional interpretation and the three requirements for use of force.

Japan does not describe its new long-range capabilities as a licence for pre-emptive war. The government's stated position is that counterstrike capability can be exercised only following an armed attack and when the constitutional requirements for self-defence are satisfied.

The April 2026 revision of Japan's Three Principles on Transfer of Defence Equipment and Technology represents another important step.

Tokyo substantially revised the framework governing defence-equipment transfers, arguing that greater cooperation with partners could strengthen deterrence, resilience and Japan's defence-industrial base.

The government simultaneously reiterated its commitment to Japan's identity as a peace-oriented state and to strict controls over transfers.

This is therefore not a constitutional return to the military state of the 1930s. It is something more complex. Japan is gradually normalising the use of military capability as an instrument of national security while retaining constitutional, parliamentary and alliance-based constraints on its employment.

That distinction will remain central to understanding Japan's future.

Veer Guardian: The Significance of Jodhpur

Against this backdrop, Veer Guardian becomes much more interesting. The exercise itself is not new. India and Japan have conducted it since 2023.

What is new is the direction and complexity of movement. Japanese fighter aircraft flew to India after a long-range ferry from Okinawa through Thailand to Jodhpur, with US tanker support.

That journey demonstrates growing power-projection logistics: planning, air-to-air refuelling, maintenance, communications, diplomatic coordination and the ability to sustain aircraft far from home.

The F-2 is also operationally relevant to India. Derived from the F-16 design, it offers the Indian Air Force a useful training reference for tactics involving a familiar but distinct fourth-generation fighter platform.

The political confidence required to place high-end Japanese aircraft and personnel on Indian soil is itself a data point.

It indicates a level of trust that would have been difficult to imagine when India-Japan defence ties were largely symbolic.

Tokyo and New Delhi have also agreed to make future exercises more complex, incorporate unmanned systems and pursue short-notice joint training when opportunities arise.

Moving high-end fighter aircraft and personnel across Asia requires planning, logistics, communications, maintenance and political confidence.

The deployment consequently creates a useful test of Japan's ability to operate with a partner thousands of kilometres away.

It also creates operational familiarity. Japanese and Indian pilots learn each other's procedures.

Ground crews work together. Commanders become familiar with communications and planning processes. Over time, exercises can transform political trust into operational competence.

From Exercises To An Operational Partnership

The India-Japan defence relationship is already moving beyond symbolic exercises. In August 2026, the two countries signed a Maritime Security Cooperation Memorandum of Arrangement.

The two governments agreed to strengthen cooperation involving ship visits, exercises, personnel exchanges, expert exchanges and logistical support, including access to ports and repair facilities.

They also agreed to advance reciprocal provision of ship-repair facilities and to explore cooperation in shipbuilding and design, including possibilities involving Japanese technological expertise and India's production capacity.

There is also a concrete defence-technology dimension. The shipborne UNICORN integrated communications antenna project has become the first major defence-equipment transfer and co-development project between India and Japan.

The two governments have committed to working toward its early realisation.

Taken together, these developments show a relationship moving from exercises to infrastructure, technology, logistics and industrial cooperation.

But the relationship is not becoming more security-oriented at the expense of economics. The two tracks are increasingly converging.

Kunimitsu's Kolkata Visit

That convergence is visible in the timing of Japanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ayano Kunimitsu's visit to India from September 10 to 12.

Kunimitsu's wider Bhutan-India trip ran from September 8 to 13, but the India leg is centred on Kolkata.

During the India portion, she visited sites connected with Japanese economic-cooperation projects.

The timing is significant. Her visit follows the September 3 consultations between Japanese Senior Deputy Foreign Minister Hiroyuki Namazu and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri as well as the September 3 Quad Sherpas' meeting in New Delhi.

It also occurred as Veer Guardian began, bringing Japanese combat aircraft to India for the first time for the exercise.

The immediate purpose of Kunimitsu's Kolkata visit is economic cooperation rather than a defence negotiation. But that distinction itself is revealing.

Japan's India strategy increasingly operates across several interconnected domains: Diplomacy, infrastructure, economic security, technology, supply-chain resilience and defence.

Japan's economic engagement with India is also becoming increasingly connected to the broader concept of economic security.

The two countries have been expanding cooperation in areas including semiconductors, critical minerals, batteries, pharmaceuticals, AI and resilient supply chains.

Kunimitsu's visit therefore provided another piece of the larger picture: Japan is not simply seeking a stronger military relationship with India. It is deepening the wider economic and technological foundations on which strategic cooperation can rest.

This matters because military power increasingly depends on industrial resilience, technology, logistics and secure supply chains.

The emerging India-Japan relationship is consequently broader than a defence partnership. It is becoming a strategic ecosystem.

Japan's Military Power Is Becoming Networked

Perhaps the most important change in Japan's defence posture is not simply that it possesses more weapons.

It is that those weapons are increasingly being embedded in networks. Japan's security partnership with the United States remains the foundation.

Tokyo is simultaneously deepening defence cooperation with Australia, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, India and other partners.

Japan's own defence leadership increasingly views these partnerships as interconnected rather than isolated relationships.

This is where the Quad becomes important. The Quad is not NATO. There is no Article 5-style collective-defence commitment.

India, Japan, Australia and the United States have not created a military command or agreed that an attack on one automatically obligates the others to fight.

The Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Partnership and related initiatives are primarily about information sharing, maritime-domain awareness, capacity-building, technology cooperation and resilience -- not collective defence.

That limitation is important. But it does not make the Quad strategically irrelevant. Its value may instead lie in building interoperability, information-sharing mechanisms, maritime awareness, technology cooperation, infrastructure resilience and capacity among four capable regional powers.

The emerging structure therefore looks less like an alliance and more like a web: US-Japan, Australia-Japan, India-US, India-Japan, the Malabar naval exercise, bilateral and trilateral exercises, maritime-domain awareness, logistics agreements and defence-industrial partnerships.

Each relationship adds another strand. Veer Guardian is one such strand.

The Quad can help align these strands, but it cannot command them as a single force, guarantee military intervention or erase national differences.

India will retain strategic autonomy, including its longstanding defence relationship with Russia.

The absence of a mutual-defence obligation is not an accidental weakness; it is part of the political design that makes cooperation acceptable to all four members.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff