One of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s most consistent pledges during and after her ascent to office has been the revision of three key security policy documents, namely, the ‘National Security Strategy’, the ‘National Defence Strategy’ and the ‘Defence Buildup Programme’. Upon entering office in October 2025, she tasked Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi with promulgating newer versions of all three documents, which were first adopted in 2012 and subsequently revised in 2014 and 2022.[1] To facilitate this process, a high-level committee (防衛力変革推進本部, Headquarters for the Promotion of Changes in Defence Capability) was convened within the Ministry of Defence.

On 12 March 2026, the committee released a preliminary document entitled ‘防衛力の変革の方向性①’ (‘Directions of Change in Defence Capabilities 1’), which offers a valuable glimpse into the evolution of Japan’s security strategy in a period of unprecedented volatility.[2] Though presented as an outline (possibly the first in a series), the document offers insights into the direction of travel that may, in days to come, culminate in new security doctrines.

Stand-off Defence Capabilities

According to the document, stand-off capabilities enable the defence of Japan’s outlying islands against external invasion at a stand-off distance while minimising risk to SDF members. Through a mix of missile types, Japanese defence planners aim to enable overlapping responses while forcing adversaries to deal with multiple systems at once, which they argue would blunt any direct assault on Japanese forces. Coupling this with the optimum use of unmanned assets would enable maximum survivability for SDF forces. This latter point is explicitly identified as a critical consideration for an armed force that serves and defends a country undergoing a steep and (hitherto) irreversible population decline.[3]

The above lessons are drawn from the conflict in Ukraine, which serves as the overarching model for the document’s planners.[4] Thus, the key considerations around which Japan’s strategic evolution is foreseen are: strengthening the targeting capabilities of weapons platforms to enable the ‘practical use’ of stand-off missile........

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