Japan is ramping up efforts to establish a strong foothold for its Self-Defense Forces’ amphibious operations in Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture of Kyushu, the southernmost of the nation’s four main islands, with China’s increasingly assertive maritime expansion in mind.

Specifically, the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo plans to build a system for joint operations between the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF)’s existing Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, which is headquartered in Sasebo, and the Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF)’s Amphibious and Mine Warfare Group (a tentative name given by the Defense Ministry) that will be newly organized in the city by March 2026.

This move aims to bolster capabilities to defend and recapture remote islands, especially in Japan’s southwestern Nansei island chain, which spans about 1,200 km from Kagoshima to Okinawa, stretching southwest toward Taiwan. The chain includes the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The islands are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan.

The plan came as part of the largest-ever organizational restructuring in the history of the MSDF, which will abolish its existing Fleet Escort Force and the Mine Warfare Force, and then consolidate them into a new “Fleet Surface Force” (tentative name) in order to centralize the operation of the MSDF’s surface vessels by the end of fiscal year 2025.

“This is a complete scrap-and-build reorganization of our surface vessel fleet,” an........

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