A US-made autonomous drone has begun flying off Japan's coast for the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the latest foreign entrant to a defense technology market Japan is trying to build up at home. The aircraft is the V-BAT, made by Shield AI, a US company that also supplies artificial intelligence command-and-control platforms to the American military.
The V-BAT takes off and lands vertically and needs no launch pad. It can also fly autonomously. In mid-July, crew members assembled the aircraft on the deck of the destroyer Ikazuchi and trained on launching and recovering it, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.
Shield AI is not the only overseas company moving into the Japanese market. Foreign makers of AI-guided autonomous drones are entering one after another, the same pattern now seen among defense-tech firms that have set their sights on Japan.
The Defense Ministry has spent about 4 billion yen on six of the aircraft. That outlay covers a small fleet, and the platforms themselves come from abroad, even as Tokyo promotes a domestic defense industry.
The Mainichi Shimbun's article was truncated in the version available, cutting off before the section on the force's chronic shortages and on how the six aircraft have performed. Those details could not be verified from the available text.