News, deep dives, and analysis — every Japan story, newest first.
Rakuten is brokering Helsing's sale of HX-2 strike drones to Japan's army, and the aircraft under test is the same one a German defense ministry document said struggled to launch in Ukraine.
Japan's defense ministry pushed four drone makers into navy testing under a rapid development program built on Ukraine's battlefield lessons, as Chinese carriers operate near Iwo Jima and Tokyo's own commercial drone market stays dominated by Chinese imports.
Maksim Filchenkov, the GRU officer sourcing Japanese components for Russian drones and missiles, has fled Japan after a press investigation blew his cover. The pipeline he built stays open.
A senior figure in Japan’s drone industry is pushing for Japan and Taiwan to align their drone rules and deepen manufacturing cooperation, arguing that mismatched regulations and Japan’s limits on defense work are holding the sector back. Kakuya Iwata, executive director of the Japan UAS Industrial Development Association, made the case in an interview with…
The University of Tokyo’s JSK Lab flew DRAGON v1.5, a drone that changes its own shape in the air, in a live demonstration on the Komaba Campus in Tokyo. The robot bends and curls to pass through gaps that would stop a fixed-frame drone, and it does it autonomously, using only its onboard sensors. Now…
Airbus and Kawasaki Heavy Industries signed a memorandum of understanding on June 26 to develop an anti-submarine and maritime patrol version of the Eurodrone for the Japanese market. The deal is the first concrete export pull for a European medium-altitude long-endurance UAV that has not yet flown. Japan joined the broader Eurodrone program in November…
Anduril Industries is in talks to buy Nissan’s Oppama assembly plant in Yokosuka, Japan, and convert the 64-year-old car factory into a production site for military drones. Reuters broke the story on June 25, 2026, citing three people familiar with the negotiations. No deal has been signed, and Nissan says it is weighing other buyers,…
Westmag emerged from stealth on Tuesday with $11 million in seed funding to manufacture drone motors and robot actuators in South San Francisco, aiming squarely at the one part of the American drone supply chain almost no one has tried to fix. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Founders Fund, Lux Capital, NFDG,…
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