Japan’s Defense Industry and AM: What Will Change?

Defense Budgets Are Rising. But Is the Manufacturing Base Keeping Up?

Global security dynamics are shifting, and defense budgets are rising across the board. The vulnerabilities embedded in aerospace and defense supply chains have moved from theoretical concern to operational reality. Japan is no exception: defense spending has increased for 14 consecutive years, hitting record highs, while the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a next-generation sixth-generation fighter jet development initiative led jointly by Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy, is entering its most critical development phase with a target operational date of 2035. Against this backdrop, the question of what role additive manufacturing (AM) could play in Japan’s defense industry is beginning to be asked in earnest.

A Shrinking Industrial Base, and a Budget Surge That May Not Reach It

Japan’s defense industry has long carried structural burdens. The supply chains behind a single weapons platform run deep: approximately 1,100 companies are involved in producing the F-2 fighter jet, and around 8,300 for a single destroyer. Yet the small and mid-sized manufacturers forming this base have been steadily disappearing. The pressures go beyond low profit margins. High performance requirements, cumbersome procurement procedures, and the inefficiencies of low-volume, high-variety production have made defense work a particularly heavy lift for smaller firms.

The erosion is visible across Japan’s manufacturing sector as a whole. According to Teikoku Databank, manufacturing industry closures and dissolutions reached 3,122 cases in 2024, with 2025 on track to surpass the highest level in a decade. Bankruptcies in the sector hit 1,145 in 2024, a seven-year high and the largest year-on-year increase of any industry at 26%. More than half of the companies that closed were profitable at the time, a sign of how deeply structural the problem runs. Within the defense sector specifically, more than 100 companies have officially withdrawn over the past two decades, and the true figure, when closures and quiet contractions are included, is almost certainly far larger. Wages and working conditions for the engineers and skilled workers who built Japan’s manufacturing base have long lagged, and the outflow of talent to overseas employers has continued. The small manufacturers that underpin the defense supply chain have borne the sharpest end of these pressures.

The turning point came with Japan’s National Security Strategy documents at the end of 2022. A total of 43 trillion yen in defense investment was committed over five years through fiscal 2027, and the Ministry of Defense raised the profit margin on procurement contracts from around 8% to a maximum of 15%. The combined defense-related order backlog of Japan’s three major heavy industry groups reached 6.25 trillion yen as of the end of fiscal March 2026, up 15% year-on-year, with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries recording all-time highs in both net profit and order intake. The pace of orders remains more than double pre-buildup levels.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries leads the airframe development for GCAP. IHI is co-developing the engine alongside Rolls-Royce. Kawasaki Heavy Industries serves as prime contractor for the P-1 maritime patrol aircraft and C-2 transport, while also supplying airframe components for Boeing’s commercial programs including the 787. At least among the prime contractors, the order books reflect a level of activity not seen in decades. Whether that momentum reaches the smaller manufacturers in the supply chain is a separate question.

So where does additive manufacturing fit into this picture?

Where Additive Manufacturing Stands in Japan’s Defense Sector Today

Direct evidence of AM deployment in Japan’s defense sector remains limited. That said, movement is beginning to appear on both the policy and operational fronts.

On the policy side, the Defense Production Base Strengthening Act, which came into force in October 2023, explicitly lists the introduction of additive manufacturing equipment among the categories eligible for government subsidies. The scope covers not only prime contractors but suppliers as well, establishing AM investment as a legally grounded budget measure rather than an informal policy aspiration.

On the operational side, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) formally adopted SPEE3D’s cold spray metal AM systems, the WarpSPEE3D and XSPEE3D, in 2023. The stated purpose was to supplement existing supply chains at bases and in field conditions, following similar adoptions by the British and Australian armies.

In 2025, the JGSDF’s Ordnance School in Ibaraki Prefecture created a dedicated position for a fixed-term self-defense official specializing in 3D printing. The role covers part fabrication, inspection, 3D data design, education, and maintenance. It represents an attempt to bring specialized expertise into the organization, not just equipment. In December of the same year, the Ministry of Defense conducted a survey of domestic private-sector AM companies through the Japan Additive Manufacturing Association, exploring the feasibility of outsourced manufacturing. The contact points between the defense establishment and the civilian AM community are beginning to form.

These are scattered signals across policy, operations, personnel, and industry engagement rather than a coordinated strategy, and the overall picture remains one of exploration. Japan’s defense AM has not moved beyond the preparation phase.

The drone sector adds another dimension. Under the Economic Security Promotion Act, the government has designated drones as a specified critical material, offering subsidies of up to 50% for research and development and capital investment, with a target of producing 80,000 units domestically per year by 2030. As the example of Anduril demonstrates, AM can directly compress development timelines and support production scaling for unmanned systems. Japan, however, lacks the large-scale AM production infrastructure that would allow it to respond to this opportunity. Whether the domestic manufacturing base can meet the demand at the intersection of defense, drones, and AM remains to be seen. (Related: Japan Commits to Domestic Drone Production: Can It Scale?)

Structural Barriers: What Needs to Be in Place Before the Technology

The reasons AM has not taken hold in Japan’s defense sector go beyond technology readiness.

The first is the absence of a certification framework. Internationally, standards such as ASTM, ISO, and NADCAP serve as the de facto prerequisites for AM parts to be formally adopted in aerospace and defense applications. Japan’s Ministry of Defense has general quality assurance frameworks in place, but no AM-specific quality standards or guidelines have been identified. For manufacturers, this means there is no clear set of requirements to invest toward. The absence of an AM-specific framework is likely to remain a significant barrier to scaling procurement.

The second is the gap in dual-use strategy. A February 2026 working group convened jointly by METI and the Ministry of Defense stated explicitly that automation through robots, 3D printers, and other advanced technologies is essential for addressing labor shortages in defense production. Yet the specific pathways by which civilian AM capabilities could be integrated into defense procurement specifications remain underdeveloped. The structural difficulty of connecting civilian expertise to defense requirements is, in many ways, the same problem as the hollowing out of the industrial base itself.

The global trajectory makes the contrast sharper. The U.S. Department of Defense allocated approximately 800 million dollars to AM in fiscal year 2024, a 166% increase from 2023, with projections exceeding 2.6 billion dollars by 2030. The U.S. Navy has cut component lead times from two to three weeks down to two to three days using wire DED systems. The British Army has deployed mobile AM systems capable of producing both metal and polymer parts in the field under Project Brokkr.

The acceleration is equally visible across Asia.

China announced a 7% increase in its defense budget for 2026, reaching approximately 1.91 trillion yuan (around 44 trillion yen), maintaining a pace of growth above 7% for the third consecutive year. Within that investment, AM applications have expanded significantly: metal AM is used broadly across major combat aircraft including the J-15, J-16, and J-20; naval vessels are equipped with onboard AM systems for underway part fabrication and repair; and exercises involving the drone delivery of 3D-printed components to forward positions were conducted in early 2025.

South Korea has achieved 60% weight reduction in K2 Black Panther tank components using laser wire DED technology, while simultaneously enabling field manufacturing and repair capability. (Related: Meltio: What the K2 Tank Snow Pad Reveals About Military 3D Printing, Korean Marine Corps Deploys Meltio Robot Metal 3D Printer)

India has made defense indigenization a national strategy under its Make in India initiative. Defense exports have grown approximately 34-fold over the past decade, reaching a record high in fiscal year 2024-25. At the National Additive Manufacturing Symposium in March 2026, the Indian Army positioned AM as having evolved from a rapid prototyping tool into a mature manufacturing capability, and is accelerating its application to missile components and aviation engine parts.

Singapore’s Ministry of Defense has been developing AM capability systematically since 2017. The Republic of Singapore Navy has AM-produced parts in operational use, including submarine decompression valves and impeller pumps, and joint research with international partners including thyssenkrupp and Naval Group has continued. At the IGNITE Innovation Symposium in July 2025, the Army’s Mobile Additive Manufacturing Lab was recognized for achieving efficiency gains of up to 90% through AM-based part production. For a small nation with constrained resources, AM has become a practical tool for operational readiness rather than a future aspiration.

While Japan’s Self-Defense Forces remain in a survey and preparation phase, the implementation of defense AM among peer and neighboring nations is advancing steadily and rapidly. Japan is not keeping pace.

The Potential: What AM Could Mean for Japan’s Defense Capability

The most fundamental value AM offers to the defense sector is speed: speed in prototyping, speed in design iteration, speed in getting concepts into physical form for evaluation. What once took weeks or months can be compressed into days. For a program as complex as GCAP, the cumulative effect of that compression on development quality and timeline is significant.

The domains of application extend well beyond prototyping. Consumables and small components produced on demand, obsolete or hard-to-source parts reproduced from digital files, field and underway repair and fabrication, airframe and engine components, drone and unmanned system parts, tooling and training equipment: AM has potential applications across all three branches of the Self-Defense Forces. For an island nation, the case for underway manufacturing and repair capability is particularly compelling as a direct response to supply chain fragility. The cumulative gains across each of these domains, individually modest, add up to a meaningful strengthening of defense readiness.

Japan has been slow to respond to technological shifts across many sectors. Defense AM is no different. The pattern is familiar: surveys are conducted, discussions continue, and by the time a framework is agreed upon, the technology has moved on. Repeating that cycle will not close the gap with a world that is moving faster. What Japan needs most is not more deliberation. It is the urgency to act while the window is still open.

AM Insight Asia Perspective

The challenges facing Japan’s defense industry are not primarily about budgets or legislation. At their root, they reflect the hollowing out of Japan’s broader manufacturing base. The small and mid-sized manufacturers who sustained the defense supply chain through Japan’s postwar industrial expansion have been declining steadily, pushed out by the economics of overseas production and the absence of successors. In a sector that, above all others, demands domestic self-sufficiency, the question of how much can realistically be produced at home no longer has a confident answer.

AM is not the only solution, and it should not be positioned as one. Alongside robotics and broader automation, it is one of the tools that could help compensate for a shrinking industrial base. But the characteristics of AM align particularly well with the specific challenges of Japan’s defense procurement: the speed of development, the flexibility to produce diverse parts in small quantities for varied operational conditions, and the ability to work across both metal and polymer materials. These qualities address gaps that conventional manufacturing approaches are not well positioned to fill as the supplier base continues to contract.

The irony is that the same characteristics that make AM well-suited to Japan’s defense needs are precisely the area where Japan has fallen furthest behind.