The United States sent another group of stealth fighter jets to an allied island situated near the contested Taiwan Strait after China recently unveiled an advanced combat aircraft.
Photos released by the U.S. Air Force show that an unknown number of F-35A Lightning II fighter jets had arrived at Kadena Air Base in Japan as of Monday. A spokesperson for the base's 18th Wing confirmed the deployment, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported.
Another type of U.S. stealth fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, has been deployed there since last month. They were sent from their home station at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, while the F-35A combat aircraft are assigned to Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
The American fighter jet reinforcement came after the Chinese military publicized its second stealth aircraft on Tuesday, the J-35A, which shares some similarities in design with the F-35A. The first stealth fighter jet from China, the J-20, has been in service since 2017.
Kadena is located on Okinawa, one of Japan's southwest islands that forms the first island chain. This U.S. defense concept links Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, aiming to leverage allied or friendly territories to contain the Chinese military in the region.
With a distance of 370 miles, Kadena is the closest American air base to Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China views as its own territory. Meanwhile, Beijing claimed that it has jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait, which the U.S. asserted is an international waterway.
The arrival of the second type of U.S. stealth fighter jet came after China on October 14 mobilized its forces, including an aircraft carrier, for a military exercise around Taiwan.
In July, the Pentagon announced that it would upgrade Kadena's air power by replacing the aging F-15C/D Eagle fighter jets with the successor F-15EX Eagle II aircraft, while the U.S. Air Force continues to maintain a rotational presence of tactical aircraft at Kadena.
During a telephone talk last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Japanese counterpart reiterated their commitment to expand a bilateral military presence in Japan's southwest islands, which lie between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea.
Besides the U.S. Air Force, the USS George Washington, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, is now scheduled to arrive at Yokosuka, a Japanese city in the Greater Tokyo Area, for forward deployment in mid-to-late November, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
The George Washington's air wing is assigned a sister variant of the F-35A, the carrier-based F-35C, which will be its first forward deployment. The carrier air wing is based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni on Honshu, one of the four Japanese main islands.
The U.S. military deploys 54,000 personnel in Japan, pursuant to the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security of 1960. Okinawa hosts more than half of the U.S. forces in the country.
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