The speech made by John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, in Tokyo, Japan on 28 August 2025.
Ohayo-gozaimasu, good morning, everyone.
Good morning and welcome aboard HMS Prince of Wales and welcome to the Pacific Future Forum.
When our flagship here, every one of 65,000 tons of military capability is being put to the service of strengthening our shared security through diplomacy and through deterrence. During an eight-month deployment involving 4,000 of our service personnel, coordinating 12 nations, covering 26,000 nautical miles and visiting 14 countries.
On behalf of Captain Will Blackett and his crew, we’re delighted to host you here for the Pacific Future Forum, a forum which is increasingly influential, setting out, as you do, a mission, and I quote, dedicated to strengthening the defence, security, technology and trading relationships between like-minded democracies.
I’m really grateful on your behalf to everyone who has helped put together this two-day forum.
I’m grateful to them and I’m proud that we’re able to host you here in Tokyo. For the first time on a foreign carrier alongside in Tokyo Bay, and that honour reflects the deepening defence partnership between Japan and the UK.
Before I turn to the future, I want to just reflect on the past, as we have this month following the commemorations around the world to mark the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Because 80 years on, we honour the memory of some 60,000 souls lost.
We reflect on the untold suffering of many more.
And especially, we join in thanks that our two nations have rediscovered friendship.
The importance of that was reminded to me yesterday when Minister Nakatani and I laid wreaths at the Chidorifaguchi Cemetery.
It was also very powerful two weeks ago when I attended the UK National Service of Commemoration at the Arboretum.
I was sat alongside one of the veterans who spoke during that service alongside his great-granddaughter.
He spoke in remembrance of his fallen by saying this:
I speak not as a hero, but as someone who witnessed the price of freedom. We must look to the future”, he said.
We must ensure that the next generation remember our sacrifices so that they can strive for a more peaceful future.
And in many ways, that is the challenge at the heart of the Pacific Forum’s purpose — that is at the heart of your discussions over these next two days.
To better protect the generations of tomorrow, we strengthen the alliances of today.
As Prime Minister Ishiba said at the weekend, aboard this very ship, he said the levels of partnership now between Japan and the UK are unprecedented.
And when he and I met yesterday, we reflected together on the fact that our two nations are now in a golden age of defence cooperation.
From future fighter jets to joint exercises, from naval cooperation to cyber resilience.
Japan is the UK’s closest security ally in Asia, and I know Japan sees Britain as its closest security partner in Europe.
And just as we set out in June, when we published the Strategic Defence Review, this relationship is vital to regional, it’s vital to global, security.
Because the security of the Indo-Pacific is simply indivisible from the security of the Euro-Atlantic.
And this carrier strike route deployment is the operational demonstration of this truth.
A deployment of firsts.
For the first time in recent weeks, Japanese destroyers have provided security to Royal Navy ships and RAF aircraft during exercises.
For the first time in recent days, a British F-35 fighter has landed on the flight deck of a Japanese ship, JS Kaga.
For the first time in the coming weeks, Japanese F-15s will deploy to Europe, based in the UK.
But our partnership goes beyond the seas and the skies.
Our armed forces continue to train together, and the UK is proud to be the first European force to exercise with Japan on Japanese soil.
And in cyber, our two nations have collaborated in one of the largest international cyber defence exercises outside the US.
That’s a relationship that we will deepen still further in the months ahead.
So in every domain, we’re putting in the hard work now so that if ever we are called on to work together in a time of crisis, we know we can. And so do potential adversaries.
Just as our armed forces operate together, our industries will build together.
Times change.
The control of the skies will always belong to those who can adapt first.
And make no mistake, our adversaries are rapidly designing the capabilities specifically to counter our strengths.
So the Global Combat Air Programme is how we’ll maintain our advantage.
A flagship example of a capability partnership — strengthening alliances, strengthening security — both in the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.
And I hope you see this as a powerful signal of the UK government’s determination to bring partners together from different global regions.
And I hope you also see it as it is, a programme also of firsts.
The first time that the UK has worked with a nation outside of Europe on such a programme.
The first time that Japan has partnered with other nations on such a programme.
And GCAP grew out of our common assessment of threats, our respect for each other’s technology, and our shared imperative and timeline for introducing the next generation of capability.
Our shared aim is that GCAP becomes an international standard for how nations pool their resources for greater security and for greater prosperity.
And you will hear over the next two days more about this, but the government and industry teams from the UK, from Japan and from Italy are making real progress now in realising those ambitions.
We set up the inter-government organisation led in Reading by a Japanese CEO, underpinned by treaties passed in all three of our parliaments.
Edgewing, our joint industrial venture, has now stood up — bringing the aerospace leaders from all three nations together in a single joint company venture.
Our task as three ministers now by the end of the year is to ensure that we can agree the first GCAP international contract — another important step in driving the delivery of the design and development phase and allowing them to get towards manufacturing.
Whilst building a supersonic stealth fighter is by nature a long-term project, economic benefits are already being felt in all three nations.
So in the UK, we’ve invested a further billion pounds this year in our future combat programme. It already employs four and a half thousand people, and we expect GCAP to create thousands of new jobs in all three nations.
So whilst it’s first and foremost about ensuring our three nations can police the skies over the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic — to ensure they keep our people safe for a generation to come — one of the greatest strengths that many of you in this room know better than anyone else, one of the greatest strengths of the defence sector, is often the instruments that we design to provide a combat or battlefield advantage become the foundation for wider progress in society.
And so GCAP will also provide huge potential opportunities for our finest minds to work at the forefront of autonomy, space, quantum technology — potential and possibilities not just for security, but for our societies as well.
And I want you to see our total UK commitment to developing GCAP, our continued effort to operate ever closer with Japan’s Self-Defence Force, and I want you to see the deployment of our carrier strike group to the Indo-Pacific as demonstrating what we declared as a government, we set out in the strategic view, of a policy that is NATO first, but not NATO only.
Because as we see the threats, more serious, less predictable, than at any time since the Cold War — Ukraine demonstrates what Jens Stoltenberg argued years ago:
What happens in the Indo-Pacific, he said, matters in the Euro-Atlantic.
And what happens in the Euro-Atlantic matters in the Indo-Pacific.
And right now in Ukraine, our adversaries are proving just that — autocratic states working more closely together.
So Russia, in the hope of breaking the will of the sovereign Ukrainian people, has called on North Korea for troops, Iran for drones, and China for technology, equipment, and weapons components.
Here, 8,000 kilometres from Kyiv, the Japanese people understand this, and have stood as true friends from the start to Ukraine.
We’re grateful, and we pay tribute to that support.
They’ve been providing assistance alongside NATO.
They’ve been supporting the coalition of the willing.
So when we say “NATO first, but not NATO only,” this is more than a slogan.
It reflects the growing threats that we face today — threats that don’t respect regions or national borders: cyber attacks, disinformation, attacks on democracy, hostile action in space.
And for the UK, some of our closest, most like-minded partners in countering these threats are to be found in the Indo-Pacific — just as some of our most exciting technological partnerships are forged here too.
And it is only through working together that we will strengthen regional security, that we will reinforce a lasting stability— the stability on which our economic growth, our social resilience, and the future of our countries depend.
For us, our allies are our strategic strength.
And so in a more dangerous world, in a new era of threats, we’re deepening our defence cooperation with good partners like Japan — bilaterally, industrially, and through NATO.
And just as the threats we face are real, to make deterrence real, we must work more closely together.
That imperative is right at the heart of the purpose of the Pacific Future Forum.
So in summary, that is why the presence of the Prince of Wales here in Tokyo is not just symbolic — it’s strategic.
It’s building on the UK’s partnerships and commitments across the region.
Our naval presence provided by HMS Tamar and HMS Spey — helping to uphold freedom of navigation, enforcing sanctions, providing humanitarian assistance.
Our military presence in Singapore, Brunei.
Our joint exercises with Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore — as part of the historic Five Power Defence Arrangements.
And our contribution to ASEANs expert working groups in the dialogue partnership.
Each deployment, each exercise, each relationship, each industrial or technological collaboration strengthens stability, reinforces security.
And as our two nations prove — when we double down, when we invest in those partnerships — those partnerships are the source of our ultimate strength.
So thank you once again to Minister Nakatani, who will speak to the forum later today.
Thank you to everyone in Japan who has made this visit possible.
Thank you to everyone who contributes to our defence partnership.
Our relationship with Japan is one that we hold dear.
And in the words of His Majesty, the Emperor:
We are friends like no other.
And I look forward to strengthening that partnership, that friendship, in the years ahead.
Thank you.
