In this fortnightly online column, ADM journalist Corey Lee Bell covers defence news across Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Visual technology, drones and precision machining were among the standout features of Japan’s Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics Agency’s (ATLA) 2026 Defense Industry Promotion Exhibition (DIPEX), which was held in Tokyo on February 12-13.
The biannual DIPEX event, which was formalised in 2022, provides Japanese firms with opportunities to meet, and negotiate partnership agreements with, Japan’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) and defence industry primes.
This year’s event featured exhibits from 63 small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Like past iterations it provided Japanese startups a platform to exhibit dual-use technology, with an emphasis on communications technology and electronics.
However, 2026 also heavily featured firms engaged in foundation industries, including material production, precision machining, sheet metal manufacturing and finishing, reflecting Tokyo’s efforts to further domesticate its defence industry supply chains.
Machining and MadeHere’s 3D printing MRO solutions
Among the exhibits of the general machining category was MadeHere K.K., a defence-grade 3D printing service provider which claims to provide groundbreaking maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) solutions.
MadeHere K.K. employs a broad mix of additive and subtractive manufacturing (AM/SM) technologies – including metal and resin AM, carbon-fibre reinforced plastic processing and injection molding – to produce defence-grade components sized between several millimetres to 10 metres with low maximum displacement.
The exhibit highlighted the company’s reverse engineering services, such as photographic data scanning, which, combined with its printing technology, can facilitate the rapid production of replacement parts that have no extant blueprints and are no longer in production or sourceable.
A presentation by MadeHere representative Tohma Takeda further brought attention to the firm’s international success, revealing its recent strategic agreement with the US Marine Depot Maintenance Command (MDMC) to provide manufacturing and sustainment services in the Indo-Pacific, and its role in equipping the USS Bataan amphibious assault ship with a hybrid additive printer/CNC machine solution to localise some offshore MRO.
In an interview with ADM, Takeda claimed one of the strengths of the company was its ability to expedite the production of rare parts.
He raised the example of his firm’s reducing production lead times by over 60 per cent for a 12 inch (roughly 30 cm) custom bolt it manufactures for the US navy, noting that a similar sized military-grade product could be produced in its facilities within roughly 7 hours.
Another machining firm seeking to capitalise on recent international success was Masuyama-MFG – a small space-sector, high precision machining provider that has produced high quality components for the International Space Station as well as CubeSat frames.
Representative Director Masuyama Akiko said the firm, whose machining units can handle metals including Inconel and have a low dimensional tolerance of around 10 micrometres (µm), will begin expanding into defence next year, roughly coinciding with the Space Domain Defense Guidelines’ recommendation for the MoD to support and broaden collaboration with the private sector.
High performance camera/visual data technology
This year’s event was also well represented by SMEs in the communications/electronics sectors.
Among them was Astrodesign – a high-performance digital camera supplier to Japan’s state television broadcaster, NHK.
The firm’s exhibit showcased several of the firm’s compact cameras including a high resolution/frame rate camera (8kx4k resolution and 240fps) and a night vision camera capable of relaying high detail images with full colour rendering in real time.
Executive Officer Hiroyasu Furuse said that his firm had been greenlit by ATLA to export abroad, and was actively looking for international development partners to produce military-grade cameras.
He provided several hypothetical examples that could build on the company’s expertise including targeting cameras capable of identifying and tracking swarming drones, as well as full colour night vision goggles.
Another firm showcasing achievements in visual technology was data-compression software provider, Catana Corporation.
Catana exhibited video demonstrations of its CVC software, which is capable of providing real-time, lossless compression solutions for laser imaging, detection and ranging (LiDAR) in autonomous cars.
Advances in LiDAR technology for autonomous cars have recently been studied by ATLA, which regards it as important for equipping unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) systems to navigate in GNSS-denied environments.
Catana claims that its CVC image software offers improved compression ratio and operates at 100 times the speed of many conventional systems, enabling stable, virtually real-time processing.
Signal relay and reconnaissance drones
The 2026 exhibition also featured new drone technology, following a major emphasis on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in recent DIPEX events.
Cosmo Research, a small tech firm whose clients include the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), presented its novel SPD-booster AIR drone.
It defined the technology as an unmanned mobile software-defined radio (SDR) image transmission system, which it claims can substantially extend transmission range by serving as a portable tower for relaying signals from distant reconnaissance drones back to a ground station, potentially well beyond line of sight.
A high-performance, new reconnaissance and transport drone system was also displayed by Tsubakimoto Chain Co. in collaboration with Arase Aizawa Aerospatiale.
Called the AZ-250, the UAV was described as an all-weather and long duration small-medium drone. Its compact, high-performance motor enables it to reach ranges of 350 km unloaded, according to Tsubaki Drone Business Development Manager Akio Hori.
Statistics provided by the company also paint the model’s performance as equivalent to if not better than the similarly-sized Edge HT-100 military-grade heavy-lift UAV, with a claimed loitering time of 7 hours (10 hrs with externally mounted tanks) unloaded, a maximum payload of 60 kg, and flight duration of over 1.5 hrs with a 50 kg payload.
Hori also stated that the drone is produced drawing primarily from domestic supply chains, similar to a key selling point of the recently trialed Kawasaki K-Racer transport drone.
Tokyo’s perception of the need to enhance security through supply chain domestication was highlighted in the 2026 event’s opening speech by Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Defense Yohei Wakabayashi.
This point was further pushed home by ATLA’s distribution during the event of information sheets outlining reporting obligations under the Economic Security Promotion Act for defence industry firms receiving foreign investment.