Two MQ-9B SeaGuardians of the Japan Coast Guard. JCG picture.
At the end of August 2025, the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) released its preliminary budget request for fiscal 2026. The request revealed plans to procure four additional unmanned aircraft for maritime surveillance of Japan’s surrounding waters.
The budget documents do not specify a model name, but based on past developments this is believed to refer to the MQ-9B SeaGuardian.
The Japan Coast Guard first looked at the SeaGuardian in 2020. They leased three in 2022. The three were subsequently purchased.
Two additional MQ-9Bs are scheduled to be deployed by March 2026. Including the aircraft requested in the current preliminary budget, the JCG will hold a total of nine MQ-9Bs by fiscal 2028. All of these airframes are planned to be acquisitions (purchases), not leases.
The US Exclusive Economic Zone is about 2.5 times as large as that of Japan, so we would need about 23 aircraft to have about the same coverage as the Japanese are planning.
Only a little over two weeks ago we got the word that the Coast Guard would be spending $266M to buy its own shore based Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Air Systems (UAS).
At the time I asked why the Coast Guard would be buying the MQ-9A rather than the MQ-9B that is optimized for maritime operation and has been selected by several navies and coast guards. Still have not seen any rationale. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.
The first USCG shore based UAS are likely to look for drug smugglers and migrants, but they would also be very useful in the broad reaches of the Pacific, far from any existing Coast Guard air station.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 