US F-22s Are Already in Japan... Why China Is Terrified to Let Them Reach the Sky?

On October 29, Taiwan's National Security Council secretary-general Joseph Wu published a map of 53 Chinese naval and official ships spread from the waters south of Japan toward the Philippines — 34 of them warships, with the Liaoning carrier group east of the Philippines. The reply, we were told, was a squadron of F-22 Raptors landing in Japan. But Air & Space Forces Magazine reported that those Raptors — the 525th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, out of Alaska — had finished arriving at Kadena on September 30. The answer landed a month before the question was asked. This video does something simple with the Pacific "wall": it reads the date on every brick. Kadena has had no permanently assigned fighter squadron since November 1, 2022, when the 44th and 67th were withdrawn. What has held the line since is a relay of visiting units — F-22A, F-16, F-15E, F-35A — and the permanent replacement, 36 F-15EX, does not begin arriving until fiscal year 2027. The NMESIS anti-ship launcher that reached Yonaguni, 110 km from Taiwan, came for Keen Sword and stayed eleven days; it fired no live rounds, and the deployment, in the reporting, "does not amount to permanent stationing". HIMARS worked on Itbayat during Balikatan, in April and May. The Typhon system at Kadena is in storage: the Okinawa Defense Bureau says Washington explained it is not a permanent deployment in Japan, and Kadena's mayor has objected anyway. The AUKUS demonstration of 40-plus autonomous systems took place in Southern California. USS Minnesota has been based at Guam since November 2024. US Space Forces–Japan was activated at Yokota in December 2024, with twenty guardians. Then the part almost nobody puts on screen. The Stimson Center's 2024 study models the shortest closure times for US air operations in Japan after a Chinese missile attack: 280 hours for fighters, 800 hours — about 33 days — for tankers. Its conclusion is blunt: no combination of US countermeasures, dispersal and runway repair included, is likely to solve the problem. Without tankers, even fifth-generation fighters lack the fuel to reach the Taiwan Strait and return. A shelter protects an aircraft. It does not protect the runway. What is permanent: Misawa is going from 36 F-16s to 48 F-35As. What is not yet here: Japan's Tomahawks, in "the coming years". We separate what is documented, what we can infer, and what remains unknown. Distance and range comparisons are our own, from published figures. Chapters: 00:00 The map has a date 02:48 Four years of handovers 05:38 Eleven days on the island 08:38 Storage, demonstration, home port 11:51 The runway is the weak part 14:48 What stays, and what keeps it moving Sources: Reuters (via The Vibes), Taipei Times, Air & Space Forces Magazine, Defense News, Stars and Stripes, The Japan Times, South China Morning Post, Washington Times, Army Recognition, USNI News, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Royal Navy, Breaking Defense, The Stimson Center (Kelly A. Grieco, Hunter Slingbaum, Jonathan M. Walker), RAND Corporation, CSIS (Jose M. Macias III, Tao-Hung Chang, Nico Vacca, Benjamin Jensen), 9DashLine (Leonardo Morreale), Foreign Policy Research Institute, 19FortyFive, RBC NEWS and OTV (Okinawa), CCTV+. Footage & imagery: DVIDS / U.S. Air Force, 18th Wing (public domain) · U.S. Marine Corps · RBC NEWS and OTV Okinawa · KUAM / Naval Base Guam · Kongsberg · CCTV+ and China Military (Chinese state media, credited on screen) · Russian Ministry of Defence (via Reuters, credited on screen) · TE SubCom (animation, labelled on screen) · aviation and travel videographers, credited on screen. Thumbnail: map background generated with Gemini (no people, no text); Xi Jinping — president.az, CC BY 4.0; F-22 — frame from our own clip. Audio: Suno sound effects; music: "Recent Events" — Out To The World; intro: "Eye of the Newscaster" — Out To The World (Epidemic Sound). #IndoPacific #Japan #China #Taiwan #Okinawa #F22