Navy Capt. Peter Roberts, command surgeon for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, helps kick off the Indo-Pacific Military Health Exchange in Yokohama, Japan, Dec. 2, 2025. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
YOKOHAMA, Japan — With warfare and medical technology evolving at breakneck speed, defense health professionals from more than 20 nations gathered here Tuesday to push for deeper cooperation across the Indo-Pacific region.
The Indo-Pacific Military Health Exchange opened at the Pacifico North convention center with more than 1,000 attendees and roughly 300 scheduled presentations.
Topics ranged from artificial intelligence and drone-enabled medical resupply to remotely guided surgery — innovations organizers say will shape future battlefields and humanitarian responses.
“The battlefield, as we have long known it, is changing rapidly,” Dr. Stephen Ferrara, acting assistant U.S. secretary of defense for health affairs, said in opening remarks. “The next fight will not look like the last one. The front lines are now everywhere.”
Ferrara said medical units, supply chains, communications networks and hospitals should be considered part of the battlefield.
“The Red Cross is no longer a shield, but a target,” he said. “To fight and to win in this environment, we must adapt.”
Dr. Stephen Ferrara, acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, delivers opening remarks for the Indo-Pacific Military Health Exchange in Yokohama, Japan, Dec. 2, 2025. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
But adaptation, Ferrara added, requires partners.
“The truth is this: Just as no single soldier can win a war, no single nation can face these challenges alone,” he said. “Our strength depends on how seamlessly we can operate together as an unbreakable alliance of professionals, of innovators and of partners.”
This year’s event is the largest in the exchange’s history and the first hosted by Japan. The gathering has existed in one form or another for about 30 years, said Navy Capt. Peter Roberts, command surgeon for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
“I think it’s pretty easy to draw a link between what we’re doing here, which is about sharing ideas and building relationships, with the successes over the years, primarily in disaster response and working together,” he told Stars and Stripes after the opening ceremony.
He and Ferrara cited multinational relief efforts following the devastating 2004 tsunami in Indonesia as a defining example of regional medical cooperation.
Navy Capt. Peter Roberts, left, command surgeon for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and Dr. Stephen Ferrera, acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, discuss resilience and cooperation in Yokohama, Japan, Dec. 2, 2025. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
“I think that event not only highlighted what we’re capable of doing together, but it also stressed the importance of kind of doubling down on that effort,” Roberts said.
Ferrara also addressed ongoing concerns about access to health care for military families and Defense Department civilians stationed in Japan. The Defense Health Agency in 2022 restricted care for most DOD civilians at military clinics, directing them instead to local medical providers, most of which do not accept foreign health insurance.
Those limits were later softened, and in January the Pentagon launched a pilot program to help civilians navigate Japan’s health care system. The program was extended in August, though some family members are still excluded.
Ferrara called the effort “incredibly successful” and said he is working with the DHA to expand capacity at military treatment facilities. The goal, he said, is to provide “as much access as possible” for civilians, service members and their family members.
