The Yomiuri Shimbun
Japan's ANA Holdings Inc. will start using drones for a nationwide logistics service by fiscal 2028, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
According to plans for a drone transportation network, takeoff and landing bases across the country would be established. Each base will cover an area with a radius of about 500 kilometers. The service will be used to deliver medicines and daily necessities to remote islands and other areas during normal times, and in the event of disasters, can be used to transport food and other supplies to isolated regions.
The service will utilize drones developed by U.S.-based Skyways Air Transportation Inc. that are 3 meters long and have a 7-meter wingspan. The drones, which can carry about 50 kilograms of cargo per flight and have a maximum range of about 1,600 kilometers, use motors to power eight propellers during takeoff and landing and will switch to engine-driven propellers when cruising. Operations will be mainly automated, with human operators providing remote monitoring and control.
ANA Holdings plans to increase the number of drone bases by one or two annually, deploying around 10 drones at each location. In the event of disasters, the drones will use onboard cameras to assess damage and deliver relief supplies to areas cut off from transportation. Multiple demonstrations of the service have already been conducted in Okinawa Prefecture and elsewhere.
"If we can deliver cargo within a 500-kilometer radius from each takeoff/landing base, the number of potential delivery destinations becomes virtually limitless," said ANA Holdings Executive Vice President Yoshiaki Tsuda, who is in charge of the project. "We aim to develop this into social infrastructure."
Drone logistics operations are already in practical use in places like Shenzhen, China. In Japan, however, the focus has largely been on experimentation, with few cases of practical implementation. ANA Holdings anticipates constant demand in regions like Okinawa Prefecture and the Kyushu region, which have many remote islands, and plans to advance commercialization while verifying safety and other factors.
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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.
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January 09, 2026 05:40 ET (10:40 GMT)
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