Category: Japan ASAT


Moving Beyond A Zero-Sum Military Space Game

Filed Under: ASNARO, Epsilon, IGS, In Defense of Japan, Japan ASAT, Japan BMD, Japan Spysats, Japan space development, Japan space militarization, M-V, Michibiki, 未分類 by admin — コメントする
2011年2月14日

I  just filed a Military Space Special for Space News last week and am giving an update here. What I have done is to copy an early version of the story below (which has a few more details than the SN version) and some comments and background.

Basically, I recently conducted a sit-down with three director-level MoD personnel who did a good job of convincing me that the MoD is very interested in military space development but feels its hands are tied  as long as it continues to face a zero-sum budget game. I stress that this was not said to me directly by the MoD who stressed that the MoD’s budget has held up despite huge pressures on the DPJ to cut due to fiscal pressures.

After talking to industry, however, there is very deep dissatisfaction with the slow pace of movement. Nobody is saying that the DPJ has reneged on the commitments made by the Basic Space Law, but it does appear that military space is drifting in neutral until budget is found. Nobody is being blamed. However, it is clear that the leadership, clear command and budget lines that were supposed to have been introduced by now, are absent.

Until the SHSP or the new Space Agency materializes and budget according to the 「ニーズに対応した５年間の衛星等の開発利用計画（１０年程度を視野（案)」as promoted by the Basic Space Law, no specific budget lines can be drawn up for the MoD, or by the MoD, and this seems to be the single biggest factor stopping more concrete progress.

1. Japan is forging ahead with IGS

In an interview with the CSIC, the one sure bet is that Japan will continue plowing money into  IGS. It’s a bit of a Melco money pit, this one, by very efficient Japanese standards, and the system has been plagued by troubles. The first generation optical satellites that have not been performing to spec- let’s hope they could at least resolve buildings, and the radar satellites have been winking off with that old bane of Melco satellites- electrical problems. (Please bear in mind, thought, that compared to spiraling procurement costs of many U.S. military procurement programs, the IGS emerges as freshly laundered as a blouse in a soap suds TV commercial!)

Anyway, hopefully these issues can be ironed out. The new generation of optical satellites should function at 60cm resolution and the new test optical satellite going up next year should be another big leap forward, given that GeoEye-2,  has a planned resolution of 25 cm  (9.8 in) it would be surprising if NEC and Goodrich couldn’t get at least half way to that. Afterall, ASNARO is looking at 50 cm or so. Given that NEC’s Daichi/ALOS satellite is the basis for the optical system for IGS, and NEC is integrating ASNARO, you can draw your own conclusions about the clarity of IGS’s future vision.

Here is the opening of the story:

Japan’s reconnaissance program continues to burgeon while military space program faces a series of difficult choices, according to a series of interviews with officials in the Prime Ministers Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defense (MOD).

Japan’s Information Gathering Satellite program, known as IGS, will see the launch launching of 10 satellites by 2018, including an extra radar satellite, an official at the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center (CSIC) said February 7.

One optical and one radar satellite will be launched fiscal 2011 and a radar satellite and a technology test satellite for future higher-capability optical satellites in fiscal 2012; fiscal 2014 will see the launch of a further optical satellite and an “extra” radar satellite. A further optical and radar satellite will be launched in fiscal 2016, and the CSIC is now planning to request the launch of a radar satellite in 2017, “assuming we get the budget to do so,” the official said. Japan’s fiscal year runs April through March.

IGS is designed to function as a fleet of two radar and two optical satellites, but the November 2003 destruction of an H-2A rocket and IGS-2A and 2B and the early failures of two radar satellites (IGS-1B) in  March 2007  and IGS-4A in August 2010 have left fleet with only two operational satellites.

As a hedge against future service interruption, Japan decided in October to launch an extra radar satellite and boost CISC’s budget to cover the satellite’s development costs, the official said.

“Yes, we have enough budget to include the extra satellite, although at the moment the plan is continue to maintain a basic four satellite system for the foreseeable future,” the official said.

2. MoD is Pushing Out Development Budgets for Military Space Programs Until 2015 or So

Here is part 2 of the original story:

Japan’s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, is taking a cautious approach to space acquisition, weighing its needs against what it can afford, according to officials who spoke to Space News on condition of anonymity.

The Ministry of Defense was formally barred from building space systems until 2008 when Japan’s Basic Space Law overrode a 1969 resolution committing Japan to use space exclusively for peaceful purposes.

In addition to making space programs fair game for the Ministry of Defense, the Basic Space Law called for restructuring control of Japan’s space-development budgets and programs away from competing ministries and into a single cabinet-level agency. The 2008 law also called for Japan to double its space spending between 2010 and 2020 and to pursue programs that contribute to its national security.

In response to this direction, the Ministry of Defense in 2009 released a report detailing a long list of space programs it might be interested in developing.

Commentary: According to the MoD’s Basic Guidelines for Space Development and Use of Space of January 15, 2009 by the Committee on Promotion of Space Development and Use, Ministry of Defense of Japan the MoD would look into just about everything except throwing Auntie Maud’s old boot stuffed with a bag o’nails up in orbit, including- more and better spy satellites, space-based early warning for BMD, a dedicated communications satellite, a SIGINT satellite (no doubt using ETS-8), Space Situational Awareness capabilities (seat belts and rear view mirrors?), microsatellites (ahem) satellite protection (wow- defensive counterspace already!) a dedicated LV (Epsilon, or I’ll eat my hat) and QZSS for, well, I’ll bet you can hazard a very, very accurate guess….

Kiku-8: Listening in on the Neighbors Soon? Perhaps not!

However, the Japan’s latest National Defense Program Guidelines – a planning document produced every five years — is much less specific. The document, approved by the Security Council in December, focuses on the ministry’s role in developing military space programs aimed at bolstering the nation’s space-based surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

For now, officials said, the Ministry of Defense is researching when and if to develop a series of capabilities, including its own space-based early warning system, a signals intelligence satellite, a communications satellite, reconnaissance satellites and experimental microsatellites. But with so many decisions to be thought through, these officials said, the ministry will hold off on starting any development programs until 2016, when the next five-year Defense Program Guidelines is due.

For example, the Ministry of Defense is questioning whether it can afford and really needs a space-based infrared missile warning satellite for its fleet of Aegis cruisers and Patriot missile batteries, according to one official.

“When we consider a cost-benefit analysis [of a space-based early warning system] we should consider the U.S.-Japan relationship,” the official said Feb. 8. “We get enough data from the U.S., so we should find out exactly what new capabilities we could get from our own satellite. If we can get appreciable benefit and if we think it is affordable, then we can consider development.”

Part of the issue for the defense ministry’s conservatism is concern about future budgets, said Satoshi Tsuzukibashi, director of the Office of Defense Production at the Japan Business Federation.

Thirty months after enactment of the Basic Space Law, Japan has yet to form a new agency to coordinate national space programs and the sought after budget increased have yet to materialize. “The most difficult problem is budget. If there is a specific budget provided for the [Ministry of Defense], the [ministry] will move ahead and promote its space programs without troubling its commitments to land, air and marine forces,” Tsuzukibashi said Feb. 9.

Commentary: MoD is playing a waiting game: here are the major points I gleaned that are publishable

Even Stage I (2013-17) Epsilon will be the Best Solid Rocket in History

1. Communications: Current transponders on Superbirds, B2, D and C  are facing end-of life issues as satellites are retiring. Building a dedicated communications satellite is still under cost-benefit analysis

2. Sigint: This really got the MoD cautious. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions. However, preliminary studies are looking into the feasibility and need for this and the possibility of Japan using a satellite is under study and not ruled out.

3. ASNARO: MoD will consider it IF it works. That’s as far as they would go. ASNARO seems sure to get money for ODA for at least Vietnam and maybe Cambodia. I’m still optimistic that this dual use technology will prove alluring for MoD. At least its a hedge.

4. No surprise here: MoD likes Epsilon. And who couldn’t. It’s great! Even Stage I (2013 Phase 1) Epsilon will be the best solid rocket ever made and for only $200 million. Prof. Yasuhiro Morita is such a genius! Just wait till Phase II is out.

5. SM3 Block IIA is on target and on course, and I believe it’s Japan’s involvement that is helping this to happen. It seems to me to be no accident that the the most successful element in BMD is the part where Japanese companies are supplying the cutting edge components. Bloody hell, the version out now can knock out satellites, functioning as a direct ascent ASAT, just with a software shuffle. I can’t imagine how scared Japan’s neighbors are when they realize just how far they are behind!

6. MoD continues to study microsatellites, what kind of satellites and their potential applications, and that is all that it will say right now. On the other hand the sterling work being up and down Japan in UNISEC and related laboratories, and the plethora of dual use technologies being developed, as well as the guaranteed budget  for Japan’s micro/nano/picosatellite development programs means that the MoD is sitting on a goldmine of talent and experience here. Purely accidentally, of course.

It’s time for the SHSP to show us the money ;-)

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SNS Features Japan’s Strategic Space Development

Filed Under: IGS, In Defense of Japan, Japan ASAT, Japan BMD, Japan Nuclear Program, Japan space development, Japan space militarization, Japan space program, Orihime and Hikoboshi, SNS by admin — コメントする
2010年12月11日

Here is a special edition of SNS updating my original article of 2006 predicting what was going to happen in Japan’s space development. Four years later, I turned out to be spot on. Strategic News Service provides real information based on original reporting by experts to try to bridge the chasm opening up between the familiar media tropes and cliches of the mass media and what’s actually going on. Almost none of the information in this newsletter is from “news” conferences.

The interesting thing about the introduction to my piece is the great anxiety raised by the MOD over China’s blue water fleet and aircraft carrier. Japan is planning its own SLBM program at some point if it decides to build a strategic deterrent. With news of 800 Chinese marines at one point preparing to land on the Senkakus (only warned off at the last moment by a very angry Hillary Clinton) hopefully Japan will realize the only way to stand up to a bully is to show you that you have your own knife at the ready to his club.

—-

Publisher’s Note: For several years now, we have been watching, predicting, and documenting the basic military profiles of China and Japan, but only as they have affected international trade and markets. The latest aspect of this would be the firing of a submarine-based intercontinental missile off the coast of Los Angeles on November 5th, most likely by a Chinese submarine – an event the Pentagon continues to deny publicly.

As we’ve seen the result of China’s sustained 19%+ compound annual growth rate in military spending, it has been obvious that her neighbors in the ASEAN world have become increasingly uncomfortable. The advent of a “blue water navy,” built around a new air-carrier capacity, coming soon, will only add to this unease.

At the same time, we continue to witness China’s client state, North Korea, acting with increasing belligerence and apparent lack of care. One is reminded of a small-minded bully trying to cause trouble in the schoolyard, and then running back under the protection of some larger kid as soon as things get hot.

The peace requirements of the Japanese constitution have long been a matter of debate and contention inside Japan, and the legal modifications mentioned in today’s issue by author Paul Kallender-Umezu appear to have opened the door to a conversion of defensive hardware, software, and budget into the offensive category.

As any modern military expert will tell you, space represents the high ground in coming global conflict. As you are about to discover, the Japanese have used a large number of peaceful programs, in concert, to allow a flip-the-switch space offensive capability beyond almost anyone’s current estimation.

I have no doubt that all of our members will be surprised and awakened to a new military space power they previously had underestimated. I think this issue of the SNS Asia Letter lives up to a well-earned reputation for clearly describing a major strategic issue that other media have yet to touch. If you want to understand Japan’s response to China’s military buildup, this letter provides an excellent place to start. And given the positioning of these second- and third-largest global economies, and their recent and growing skirmishes, this understanding should be required of all people doing business in Asia.

Americans didn’t take much notice when North Korea fired missiles over the country a few years ago – but the Japanese did. The results follow. – mra.

___

» Japan’s Strategic Space Development: Onward and Upward!

By Paul Kallender-Umezu [Tokyo]

Japan is rolling up its sleeves and getting to work on beefing up its military space technologies, whether it looks like it or not.

When explaining Japan’s military space program to otherwise intelligent people whose main source of information may be only reports from the mass media, I often get blank stares. “Japan? Does Japan even have a space program?” Some might remember astronaut Naoko Yamazaki performing the important scientific task of making sushi in a kimono on the International Space Station; others might remember an asteroid mission that recently brought some cosmic dust back to Earth. But overall, when people think of Asia and space, they probably think of China’s space program, because that’s where the majority of media attention is.

The recent Hayabusa[1] (“Falcon”) mission is a case in point. In a seven-year journey, Hayabusa flew over 2 billion kilometers on a revolutionary new ion-engine propulsion system, overcoming technical malfunctions to collect samples from an asteroid and bring them back to Earth. The mission, which contained many firsts, was spearheaded by half a dozen eggheads on a couple of hundred million bucks (that’s trim and tremendous in the space world). But you wouldn’t know much about that if you’d read the mainstream press, with coverage which focused more on problems and caveats rather than  successes.

So when I start talking about Japan’s military space programs, I often use the metaphor of a high-quality Japanese hocho – a type of kitchen knife – to describe what’s up with this strategic national technology program. As the NRA is fond of reminding people, it’s not the gun that kills, it’s the person pulling the trigger. The hocho may not be official issue in the SAS or Delta force, but this 10-inch-plus, finely crafted, durable and razor-sharp sushi-slasher is the weapon of choice for many a Japanese convenience-store robber. The shape and label point to a different application, but the sharp end still does the business. Similarly, Japan’s space program was explicitly meant for peaceful purposes right up to 2008.

Actually, Japan is a military space power with a huge toolkit of up-to-date and serviceable technologies that will keep it in the leading pack of space-faring nations, if and when it chooses to go nuclear, or if and when an orbital arms race kicks in. Sound outlandish? My book In Defense of Japan: From the Market to the Military in Space Policy (Stanford University Press, 2010)[2] goes into this exhaustively, but for a digest of some of the main issues, please read on.

Four years ago, in the SNS newsletter, I predicted that the militarization of Japan’s space program would kick into higher gear after 2010, once the nation’s almost childishly sentimental legislative breaks on such activities – a 1969 Diet resolution that limited Japan’s space development to peaceful purposes only – were removed.

This has indeed happened. In May 2008, Japan passed the Basic Space Bill establishing a national Space Headquarters for Space Policy [3](SHSP) in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet office to remove the longstanding ban on Japan’s military use of space assets and to promote Japan’s space industry. Most notably:

  • Article 2 “provides that space development and use shall be conducted in accordance with international treaties and other international commitments including the Outer Space Treaty, and pursuant to the spirit of the peaceful principle of the Constitution of Japan”; and
  • Article 14 requires the government to take “necessary measures to promote space development and use” that would promote both national and international security.

….and so on. Please go to the SNS site for the rest.

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The NHK’s "News" on Japan’s Not-So-Secret Nuclearization Plan 1968-70

Filed Under: Japan ASAT, Japan Nuclear Program, Japan space militarization by admin — コメントする
2010年10月4日
I was both a little excited and very disappointed that the NHK decided to publicize something that’s been public knowledge for around a decade – that Japan looked into and decided not to produce nuclear weapons in the late 1960s. The 日本の核に関する基礎的研究 conducted by the 内閣調査室 (Cabinet Information Research Office) for the then PM Eisaku Sato by Profs. Hidetake Kakibana, Michio Royama, Yonosuke Nagai and Hisashi Maeda distributed some 200 copies with the highest secrecy concluding that it was probably not in Japan’s best interests to develop an independent nuclear deterrent.

(Characteristically, in 1970, a young firebrand called Ishihara Shintaro called for Japan to develop its own SLBM MIRVs. Interestingly enough, METI’s own bid to get budget for SLMB development was quashed last August by the DPJ’s rewriting of the general space activities budget request in August 2009.)


The fact is that Japan’s ability to produce nuclear weapons quickly is not controversial. In addition to a pluthermal/ fast breeder reactor program that will accelerate Japan’s production of supergrade plutonium (to an estimated 700 kg over ten years at Monju alone) via technology illegally imported (according to Greenpeace) from the U.S. Savannah River Plant and Oak Ridge labs, Japan is known to have around 444kg of weapons ready plutonium in critical assemblies at Tokai Mura. That tiny part part of Japan’s plutonium stockpile is enough to produce around 100 warheads within about 9 months of a political decision for Japan to arm itself.

Of course with supergrade, you can use less plutonium for the same bang, or it helps you to move to boosted fission options, the technology of which Japan is strongly suspected or assumed to possess.

The major points I would like to discuss in relationship with this weekend’s non-news news by the NHK is that serious discussion about developing an independent nuclear deterrent was launched in the wake of China’s rapid progression from fission to thermonuclear weapons capability in 1967 in a scant 22 months was not limited only to nukes. It also included space development.

In fact, the effect of China’s rapid progress on Japan cannot be understated in the post-war history of Japan developing its recessed deterrent strategy, of which Japan’s “peaceful purposes only” nuclear program and (until 1998) “peaceful purposes only”space program have been conjoined.

While Japan did not actually develop a nuclear deterrent, it did decide to develop and maintain all the technologies it needed to make sure that in an emergency Japan could rapidly go nuclear.

In Defense of Japan is a critical part of this story, because exactly the same strategy was employed for space development, to make sure Japan has a full spectrum of military space technologies ready to deliver weapons if or when they are made.

The exciting thing is that NHK is prepared to break one of the official mass media taboos, that Japan both can produce, and has strongly considered producing such weapons. But I feel it’s time for a more honest media discussion on the role of Japan’s space development program.

I’d like to think in some way that In Defense of Japan is also playing its part in lifting the almost willful non-discussion in the Japanese media, and the international media, of the meaning of Japan’s space program and the way policy is reported to the public.
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In Defense of Japan Launches into Production

Filed Under: In Defense of Japan, Japan ASAT, Japan BMD, Japan space development, Japan space militarization, Japan space program by admin — コメントする
2009年12月18日

Hopefully not into the wrong orbit. 

It’s hard to think that it is already a year ago that we had to defend the thesis, and there was a quite an air of unreality about things then. We strongly got the sense that in trying to break the mould, whether it be accepted academic or media conceits, we faced a slog against hostility to someone trying to rock the boat. The other reaction will probably be 黙殺  here in Japan. But hey, who knows!
 The good news from SUP  is that page proofs will be ready in April.  I am really looking forward to the process of turning dead trees into academic literature. I think it’s just like hitting the makiwara!
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In Defense of This Book

Filed Under: In Defense of Japan, Japan ASAT, Japan BMD, Japan space development, Japan space militarization, Japan space program by admin — コメントする
2009年12月17日
Hi, to anyone reading this first entry for “In Defense of Japan” a book inspired during my 15-year stint covering Japan’s space development program. 
Where do I begin?  Well, here! 
How about some previews from leading academics: 
“It is a very valuable work and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the unraveling of the Yoshida Doctrine and Japan’s evolving security strategy. Needless to say, I totally agree with the thrust of what you say…”
Kenneth B. Pyle, Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Washington, winner of the Order of the Rising Sun (1998) and author of Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose.
“Thanks for sharing this. This ms is in terrific shape and should be a powerful contributor to debates on Japanese militarization, Japanese politics, industrial policy and host of other areas.”  T. J. Pempel  director of the Institute of East Asian Studies from January 2002 until 2007, currently Il Han New Chair in Asian Studies and author of Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia-Pacific (Oxford University Press)
“…your willingness to tackle an important subject, make a strong argument, and avoid narrow minded…concerns….is always a breath of fresh air. Moreover your argument seems entirely correct. This book will be an important contribution to the literature of Japanese industrial policy and national security.” 
Richard J. Samuels, Ford Inernational Professor of Political Science, Director for International Studies, MIT, author of Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia and Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan.

It was particularly gratifying to get this feedback from Dick Samuels, whose work, and common sense, was a major inspiration for this book, which will be out in the spring- finally- from Stanford University Press.
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