Category: Japan Nuclear Program


J-2/ Epsilon is Go!

Filed Under: ASNARO, Epsilon, H-2A, In Defense of Japan, Japan Nuclear Program, Japan space development, Japan space militarization, M-V, 未分類 by admin — コメントする
2011年4月20日

The more I talk to Morita Sensei about the Epsilon, the more I am struck by how important it is to Japan’s strategic solid-fuel dual-use technology maintenance program. Those of you who know your rockets will know that the last two generations of ISAS sold LVs have been judged as readily convertible to ICBMS, and also the J-1, the last time Japan “mixed ‘n’ matched” technologies from its NASDA derived and ISAS derived programs.

But the Epsilon is very very different. Or is it? Where else other than in Japan could you develop a launch-on-demand rocket/ missile for $200 million? The Epsilon rocks! It is only an extreme budget squeeze that is stopping it from launching in its full configuration in 2013 right away. First of all, here is the article I recently wrote for Space News:

The technical changes being made to develop the Epsilon seem to have fully taken on board and learned from the mistakes made for the J-1 (featuring Tomifumi Godai, about whom I talk more about below), which, in one of my favorite articles for Space News in the 1990s, was “hammered” for its costs after a report by the Management and Coordination Agency showed that the J-1 development program cost more than similar projects in other countries. At the time I could see the mantra; Japan was trying to switch to genuinely be seen to cut costs from practically nothing to vapor, while underneath the J-1 was always mainly a technology development program to see if it could integrate an ICBM from its liquid and solid development programs. In terms of the cost per launch, the J-1 was really quite expensive. But in terms of technically showing how easy it is for Japan to produce ICBMs, the J-1 was quite a piece of work!

Here is the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States
Appendix III: Unclassified Working Papers assessment of the J-1: 

To jog your memory: the J-1 was a three-stage solid fuel rocket able to place payloads of about 1,000 kg int low Earth orbit and the first NASDA rocket to be made from a  combination of existing indigenous rockets – the solid rocket booster of the H-2 and the upper stage of the M-3S II. In other words, after an awfully long, twisting and tortured route down the J-1U -> J-2 -> GX route, which was basically IHI’s bid to become a liquid engine technology integration company, the Epsilon is the direct successor of the J-1. The Epsilon is what the J-1 should have been.

Does any of this, taken from the Japan Echo of 15 years ago, sound at all similar?

Information Bulletin No.64
First Launch of Cost-Efficient J-1 Rocket Scheduled for February 1996

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January 8,1996

The National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) is in the process of assembling a new domestically produced rocket, the J-1. Scheduled to be launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in February 1996, the J-1 features a cost-efficient design that incorporates parts of existing rockets. It will carry as its payload an experimental space vehicle that will gather data to be used in the development of a Japanese space shuttle, HOPE.
The mainstay of Japan’s space program is today the H-2, the first of which was successfully launched in 1994. The H-2, which can boost a two-ton satellite into geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator, is a two-stage rocket fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The J-1, on the other hand, is a three-stage rocket designed to place a satellite of about one ton in low orbit. It was jointly developed by NASDA and the Ministry of Education’s Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science with an eye to a likely increase in the demand for rockets to put into low orbit small telecommunications and other satellites.
To save on development and production costs, current plans call for the first J-1 to incorporate the type of solid-fuel rocket now being used by NASDA as boosters for the H-2; the second and third will use a combination of the M23 and M3B sold-fuel rockets that constitute the tip of ISAS’s M-3SII. The J-1, which stands 33 meters tall, measures 1.8 meters in diameter, and weighs 87 tons is rather small compared to the H-2-50 meters tall, 4 meters in diameter, 264 tons-but was developed for only one-ninth of the cost, or 3.1 billion.
The first J-1, scheduled to be launched on February 1, 1996, will carry as its payload the 1,050-kilogram HYFLEX …” [X-37B space bomber test... no no, only joking. It's nothing like the X-37B space bomber at all; here it is landing, right] “…a hypersonic flight experiment vehicle that will collect data for the development of a Japanese space shuttle, named HOPE. HYFLEX will separate from the J-1 at an altitude of 110 kilometers and glide back through the atmosphere. Scientists will be evaluating such points as HYFLEX’s heat-resistant properties as it reaches temperatures as high as 1500-1600 degrees Celsius and its stability and control systems as it hits speeds of up to Mach 15. After completing its glide, the HYFLEX will deploy a parachute and splash down in the ocean near the island of Ogasawara, where it will be retrieved by waiting ships.

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The wonderful thing about this article is that it shows what they Japanese call the 急 (Kyu) pichi (pitch) or the rapid assault on the higher strategic echelons of space development. It’s hard to believe going back to 1990s with the hubris and triumphalism;  with people like Tomifumi Godai, the godfather of the H-2, regaling Japan for its prowess in building better than the gaijin. The NYT article I linked to, unlike the screed put out these days, is actually worth reading! Godai’s pride in the H-2 was soon deflated though and his triumphalist series of articles in NASDA today in the 1990s has now disappeared from web and written out of history. But I remember.

It’s worth reminding people, I feel, that with a little bit more money, Japan would have had its own automated shuttle by now. It’s not doing too badly as it is with Kounotori, which is itself a technical triumph and a bargain- costing only $200 million or so to develop (officially).

But, literally, Japan lost Hope.  In caffeinated and wilder-eyed moments I often wonder how much pressure was put on Japan to sacrifice its space program on the altar of fiscal restraint when other much more wasteful spending programs survived. (I often marvel at how quickly SmartSat disappeared too…did someone in the U.S. embassy  gently whisper sweet somethings  in NICT’s ear so as not to show up the U.S. or frighten the Chinese too much?)

There is no question that the Epsilon is a highly aggressive dual-use ICBM program that actually will fulfill three functions;

a) It’s stated purpose- to provide a low-cost, highly flexible alternative to the H-2A/B for Japan’s microsatellite and science community and ASNARO/ ODA-programs

b) A fast-flexible mobile launcher for military micro/nano/pico satellites at times of increased tension or the buildup or waging of war. In fact the SPRINT series in itself does a nice job building up a standard bus system for modular payloads, which will make them highly versatile for applications starting with medium resolution/ tactical spy satellites aka ASNARO. The SPRINT-A flight is in fact a test launch for upcoming deals with Vietnam and Cambodia to supply satellites as ODA (and to keep them out of China’s orbit- again literally!)

c) A family of boosters for said purposes (a) and (b) and also as an ICBM design for if/when Japan decide to weaponsize its supergrade / plutonium stocks.

I have also put the first article I published on the Epsilon, which was originally called the ASR here, FYI:

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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.

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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.

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» 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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More News on Japan’s Strategic Nuclear / Space Hedge

Filed Under: In Defense of Japan, Japan Nuclear Program by admin — コメントする
2010年11月30日

Senior Vice Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto admitted November 29 in not so many words that Japan in the late 60s was considering developing nuclear weapons. The fessup followed an in-house MOFA probe on the recent NHK documentary on a senior MOFA official’s deathbed confessions that Japan conducted under-the-table negotiations with West Germany that the two collaborate on building nukes in the late 1960s. In the event the Germans said no and the Japanese went ahead to build a virtual nuclear weapons and delivery systems program anyway. You know this as Japan’s peaceful nuclear energy program and Japan’s recently for peaceful purposes only space space program. Except it ain’t quite so peaceful these days ;-) .

Each time these revelations roll out, In Defense of Japan just looks more and more prescient.

In connection with this the Mainichi Shimbun has just released news that MOFA wavered over whether Japan should sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1970, thereby giving up the right to possess nuclear weapons. In fact, 15 documents reveal more formal data on how close Japan was in 1968-70 to arming itself with nuclear weapons as a response to China’s extraordinarily swift development of deployable thermonuclear weapons.

Two critical issues were 1. Could Japan rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and 2. would signing the NPT might impair Japan’s domestic nuclear energy program by making allies loathe to supply Japan with enriched uranium.

Most tellingly documents show that in September 1969 Japan was drawing up guidelines committed to the need to have the capability to convert its nuclear technology into nuclear weapons while promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

The critical points are here:

また、外交政策大綱では「当面核兵器は保有しない政策をとるが、核兵器製造の経済的・技術的ポテンシャルは常に保持するとともにこれに対する掣肘（せいちゅう）（制約）をうけないよう配慮する」（６９年９月）と核兵器製造の潜在力保持の必要性を指摘。原子力の平和利用を進めながらも核兵器に転用可能な選択肢を残すよう求める意見が記されている」

“While Japan is adopting a policy of not possessing nuclear weapons for now, it should possess the economic and technological potential to produce nuclear weapons and there should be no limits to such potential,” the guidelines state.”

This confirms why Japan’s pluthermal program is designed, accidentally on purpose to produce plenty of supergrade plutonium in order to produce highly efficient nuclear weapons anyway.

This is highly significant because it confirms the premise of In Defense of Japan that 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.

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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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