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.
