After 15 years and twists and turns that made IHI/Nissan’s bid for the J-1A->J-2->GX look like a skip around the block, Michibiki will finally become an openly accepted part of Japan’s emergent space-based national security structure.
There has always been a strong element of “aw-shucks, you don’t say” about the real purpose of the QZSS system, which is to provide a highly advanced (15cm to 1m positioning accuracy) sovereign (encrypted = military signal) positioning (read targeting) local (read regional) GPS system, that’s useful for…the same uses as the original GPS and GLONASS systems.
Although the what become the present system originated out of Melco and the old CRL (Communications Research Laboratory, now NICT) in 1996/7. I can still remember the pitch, and then the huge wrangle between the STA and MOFA with the U.S. over it. I covered this for Space News what, 14 and 13 years ago now.
In a recent conversation I had with a former GSDF general who is now a consultant for a major Japanese IT firm consulting the MOD to fight Japan’s cyberwars against 30,000 state-funded Chinese hackers, making sure QZSS has targeting capability has been formally on the table in inter-ministerial meetings (well at that time the MOD was the JDA) since at least 2005. In fact, retired general “X,” as we’ll call him, brought QZSS up unilaterally. The topic we were discussing was the utility of UAVs and network-centric warfare and the limits of interoperability. The main issue for X was concern that Japan be capable of building a “rec’n'rocket” Global Hawk capability as well as a tactical capability so that battlefield, operations and strategic roles can be fulfilled. And then, as he put it, “there is the space element” of which QZSS or its successor will no doublt play a role…
2005. 2005. Well, well, well. Wasn’t that time when the now-defunct ASBC (Advanced Satellite Business Corporation), who were responsible for window-dressing QZSS as an orbital Wall-Mart communications and broadcasting and “man nabi” system, gave me a very 玉虫色 (tamamushiiro) response about if they were talking to the JDA about the QZSS’s dual-uses.
The business model for QZSS as pounded out by ASBC didn’t make sense. Why would we need man-nabi from a keitai with an expensive chip plugged into a space-based system when nabi functions were already commonplace. Why would we need broadcasting when we already had BS* by NHK, and SKY PerfecTV washing our brains out with hundreds of channels of digital junk. SkyPerfect being the consolidated rump of what had been DirecTV, PerfecTV and JSky B competing in Japan’s limited market, and JSAT competing with Mitsubishi’s SCC as a platform service providers. (SCC lost and was merged into JSAT). So there goes your business model.
As we make clear in In Defense of Japan, “..although the QZSS/Michibiki itself is a product of the 2000s, the system as a whole represents the culmination of eff orts to develop a regional GPS system dating back to the late 1980s. Like a lot of the other space- based technologies discussed in this book, this one has had a long trajectory…”
More precisely, like everyone else, Japan realized that the space-based force muliplier technology and infrastruture, with gave birth to RMA, completely outdated militaries not similarly equipped in practically anything other than low-intensity conflicts. Thus the gearing up by Europe (Galileo), China (Beidou) (not exactly friends those two with the snooty French keeping the receipe for roast canard separate while the Chinese attempt to spice the whole affair up with illiberal doses of General Tao’s Sauce) and and Japan (Michibiki) to develop its own PNT capability in case it was denied access or remained dependent on U.S. technology.
In the 1990s, the STA, METI, and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), looked to develop a positioning system that would cover a large swathe of Asia, from the Kurile Islands to the north, China to the east, and Guam in the south. In March 1997 the then STA asked what was then NASDA (now JAXA) to move ahead with research into the highly accurate, satellite-mounted atomic clocks needed for a high-precision GPS. This was billed at the time as a matter of “economic security.” As anyone who understands Japan’s nomenclature, “economic security” is a fine bedfellow of “security” and his old chum “national security.” The facinating story of how Michibiki got developed is summarized in In Defense of Japan. Meanwhile, as my recent story in Space News below tries to make clear, the curtains have been drawn open, and people in Japan are starting to talk about Michibiki’s national security role more openly.
*BS means Broadcasting Satellite in Japan, not “the other” meaning.