One of the interesting things about doing Defense Industry Daily every day is is the trends it sometimes allows me to spot. Here's the bottom line: Japan is moving forward full speed ahead on anti-ballistic missile defenses, in cooperaton with the USA.
Most significantly, Japan's Defense Minister recently said that under certain conditions (starting with US permission), Japan might consider selling the results of these efforts abroad as defensive systems.
There has been a lot of recent activity. Weapons purchases have been made, a Kongo-class AEGIS destroyer is contracted for conversion for dual use as air defense/ forward ABM defense via AEGIS upgrades and SM-3 missiles, agreements have been formalized re: ongoing ABM cooperation, and Japan has just made arrangements to license-produce the Patriot PAC-3 missile for point defense.
Realistically, this will represent a partial defense only. Realistically, the uncertainty it creates is enough to have deterrent value against neighbours like North Korea's mad dictator. With Co-operative Engagement Capability among AEGIS platforms that allows them to act as a single spaced array (think of a compound eye, or radio astronomy VLAs), and the ability to network them with new aerial systems like JLENS blimps and ground systems like the Patriot PAC-3, Japan's efforts represent an important start, an important contribution and test lab - and an important trend.
In 1998, China's proxy North Korea fired a hilariously-named "Nodong" ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific. Having seen first-hand what that could mean, the Japanese didn't think it was all that hilarious.
This year, China's manufactured anti-Japanese demonstrations raised further questions, even as a younger generation of politicians are beginning to make their influence felt in Japan's policy circles and are becoming more assertive vis-a-vis its traditionally dominant bureaucracy. Japan's China policy in particular is changing.
Japan is rethinking many things these days. There will be more rethinking to come.
I want Japan to have a real good defense.
The NK missile name Nodong (spelled Rodong, but pronounced Nodong) may sound funny to English speakers, but I believe it just means 'labor', as in the NK Rodong Sinmun (Labor Newspaper).
China has played an excellent policy position to move ever closer to its goal of taking Taiwan. North Korea, keeps Japan on edge while the Chinese increasingly isolate it. If the US counters a Chinese move on Taiwan, what will the roles of Japan and NK be?
looking the other way at something that suddenly became very important
Are the Japanese also buying Israeli technology?
I want China to be more democratic than Japan. Wonder if it already is?
Mouse (#3)
As I see it, NK foreign politics follow the internal motivation of their leaders: to survive. I don't think they will attack anyone neither conventionally, because they don't trust their population, nor exerting the nuclear option, which, by definition, is against their main objective.
They cannot either loose their grip around the necks of their people for, as Gorbachev showed, reform in such a tyranny collapses the entire political system.
The only thing they can do is blackmailing the Western world with the threat of missiles and nuclear warheads to get some foreign aid that underpins their regime.
The Nodong missile is designed to scare the Japanese, and the Taepodong 2 (a Nodong with a new first stage) to do the same with the Americans, rather by their mere existence than their use or accuracy. In fact, a Taepondong 2 missile exploded in its launch pad in 2002, probably suffering its development a serious drawback.
The response from Japan has been pretty convincing, to launch spy satellites to keep under surveillance its neighbourhood and to build the first ABM shield, using PAC-3 and AEGIS - SM-3. For now, Western ABM technology evolves faster that NK rocketry, downplaying the threat. Something similar happens in the Mediterranean with Syrian missiles.
That is why I think NK has focused now in nuclear warheads, which is still scary for the Western public opinion, and any failure in development is not so obvious. In fact, the objective is just propaganda.
Moreover, Japan has tons of reprocesed plutonium, and very probably the knowledge and technology to build fission nuclear warheads and their medium range vectors just in a matter of months, and this ones would reach their objectives in a big percentage. Fission bombs are within reach of any industrialized country, not to say the second world economy.