Civilian R&D agency to get military role to spur arms innovation

How long 'til the Gundam is finished? In any event, I don't think senior citizen Japan is going to have an advantage in people and technology.

富国強兵 -- the advantage of leaving security up to the Americans was one of the great unintended consequences of the peace constitution. While DARPA in the United States spent all this money developing dual use technology, the Japanese and others were able to commercialize these technologies and sell them to the Americans.

It is a stupid path for Japan to develop its own military use technologies. Japan will not be able to volume produce enough to make up its investments. The path to a strong military is in fact a rich nation, and the prosperity of that nation is to help the Americans but not to replicate what the Americans are doing, often at great waste and with negative consequences.

It is a stupid path for Japan to develop its own military use technologies

It's very possible that Japan has unseen high-tech weapons on paper but has not been able to, or want to, develop them. Certainly explains the quick switch to weapons development.

I see a slow march to war.

"It is a stupid path for Japan to develop its own military use technologies. Japan will not be able to volume produce enough to make up its "

Did you miss this bit?

"Using tax-funded R&D to push into so-called dual-use projects will add momentum to Abe’s more muscular security agenda, which included a decision last year to end a decades-old ban on arms export"

"Abe’s strategy on defense technology harks back to Japan’s 19th Century transformation from a feudal society to an industrialised nation that was in large part driven by rapid military modernisation."

Not mentioned, of course, is the very very steep price the country paid for this.

The "rapid military modernisation" came at the expense of the development of democracy - the militaristic government essentially, over time, militarized the society -- and we all know how this turned out - with the destruction of most of the country, the deaths of millions, and many very lean years of poverty and suffering for it`s citizens.

Technology, especially military technology, doesn`t always equal progress.

I want to work at NEDO. Since I was a kid I loved designing weapons.

I'm getting to tired of all this I guess. Why don't we just invent the weapon that will wipe out life on earth. The universe will be better off for that.

gokai_wo_maneku: I'm getting to tired of all this I guess. Why don't we just invent the weapon that will wipe out life on earth. The universe will be better off for that.

Find something happy to do, cheer yourself up, go to hot springs, go to gokart track, whatever.

Why blow up the world and the rest of us with it?

Violence and conflict have been a feature of human life throughout history.

Starting with simple weapons, people have developed ever more advanced methods to kill one another. Technology has dominated warfare since the early 1900s, and an astounding 190 million people may have been killed during the 25 biggest conflicts of the 20th century.

It's scary to me t think that some of the brightest minds are thinking of the most efficient ways to kill someone and then selling that technology so it can end up god knows where.

Harvey pekar. How many people have died from car accidents, greassy and salty food, religion? Weapons are needed. Just imagine the world wihout nuclear weapons.

We can thank China for spurring this movement. No territorial aggression from the CCP, no need for Japan to work over it's peaceful constitutional stance. But the CCP wanted to flex its "big boy" muscles.

That whole protest with the signs of Abe being compared to Hitler is starting to take on a little more validity with his 'rise of the new Japan' in weapons design, increased defense spending and military contracts, changing of the constitution, suppression of any media that does not toe the line, etc.

HonestDictator: Everything you said about China is exactly the same for Japan, save that the latter started all this when Ishihara decided to privatize the Senkakus. Japan created its own need to defend itself by pouring a whole lot of fuel on a small fire. Now they are going to start building more canisters for even more fuel. Even the Japanese majority are against changing the peaceful constitution -- there's no real 'need' for it, it is the personal ambition of Abe, who is still trying to be his war-criminal grandfather and create a 'beautiful Japan'.

I hope Japan goes all out and builds all the nasties.

Just to shut and piss off those who claim Japan can only hide behind the US!

Peeping_Tom: I hope Japan goes all out and builds all the nasties.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/RX-178.W.GIF

Gundam Mark II

turbostat

While you play with Gundams, Japan plays with other stuff:

http://archive.defensenews.com/article/20140929/DEFREG03/309290032/Japan-Make-Major-Switch-Sub-Propulsion

Peeping_Tom: While you play with Gundams, Japan plays with other stuff

Lithium-ion considered an advance in sub tech?!? When all the electric vehicles are driving around with them???

Turbostat

Are u for real? Did u bother to read the article? Do u know the current state of non nuclear sub tech? Do u know who leads it? Or r u arguing for the sake of it?

“The way of making Japan strong is through technology,”

Definitely agree with this, Japan is never going to have the numbers so it needs to have the superior tech