Japan, U.S. to boost defense cooperation in outer space

Abe the space cadet, how apt...

Bark at the Chinese, Shinzo.

Woof.

Bark at the Russians, Shinzo.

Woof.

Bark at the moon, Shinzo.

Woof woof.

Good boy. Here's a shinzysnack.

Woof.

The USA is leading the world on space organisation and colonization. I think that Steve Carell should be vice admiral of this whole project after I watched Space Force.

The US is recruiting Japan to assist in the militarization of space. What could go wrong?

Space has been militarized since the early 1980s. The Soviets had in orbit systems designed to destroy satellites in service during the Cold War. Now China is adding its own systems to the mix. The horse has been out of the barn for a long long time. You were apparently napping and missed it.

Abe is back to wearing his jacket and tie again!

Theres no way he’d keep a spacesuit on for long...

the Space Operations Squadron is tasked with monitoring threats to Japanese satellites such as space debris and meteorites. 

And then do what if space debris is on its path?

Russia and China are ahead of the the US and it's allies in militarizing space. This means destroying satellites, disabling communications, logistics. I wonder how some of the posters would feel if they wake up one day and GPS is no longer working.

Alfie,

Nice one, nice to start the day with a laugh. My ribs are paining.

Earth to Abe, Earth to Abe....

I'd rather see Japan colonize a piece of island first and especially if it clearly is under is administration. For crying out loud it would be much much cheaper for Japan to just put a flag on it and literally place a rotating shift out there vs the costs of space. Get that done and you have my support for any space exploration. Take care of home first.

Well done PM Abe, Japan and the US need to work together to keep the peace and protect Freedom.

I wonder how some of the posters would feel if they wake up one day and GPS is no longer working.

Most posters don't what GPS is or what it does. They are too worried about what the PM is wearing - " Abe is back to wearing his jacket and tie again!" to understand Space science or Geo politics.

Space Operations Squadron. S.O.S.

Has a real ring of competence to it.

I wonder how some of the posters would feel if they wake up one day and GPS is no longer working.

Not just that. Most would lose internet access of any kind, even vital communications will be tenuous or unavailable, and the defence capability of the US and Japan would be crippled. There will also be risks to nuclear power stations, electrical grids, anything that has any dependence on communications or internet access. The first thing China would do in any all out war would be to destroy satellites and cripple the enemy.

It's easy to belittle this kind of policy, but it had to happen someday. Like it or not.

So basically Japanese taxpayers will fund very expensive American offensive weapons of possible mass destruction against the Japanese Constitution.

Sure, sure - spend more money on militarization. What else could it be used for? Environmental protection? Cleaner energy development? Social programs? Alleviating poverty? Job creation? Healthcare? Education? Who needs that stuff? And if you spend on militarizing outer space, you'll get an even bigger trickle down effect, because of the velocity! Gotta love that gravity!

Ah. Space Farce. Abe, the wizard suits up. Space man. Star Wars. Brought to you by the two daftest presidents in U.S. history: Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

Billions if not trillions to be spent on research and development - plans that were proved during the Reagan administration to be not just a farce, but would not function if actualized, a complete boondoggle and simply a funnel of cash to the aerospace industry which would accelerate the future bankruptcy of the USA. Apparently, Abe and whatever he represents of Japan wants to hook into that strategy for ruin. Though the actual plan may be for those empowered to profit and loot the treasury with little concern for the actual viability of Star Wars.

Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, asserted that “any war in space would be the one and only. By destroying satellites in space massive amounts of space debris would be created that would cause a cascading effect and even the billion-dollar International Space Station would likely be broken into tiny bits. So much space junk would be created, Mitchell said, that we’d never be able to get a rocket off the planet again because of the mine field of debris orbiting the Earth at 15,000 mph. That would mean activity on Earth below would immediately shut down—cell phones, ATM machines, cable TV, traffic lights, weather prediction and more—all hooked up to satellites, would be lost. Modern society would go dark.”

The landmark Outer Space Treaty was put together by the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and the U.K., and since signed by most nations on Earth.  In fact, Russia and China have been advocating the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty under which the placement of any weapons in space would be barred. The U.S.—under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations—has opposed the PAROS treaty and has effectively vetoed it at the United Nations.

As to the weapons a Space Force might use, proposed for Reagan’s “Star Wars” program were hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons onboard orbiting battle platforms with onboard nuclear reactors or “super” plutonium systems providing the power for the weapons. General James Abramson, head of “Star Wars,” or as it was officially termed Strategic Defense Initiative, said at a Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that “without reactors in orbit” there would need to be “a long” extension cord bringing up power up from Earth.

National Public Radio reported that Trump’s advocacy of a Space Force “started as a joke.” NPR’s Claudia Grisales in August related: “Early last year President Trump riffed on an idea he called ‘Space Force’ before a crowd of Marines in San Diego. It drew laughs, but the moment was a breakthrough for a plan that had languished for nearly 20 years.” Trump continued: “’I said maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force,’ Trump said at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in March 2018. ‘And I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘What a great idea, maybe we’ll have to do that.’”

Sure, sure - spend more money on militarization. What else could it be used for? Environmental protection? Cleaner energy development? Social programs? Alleviating poverty? Job creation? Healthcare? Education? Who needs that stuff? 

Exactly.

Two leaders who cannot provide their citizens with mere mask during a pandemic.

Will any of the U.S. Space Force's personnel be able to be deployed to Japan in disregard of Article 6 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, part of which stipulates:

"For the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East, the United States of America is granted the use by its land (the Army), air (the Air Force) and naval forces (the Navy) of facilities and areas in Japan"?

I'm sure they will because there's a precedent already: the U.S. Marine Corps.

Most of the anti crowd on here are lost in space any way !

Well, that’s lucky. Just send an SOS for the S.O.S.

“Who’s on first?” etc

For the U.S., international treaties and agreements are virtually nonexistent as far as Japan (or Okinawa) is concerned. We have seen more than enough such examples in Okinawa.

"Will any of the U.S. Space Force's personnel be able to be deployed to Japan in disregard of Article 6 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, part of which stipulates:

"For the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East, the United States of America is granted the use by its land (the Army), air (the Air Force) and naval forces (the Navy) of facilities and areas in Japan"?

I'm sure they will because there's a precedent already: the U.S. Marine Corps."

Willis, what you talking about? already hear and have been here for quite some time, too late.

rgcivilian1:

Willis, what you talking about? already hear and have been here for quite some time, too late.

Yeah, the Marines have been here for some time, and in violation of the treaty at that. Does that exonerate their treaty violation at all?

voiceofokinawaToday  12:56 pm JST

Will any of the U.S. Space Force's personnel be able to be deployed to Japan in disregard of Article 6 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, part of which stipulates:

"For the purpose of contributing to the security of Japan and the maintenance of international peace and security in the Far East, the United States of America is granted the use by its land (the Army), air (the Air Force) and naval forces (the Navy) of facilities and areas in Japan"?

I'm sure they will because there's a precedent already: the U.S. Marine Corps.

Will you PLEASE drop this repetitive and inane semantic argument? I'm sure there are better arguments to raise.

"The Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy. At an administrative, political and civilian level, the Marines operate beneath the Secretary of the Navy."

https://science.howstuffworks.com/marines1.htm

The US is recruiting Japan to assist in the militarization of space. What could go wrong?

americans have been the pioneers in the militarization of space since the beginning of the space age, depending on how one wants to obfuscate it with euphemism, whether offensive or defensive or scientific or peaceful or reconnaissance or whatever.

NASA's Secret Relationships with U.S. Defense and Intelligence Agencies

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB509/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-military-has-been-space-beginning-180969403/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/declassified-u-s-military-s-secret-cold-war-space-project-revealed/

many other capabilities and projects remains classified.

Russia and China are ahead of the the US and it's allies in militarizing space. This means destroying satellites, disabling communications, logistics. I wonder how some of the posters would feel if they wake up one day and GPS is no longer working

I wouldn't be too sure. Read up on the X-37B, what little good information there is. A robotic space shuttle of some sort that goes on missions lasting more than a year in space doing things the US isn't talking about. That is just the stuff that's in the public realm.

Once upon a time Russia was an aerospace powerhouse. Not today. Russia doesn't have young up and coming engineers any more. The pay and living conditions in Russia are lousy so they all go to the west. All they have left are the old gray beards and the Russian's aren't replacing them as they die off. The Chinese have no shortage of new engineers, but that is their problem. China killed or ran off all the smart people during the Cultural Revolution (that includes my own family btw) who today should be the experienced senior engineers who've designed, tested and flown multiple complex systems and can mentor the newbies so they don't make a lot of mistakes. Lacking that cadre of highly experienced experts, China relies on stealing technologies from others. But China isn't pushing the limits of material science like the US is. Not even close. Let's see China or Russia match some of the missions to the outer planets that NASA JPL has conducted. They will be another forty years getting a spacecraft beyond our solar system like the two US Voyager spacecraft, and that is if they launched something today.

Yeah, the Marines have been here for some time, and in violation of the treaty at that. Does that exonerate their treaty violation at all?

Uh, how exactly are the Marines stationed in Okinawa and mainland Japan in violation of the treaty? They are there to keep the Russians and Chinese out of Japan. Yes, that benefits the US but it also benefits Japan and the Japanese people, unless you would prefer to send your hard earned tax money to Beijing and have your freedoms ripped from you by the CCP like they doing to Hong Kong.

OssanAmerica,

Sure, the Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy administratively, but they are never part of a service or military branch called the Navy. The Commandant of the Marine Corps doesn't report to the Chief of Naval Operations of the Navy because the two services has different chains of command independent of each other. The fact that two Marine generals participate in the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on a par with a Navy admiral shows that the Marine Corps and the Navy are mutually independent services, so that the Marines' stationing in Japan is in violation of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

This is not an inane argument.

This is not an inane argument.

It is an inane argument. Why does it matter who the Marines report to in the US military chain of command? In any event the Marines remain part of the Department of the Navy. There is no Department of the Marines. The one insurgency the Marines have mastered is the one fought in the halls of Congress to gain influence, power and budget authority. They have done well in that regard, better perhaps than any other form of combat in which they have engaged (I can hear the incoming salvos already). Nonetheless how any of this matters in terms of the US-Japan treaty is a mystery to me. The Marines are in Japan legally.

Desert Tortoise,

The Department of the Navy isn't the Navy. The former is an administrative body headed by a civilian secretary. The Marine Corps is attached to this administrative body for the sake of convenience. and for historical reasons. The Coast Guard was also attached to the DoD until recently for convenience's sake. It isn't anymore. 

If there were a future realignment of services, the Marine Corps could possibly be attached to the Department of the Army because it shares so many features with the Army. I repeat: The Marine Corps isn't the Navy because it's attached to the DoD.

If the Marines aren't the Navy, they cannot be stationed in Japan because their stationing violates Article 4 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which states only the Army, the Air Force and the Navy can use bases and areas in Japan.

Correction:

If there were a future realignment of services, the Marine Corps could possibly be attached to the Department of the Army because it shares so many features with the Army. I repeat: The Marine Corps isn't the Navy because it's attached to the Department of the Navy in the DoD.

 The Coast Guard was also attached to the DoD until recently for convenience's sake. It isn't anymore.

You know very little. The original US Marine Corps were formed under the US Navy to fight in the rigging of sailing ships with muskets and swords, and to try to capture enemy ships at sea. Land warfare would come later during the Mexican American war.

The US Coast Guard began life as the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790 under the Treasury Department. It's job was to catch smugglers and enforce customs laws. In 1915 the United States Lifesaving Service was merged with the Revenue Cutter Service and renamed the US Coast Guard, still under the Treasury Department. In 1967 the Coast Guard was moved to the newly formed Department of Transportation. In 2003 it was moved again to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security where it remains today. Upon declaration of war, the direction of Congress or the President Coast Guard ships and aircraft can be placed under operational control of the US Navy. In WWII however they operated more US Army watercraft than anything else and had the highest proportional casualties of any of the armed services as a result. Those Army landing craft hitting the beaches in North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, Southern France, Philippines and Normandie has Coast Guard coxwains at the helm and the Army's vast fleet of transport ships (the US Army had more bottoms and more deadweight tons than the US Navy had in WWII) were operated by Coasties. To this day the US Coast Guard uniform is the same, with minor differences in insignia, as that of the US Customs Service, the department the Coast Guard was under for most of its history. btw, the US Army still operates a fleet of watercraft and landing ships with soldiers sailing them now instead of Coasties.

And none of that answers why having US Marines stationed in Japan violates the mutual defense treaty between the US and Japan.

Desert Tortoise, 

Well, thank you for correcting my misconception about the U.S. Coast Guard. I took up the Coast Guard to exemplify how a service could be moved from one department to another just for the sake of convenience. Same could be said about the Marine Corps.

But you haven't refuted my contention that the Marine Corps is not subsidiary to the Navy; that it's a bona fide service independent of the Navy, another bona fide service attached to the Department of the Navy. You haven’t refuted my contention that each service has its own chain of command and that Marine generals participate in the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a par with other generals from other services whereby the Marine Corps is not part of the Navy, the genuine Navy, that is.

The Department is not a military service commanded by a general or admiral but purely an administrative body charged with the administrative affairs of both services. This fact doesn’t warrant that the Marines are the Navy.

According to the latest description in Wikipedia, there're six services in the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Space Force. 

The Space Force was created recently out of the Air Force and is attached to the Department of the Air Force in the DoD for the purposes of administration. But the Chief of Space Operations doesn't report to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, each having an independent chain of command.

Can one say that the Space Force is subsidiary to the Air Force whereby they can deploy to Japan, just as the Marines?

But you haven't refuted my contention that the Marine Corps is not subsidiary to the Navy; that it's a bona fide service independent of the Navy, another bona fide service attached to the Department of the Navy. 

I work with the Navy Marine Corps team. The Marines can't go anywhere without the Navy. They depend on Naval air power and Navy sea lift to fight. We work closely together with Marines in Navy units and vice versa. Their pilots graduate from Navy flight schools and undergo the exact same training as Navy pilots. They wear Navy wings and are designated Naval Aviators. I am among them btw so I know of what I speak.

More recently the Marines have decided to completely change how they will fight. They are abandoning heavy armor altogether and replacing gun artillery with rockets and missiles. No gun made today has sufficient range to out-range cruise missiles. Relying on guns is suicide. The Marines now will focus on taking islands and establishing anti-ship missiles on them that can threaten enemy naval forces in close coordination with naval forces at sea. Think hammer and anvil or sheep dogs (Navy ships) herding the enemy towards the pen (Marines on and island with missiles). This doesn't only apply to the South China Sea though that might be the main emphasis. It is telling that the US Marines have been talking to Norway about improving the airfield at Jan Mayan Island. Find it on a map and see how useful it could be combined with Iceland and Norway to bottle up the Russian fleet. Imagine Tomahawks and Norway's own JSM, which the Navy and Marines are now buying, placed there. That is where the Marines are going, taking islands often for short period of time, setting up anti ship missiles, shooting in coordination with the Navy and then leaving. Of course this requires amphibious lift from the Navy to accomplish.

Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger said the following in Congressional testimony regarding the current reorganization of the Corps.

“Part of the homework that the Navy and Marine Corps done over the past six months is how we think we are going to need to operate in the future as an integrated naval force and that means the Marine Corps assumes a role that we have not had in the past 20 years which is how do we contribute to sea control and sea denial,”

You can read more here:

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/03/05/to-combat-the-china-threat-us-marine-corps-declares-ship-killing-missile-systems-its-top-priority/

Btw if you think the Marines would ever be placed in the Department of the Army you are delusional. It would never happen but you have to understand the Marines to know that. One of my peeves working with the Marines is they spend ridiculous amounts of of the taxpayers money on aircraft and vehicles that are different from what the Army uses and I sense it is so they are not seen as just another part of the Army. They have the most expensive version of the F-35, are planning to buy a helicopter, the CH-53K that will cost as much per unit as an F-35B and cost nearly as much per flight hour to fly (more than twice the unit cost of a Chinook and three times the cost per hour to fly) all so they can be different from the Army. The two organizations could not be more different either. The Marines delegate and expect their troops to be able to innovate on the fly. The Army is much more top down and structured. Oil and water. I have worked with all the services.

Desert Tortoise,

I work with the Navy Marine Corps team. The Marines can't go anywhere without the Navy. They depend on Naval air power and Navy sea lift to fight. We work closely together with Marines in Navy units and vice versa. Their pilots graduate from Navy flight schools and undergo the exact same training as Navy pilots. They wear Navy wings and are designated Naval Aviators. I am among them btw so I know of what I speak.

The fact that the Marines and the Navy work closely together, especially when engaged in expeditionary campaigns, doesn't warrant that the Marines are part of the Navy. All the transportation ships the Marines rely on for transportation, such as amphibious assault ships, belong to the Navy. 

You also say the Marines depend on the Navy to nurture pilots by having them graduate from Navy pilot schools. So what? It'd be squandering money if the Marines had their own pilot schools. In my opinion, these Navy pilot schools should be integrated with USAFA to save U.S. taxpayers' money. Rivalries among services, hwever, may prevent such an attempt.

All in all, what you mention here and in the rest of your post doesn't support your claim that the Marines are part of the Navy despite yourself.

It may be because there's not so strong rivalry between the Marines and theNavy as observed between them and the Army or the Air Force that many Marines have special solidarity feelings toward the Navy. But it's merely their solidarity feelings, which never warrant that the Marines belong to the Navy. The personal feelings of individual Marines toward the Navy and the hard reality that the Marines are independent of the Navy must be clearly distinguished.

It may be because there's not so strong rivalry between the Marines and the Navy as observed between them and the Army or the Air Force that many Marines tend to think that the Marine Corps and the Navy are the same, engendering the Marines' solidarity feelings toward the Navy even more so. But it's merely their solidarity feelings, which never warrant that the Marine Corps is subsidiary to the Navy. The personal feelings of individual Marines toward the Navy and the hard reality that the Marines are independent of the Navy, organizationally and systemically, must be clearly distinguished.

Some people say things concerned with the bilateral relations are dictated and decided by the fact that the U.S. won the war and Japan lost.  That may be true

But if so, what are those treaties and agreements? Are they just empty words or a façade to camouflage the hard reality that Japan is a half independent U.S. vassal and that Okinawa has been offered to the U.S. as a sacrifice for a military colony?