A Navy Hornet fighter takes off from the carrier USS John C. Stennis sailing in the South China Sea last month

A Navy Hornet fighter takes off from the carrier USS John C. Stennis sailing in the South China Sea last month

Over the next 15-20 years, the U.S. and China are headed for a confrontation in the western Pacific, with Japan caught in the middle. And China, currently the underdog, could very well come out on top. That’s the unnerving conclusion of a new report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The nine authors of “China’s Military & the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030,” released Thursday, stress that a full-blown shooting war is not in the cards. “The threat is not a war with China,” the report states. Rather, Washington and its close ally Tokyo could find themselves losing influence and disputed island territory to an increasingly unconstrained Beijing that  finds it can “win without fighting” owing to a combination of its own military rise and its rivals’ relative declines.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Global Hawk. Photo: via Reuters

The Pentagon’s biggest, most high-tech spy drone aircraft — one of the hottest items on the international arms market — is the key to a burgeoning robotic alliance among the United States, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

The RQ-4 Global Hawk, a $215 million, airliner-size Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) built by Northrop Grumman, could help this four-nation coalition monitor both China, as it increasingly flexes its military muscles, and North Korea, as it develops ever more sophisticated nuclear weapons.

If, and when, Canberra, Tokyo and Seoul acquire their Global Hawks — all three sales negotiations are still at an early stage — they could all share intelligence with Washington and vice versa. For all would be using the same hardware and software system. The resulting network could monitor millions of square miles of land and sea around the clock and in real time.

Read the rest at Reuters.

National Archives photo.

Seventy years ago a shocked and wounded United States turned to a hare-brained scheme to strike the Japanese home islands in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. Col. James Doolittle’s 16 B-25 bombers began their airstrike on Tokyo from the USS Hornet’s flight deck, a place they were never designed for, far out in the stormy Pacific Ocean. So outlandish was the notion of a carrier-based bomber attack that FDR’s airy fiction, “They came from Shangri-La,” became legend if not received fact.

The greatest effect of the Doolittle Raid, however offers a cautionary tale for the cyber age. The sight of American warplanes over the sacred grounds of the Imperial Palace was utterly mortifying to the Imperial Japanese Navy. Charged with protecting Japan and its possessions, the IJN now found sour the triumphal accolades following Pearl Harbor in the face of this fundamental failure.

In a ferocious response the IJN threw nearly every vessel and aircraft available into scouring the Western Pacific for the carrier task group (whose existence had been tortured out of captured B-25 crews in China). The tremendous volume of signal traffic generated proved to be a gold mine for Cmdr. Joe Rochefort, and the other crack codebreakers of the U.S. Navy.  The vast flood of signal intelligence, to and from each member of the fleet, allowed Rochefort and his team to penetrate IJN communications — including preparations for the assault on Midway. This intelligence picture gave Adm. Nimitz the edge on his opponent Adm. Yamamoto and upon such advantages does history turn.

With each overflight by a foreign aircraft or incursion by a foreign vessel into contested waters, Japanese (and other) defense forces must be careful to calibrate and cloak their responses. With so many sensors and minds attending to activity in the East and South China Seas, the less one tips one’s hand the better. There are very high stakes of national “face,” social trajectories and vast resources in play, which will drive the kind of overreaction the Imperial Navy made in 1942. Practicing patience and keeping an eye on the long game when planes buzz overhead, while very hard, can open the freedom to act wisely.

Reuters photo.

Fifty-two years ago, the United States and Japan signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. Forged just 15 years after a brutal, racially charged war between the two nations, the treaty was an exercise in realpolitik. It was written with an eye toward not only Japan’s security but the containment of communism across Asia. The U.S.-Japan alliance is credited with nipping a resurgent Japanese militarism in the bud, providing a backbone of stability for postwar Asia, and giving the United States a base from which to confront China, Russia, and its satellites.

Today, Japan has fully recovered from the war to become the third-largest economy in the world. The threat of communism has evaporated. Yet despite the alliance’s past successes, it’s hard to conclude that it continues to serve the United States and Japan well. The alliance freezes the relationship in time, forcing both to adhere to antiquated policies. It views the regional security environment through a Cold War lens, distorting how other countries are perceived. Perhaps most importantly, it prevents Japan from evolving into a modern state and accepting the responsibilities that come with it.

Read the rest at The Atlantic.

East Asia. AOL Defense art.

America counts heavily on a cordon of allies stretching from Japan to the north down to Thailand, and across to India, in the highly unlikely event of war with China. But these same allies could draw the U.S. into strictly local disputes in which America does not always have a clear security interest and which could destabilize the region.

Asian powers including India and Japan possess large, sophisticated navies and air arms which, combined with U.S. Pacific forces, could outgun the rapidly-modernizing People’s Liberation Army in wartime. And in peacetime, these same regional powers can help as counters to Beijing’s growing influence.

Read the rest at AOL Defense.

Hayabusa 2. JAXA illustration.

by KYLE MIZOKAMI

Japan’s answer to NASA — JAXA — is slated to add defense and intelligence tasks to its traditionally civilian role. Kyodo explains:

A government panel on space program strategy plans to revise a law to allow the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to step outside its current commitment to peaceful projects and become involved in the use of space for national security.

Following the panel’s decision Friday, JAXA would be allowed to cooperate in developing spy and early warning satellites if the amendment bill is approved during the ordinary Diet session that convenes later this month.

The controversial move, however, is likely to provoke opposition to the military use of space.

The nation’s space program was based on a 1969 Diet resolution limiting it to nonmilitary fields in principle.

But a basic space program act enacted in 2008 stipulates that the program should contribute to security, permitting the use of space for defense purposes. (Link)

Japan maintains five spy satellites: three optical satellites and, as of December 12th, two radar satellites. In the United States, civilian and military space are both large enough to warrant separate programs. In Japan however, it just makes sense to have one agency control both areas. One possible concern with the merger is that military space in general is notoriously secretive and thus a spinner of red tape, which could slow down JAXA’s other civilian-oriented programs.

Along with the recent arms ban export relaxation, the decision to fold military missions into JAXA is part of a broad push towards mainstreaming defense and security in Japan.

F-35. Lockheed photo.

Japan will pick its next jet fighter on Friday. It will be Lockheed Martin’s F-35, and here’s why.

Beneath the often contentious U.S.-Japan basing dilemma is an underlying truth: that armed forces need to train in order to retain their effectiveness. Those based outside of their home countries not only need living space, room to park planes, and places to bury munitions, but they also need geographic space to train. Under the present conditions of the U.S.-Japan alliance, Japan finds itself confronted with the necessity of accommodating 27,000 American service members, their families, bases and equipment.

Under the terms of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, the United States provides Japan with protection; in return, Japan provides the United States with a forward presence in Asia. Size and numbers however, make this problematic. Japan is one of the most crowded nations on Earth, and with 121 million people crowded into an area a third of the size of California, land is at a premium.

As Japan gears up to confront a stronger China, funds for expanding and upgrading the Self-Defense Forces will be limited. The current economic crisis, as well as the need to rebuild communities damaged by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, will ensure that any funding increases will be marginal at best. The SDF will need to be able to do more with less.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

J-20. Via Chinese Internet.

For more than 20 years, the U.S. Air Force had a world monopoly on radar-evading technology — and with it, a huge advantage over any rival. Several generations of stealth fighters and bombers, from the earliest F-117s to the 1990s-vintage B-2s and today’s F-22s, have helped win wars, take down regimes and exert U.S. influence across the globe.

Then something happened. In an eventful two years, the United States has apparently lost its stealth monopoly to Russia, China and several other countries that have already flown their own stealth-fighter prototypes — or might soon. U.S. stealth planes are still better and far more numerous than any other country’s, and will be for a long time. But they’re no longer alone.

The implications could be enormous, for the United States and the world.

Or not. There’s evidence that most countries are merely bluffing with their stealth-fighter plans. In that case, U.S. stealth dominance could continue … only slightly diminished.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

Oosumi class. MSDF photo.

Within 45 minutes of the massive Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami hitting the northeast of Japan on March 11, the country’s Maritime Self-Defense Forces had sortied their first ship from the fleet anchorage at Yokosuka, the destroyer Kurasame, sending it north. With 24 hours, 17 MSDF ships had been sent north. In less than a week, over 100,000 members of the Self-Defense Forces, hundreds of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and more than 50 percent of the fleet was at work in the affected zone, doing everything from search and rescue, to sheltering displaced persons.

As naval support of the Tohoku emergency winds down, it’s a good time to consider how Japan might better address future disaster contingencies, as well as the country’s role in the world. Capitalizing on its recent experiences and those of other countries, Japan can build a pioneering fleet dedicated to disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, for both home and abroad. Such a fleet, under civilian control, would be a welcome sight both in Japan and abroad, in the aftermath of regional catastrophes and in regular visits to isolated Pacific communities that would welcome medical and technical assistance.

Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief missions are typically supported by naval vessels. The March Tohoku emergency, as well as the January 2010 Haitian earthquake, saw multinational fleets sortieing to the assistance of island nations. In both instances, natural disasters disrupted local airports and port facilities, slowing the flow of relief into the disaster zone. The design of naval vessels, such as the USS Essex in Tohoku and the Italian aircraft carrier Cavour in Haiti, made them key to opening up affected areas. Self-sufficient in food and power, and designed to serve a large expeditionary force, such ships are designed to project large amounts of military force abroad into less than ideal conditions. If one substitutes aid and assistance for force, the usefulness of naval designs is readily apparent. It’s no wonder then that Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief missions are typically carried out by naval vessels.

Read the rest at The Diplomat.

Chinese UAV. Japanese MoD photo.

It was another big reveal in a long history of them. Six months after the Chinese air force let the first photos of its new stealth fighter leak online, Beijing’s military has “accidentally” showed off another secretive weapon system: a small drone, apparently used to scout ahead of China’s fast-growing fleet of warships.

Details of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle — gleaned entirely from a snapshot (.pdf) taken by a Japanese navy patrol plane last week — are sketchy, at best. But the new UAV certainly represents a step forward in China’s development of American-style spy drones.

The drone (pictured above) appears to be small, possibly no more than a dozen feet in length. Since it was spotted far from land in the company of Chinese warships, it’s likely that the flying robot is launched from the helicopter flight deck of a frigate or destroyer — though the exact methods of launch and recovery remain unclear. (U.S. naval drones use catapults or take off vertically.) The UAV’s apparent small size implies a limited range and basic sensors, particularly given China’s problems building robots and advanced military electronics.

Read the rest at Danger Room.