Japan aims to start missile defense development with US from 2006
This isn’t really about North Korea it is about Bush’s obsession with China. The United States is purposefully sabotaging negotiations with North Korea and deploying military forces and weapons to the area which are directed primarily against China.
U.S. at War With Beijing, Reports Cite China as No. 1 Threat
Both the Pentagon and the Commission on U.S-China Economic and Security Review cited Beijing as a major threat to U.S. national security. The two reports noted the growing military capability of China combined with its predatory economic policy is aimed directly at the United States. #msg-3379438
Clearly, ending North Korea's nuclear crisis or even eliminating "evil" is not the ultimate goal of the US. What the US really wants, and is exploiting the North Korea "crisis" to achieve, is to deploy sufficient military forces and resources in the western Pacific (especially close to Taiwan) so as to encourage Taiwan independence, thereby checking China's growth as a power that might compete with the US. Not long ago, the US and Japan were talking about using Japan's Shimoji Island as a military base. Only about 200 miles from Taiwan, Shimoji has a "runway capable of safely handling a fully loaded F-15C fighter jet", observed James Brooke in the New York Times. #msg-4722542
A number of Bush administration sounding boards, such as neo-conservative Charles Krauthammer, have openly advocated Japan going nuclear as a way to offset the growing influence and power of China. Acquiring nuclear weapons would be relatively easy for Japan, which has plenty of fuel to reprocess, as well as missiles and satellite targeting systems. #msg-6547899
Japan aims to start missile defense development with US from 2006
TOKYO (AFP) Jun 06, 2005 Japan aims to start developing next year a missile defense system that it has been researching with the United States, the defense agency chief said in reports Monday. The defense agency will include in its budget for the next fiscal year some "several billion yen (tens of millions of dollars)" for the project, Yoshinori Ohno told Japanese reporters in Singapore Sunday.
"We have completed the joint technology research stage," Ohno was quoted by the Asahi Shimbun as saying at an international conference, where he met US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"We are now moving toward the development stage," he said.
"We would like to expand the scope of the missile defense system so we will have the capability to respond to decoys that are used to avoid interceptors against ballistic missiles," he was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.
Production will begin following a five-year development phase that ends in fiscal 2011, he said, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun.
Ohno also stressed the need to develop and produce the interceptor missiles as soon as possible, major media said.
Japan has been in a hurry to build up a missile defense system since North Korea fired a suspected Taepodong missile over the Japanese mainland and into the Pacific in 1998, unnerving the region and the world.
Ohno said Japan and the United States would jointly carry out the first missile interception test for the sea-based Standard Missile 3 interceptor next March in Hawaii.