A Japan Defense Agency plan to spy from the sky tests the ban on military reconnaissance satellites

Tokyo � 1997 - It's 5:30am in the Japan Sea. A trawler chugs through the dawn toward Toyama. Crammed below deck, dozens of sans-visa Chinese sit on crates of pistols and shabu. Suddenly, out of the haze, a helicopter buzzes the bridge. Snakehead and cargo scurry for cover, while the crew stand bemused and a searchlight stabs the deck.

Too far out to be detected by land-based radar, avoiding known patrol routes and with people paid to look the other way, the crew wonder how they've been discovered, even as a sensor 450 kilometers above tracks them via Japan's first spy satellite.

It is a scenario that may tweak sensitivities about the recently quickened war on illegal immigration. Yet it is also one the Government and satellite companies vigorously tout as a benefit of having access to improved remote imaging hardware.

It is just as likely, however, that the eyes in the sky will be deployed in an entirely different situation, a use the officials and company PR guys haven't said a word about: Food riots in the North Korean city of Mangyongdae have spread all the way to the outskirts of Pyongyang. The official press has cut any reference to the troubles, while Western and Japanese intelligence agents are forwarding reports of a coup.

The not-Dear-yet Leader does not, however, make any significant military moves. Most important, he does not order any Rodong missile launchers into position within striking distance of Japan.

Tokyo responds calmly, urging the new ruler to seek a peaceful solution to the internal unrest. The government's confidence is based on satellite reports showing no movements at known North Korean missile emplacements. A year ago, such information would only be available through (censored) images obtained from satellites operated by U.S. military intelligence. Now, Tokyo gets it first-hand, uncensored, directly from the satellite itself.

Though the hardware in this scenario isn't fancy technologically, it could violate the spirit of the law which governs Japan's space development. A 28-year-old Diet resolution of June 23 1969 says that Japan's version of NASA, called the National Space Development Agency (NASDA), may only use rockets and satellites for "expressly peaceful purposes." Any satellite capable of imaging an immigrant-smuggling trawler may watch Chinese rocket silos or help steer advancing tank divisions away from concentrations of the enemy just as well as snap a Hanami party in Ueno park or even a bicyclist pedaling along Meiji- dori.

Yet Tokyo has not built its own spy satellite. Instead the Japan Defense Agency has signed agreements to purchase the same images from privately owned satellites operated in the United States, skirting both the letter of the law and international sensitivities.

The effort, dubbed the geospacial information system, has Tokyo-based companies tying up with U.S. partners to buy sub-one meter resolution images as early as 1998. Hitachi has signed a deal to resell image data from U.S.-based EarthWatch Inc., which is launching the EarlyBird satellite this month and QuickBird, in 1998.

Similarly, Mitsubishi Corp. is teaming up with a consortium lead by U.S. military hardware giant Lockheed Martin and Eastman Kodak to form Space Imaging Co. to sell similar products. The buyers include the usual range of environmental monitoring organizations and others. But the most important client, perhaps, is headquartered steps away from Roppongi crossing.

"Well it's a kind of secret, but the Japan Defense Agency plans to use the images too," said Masataka Itoh, an assistant manager of Hitachi's defense division.

"The Gaimusho (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) plans to buy directly from Mitsubishi. You should have seen the number of bureaucrats at Hitachi last year after they announced these plans. Provisionally the Gaimusho are favoring Mitsubishi, but the JDA will purchase from either of them as the image quality will be almost equal. They don't care how they get it, it's a question of which one is faster...it's basically a way to get the data cheaper than developing it on their own," said a former satellite engineer who worked on earth observation satellites.

At the moment, Japan must rely on U.S., and to a lesser extent, European satellites for reconnaissance. While U.S. satellites have had up to 14-centimeter resolution, Tokyo has so far been getting imagery from the U.S. (Landsat) and French (Spot) satellites at resolutions of 30 and 10 meters respectively. Also, officials have questioned the willingness of Washington to give them unadulterated images.

The need for such images is widely agreed upon, though it is not often that officials are willing to acknowledge the fact.

But plans to acquire ever more accurate satellite imaging have run against cost limitations, fear of a U.S. backlash and legal scruples.

Officially, in fact, there is no such effort at all.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto created a stir, therefore, when he told the Asahi Shimbun last year that Japan might look into developing its own reconnaissance satellite for national security-related purposes. "Should a concrete need arise," said the prime minister, "we will look into [development] as is necessary."

Top officials in the JDA swiftly countered that funding limits would constrain any such development and that problems would surely arise with the United States. The article, which appeared on May 18, implied that the defense agency had already priced the research and that Hashimoto appeared to be gauging public reaction.

The next day, Jiji Press sent "Fear that a [Japanese] reconnaissance satellite will become a second FSX" out on its newswire, suggesting that while domestic satellite makers had already calculated costs and a development time frame, the JDA was warning that, as in the FSX debacle in the late 1980s, U.S. pressure might kill the deal.

Defense officials also believed U.S. satellite makers would probably demand a share of any such production and that Washington would frown upon any independent military program, while Asian nations would harbor grave suspicions.

NEC took a look at the cost of development and priced it at around $2.4 billion. The life of such a system would be roughly four years, and would require annual upkeep costs of approximately $200 million. The three satellites would orbit at an altitude of between 300-700 kilometers.

Development of a four mini-satellite Global Positioning System due for 2004 was shelved last year by the Science and Technology Agency (STA) following pressure from a U.S. diplomatic team last August and the �500 billion price tag, according to STA's deputy director Ryuichi Sekita.

However, the defense establishment has been pursuing spy satellite technology, but it has done so largely under the guise of environmental research.

"The JDA has been pushing NEC and Mitsubishi hard to develop spy satellite technology for the last seven years. But, the budget isn't enough to deploy anything substantial," said the former satellite engineer.

Instead, NASDA has a project called ALOS, the Advanced Land Observation Satellite, which is ostensibly going to be used for mapping and environmental research. Hidden in NASDA,s environmental observation budget, the satellite will be capable of resolution of up to 2.5 meters. While NASDA scientists marvel at the system's potential scientific contribution and point out that its data will be available to everyone, insiders spy a different purpose.

"It's nothing more than a JDA mission in disguise. It doesn't have any scientific meaning," the engineer added. But as it is taking NASDA more than five years to build a satellite that has inferior resolution to EarlyBird and QuickBird, the JDA are opting for the even more indirect and less problematical U.S. purchasing option, he says.

The JDA is covering its tracks as part of a broader strategy gradually assume more power against its bureaucratic rivals the Ministry of Finance and others.

The Gulf War, the rise of China and the unpredictability of North Korea has compelled the JDA to power up its influence.

These days JDA is playing a key role in Japan's Asia Pacific policy, carefully cultivating ties with the military establishments of other countries in the region," writes Peter Ennis in the March issue of Toyo Keizai's Oriental Economist newsletter.

Historically, the Ministries of Finance and International Trade and Industry have kept the upper hand by packing the JDA's top civilian posts with former MOF and MITI staffers.

The JDA has begun to bypass this, however, by forging close links with the prime minister's office. Hashimoto reportedly counts Defense Policy Bureau Director Masahiro Akiyama among his closest advisers.

The Defense Agency's push extends overseas as well, in the form of an intelligence gathering initiatives. The JDA has systematically dispatched personnel to think tanks and universities in the United States and elsewhere.

The domestic manifestation of this is apparent in the agency's new Defense Intelligence Headquarters in Ichigaya. With a staff of 1,600 devoted to boosting administration, planning, surveillance and threat-assessment roles, DIH also boasts a new spy imagery division.

Repeated attempts to obtain comments from the Japan Defense Agency and the Maritime Safety Agency were unsuccessful, with a JDA press relations official refusing to answer written questions and adding "we have nothing to say", in follow up telephone calls.

This popularist version of Japan's Spy Plans originally appeared in Tokyo Journal Tokyo's leading English language city magazine. Check it out today!