Free Republic

A government panel will urge Japan to allow its military to help allies that come under attack, in a major reversal of the country’s ban on collective defense under its pacifist constitution. […] Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants Japan to play a greater role in international peacekeeping and step up its defense posture, mainly because of potential military threats that Japan sees from China and North Korea. As China’s influence rises and that of the United States fades in the region, Japan is trying to expand its defense alliance outside of its “cornerstone” ties with Washington and has signed defense...

North Korea is stepping up pressure on the US and South Korea to cancel a major military exercise due to begin next month, with a senior official warning that the drills will push the peninsula “to the brink of war”.

Enlarge Caption TOKYO: Chinese ships sailed through disputed waters off Tokyo-controlled islands on Sunday as diplomatic tension between Tokyo and Beijing intensifies. Three Chinese coastguard vessels entered the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters off one of the Senkakus, which China claims and calls the Diaoyus, at about 10:00am (0100 GMT), Japan's coastguard said. It came days after a diplomatic battle over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to a contested war shrine reached the UN Security Council, with China and Japan accusing each other of threatening stability.

The purge of Jang Song Thaek associates has reportedly continued with the execution of a senior Central Administrative Department official in North Korea’s ruling party, a Japanese news agency reported Tuesday. Choe Byung Hee, a division chief at the Central Administrative Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, has been shot to death following the execution of Jang Song Thaek’s associates Ri Yong Ha and Jang Soo Kil from the same department, the Asia Press agency reported, quoting a local government official in the northern Ryanggang province of North Korea.

Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted President Obama for the foreign policy portion of his State of the Union address Tuesday night. “The world is literally about to blow up,” the South Carolina Republican told Roll Call. “The world as I know was not remotely described by the president.” “Syria is a contagion … Iraq is disintegrating. The whole region is moving toward chaos, and we’re doing nothing. We’re talking about limiting drones?” he continued. “I hope he will leave a residual force in Afghanistan [so] they can do the job, because if he doesn’t,

The special operations branch of the Korean People's Army, tasked with conducting asymmetric warfare against the United States and South Korea, is reported to comprise 200,000 soldiers, according to the Seoul-based Chosun Ilbo. As the South Korean government's defense white paper noted in 2010, North Korean special forces consist of 60,000 specialized troops and 140,000 light infantry soldiers. General Walter Sharp, the former commander of the South Korean-US Combined Forces Command stated that the infantry soldiers are lightly armed and trained to infiltrate deep behind enemy lines to destroy key installations and engage in black ops. Specialized troops may infiltrate...

While most Western military experts focused their attention on the production of the Shenyang J-15, China's first carrier-based fighter and the launch of larger surface combat vessels including two Type 054A frigates and one Type 052D destroyer, the official website of the People's Liberation Army Navy said that the Type 056 Jiangdao-class corvette is in fact the ship class that the nation produced the most of in 2013. The Beijing-based Sina Military Network indicated that ten Type 056 Jiangdao-class corvettes had been launched this year to replace the older Type 037 submarine chasers. Mounted with two triple torpedo tubes, the...

Production of the sauce fell 5.1 percent in the five months that ended on Nov. 30 from a year earlier, which partly reflected stockpiling before Kewpie Corp. hiked prices by as much as 9 percent in July, followed by Ajinomoto Co. in August. The cost of living in Japan, excluding fresh food, climbed at the fastest pace in five years in November, even as salaries continued a tailspin that started in June 2012.

Although some consider Chinese fighters to be little more than less impressive copies of Russian designs, the J-20, China's first fifth-generation stealth fighter, has the potential to become one of the world's most iconic military aircraft like Japan's Mitsubishi A6M Zero during World War II, according to Aireview, a Japanese magazine covering military aviation news. Before the Zero first saw action against the Russian-built I-15bis and I-16 fighters operated by the Republic of China Air Force over Chongqing in September 1940, most Western military experts had a similar view of the Japanese fighter as people have towards Chinese fighters today,...

New Delhi: India is set to become the first country since World War Two to buy a military aircraft from Japan, helping Prime Minister Shinzo Abe end a ban on weapons exports that has kept his country's defence contractors out of foreign markets. The two countries are in broad agreement on a deal for the ShinMaywa Industries amphibious aircraft, which could amount to as much as $1.65 billion, Indian officials said on Tuesday. However, several details need to be worked out and negotiations will resume in March on joint production of the plane in India and other issues. New Delhi...

US presses Japan to hand back 300 kg of plutonium IANS | Tokyo January 27, 2014 Last Updated at 04:34 IST Japan's key ally the US has been pressing the country to return more than 300 kg of mostly weapon-grade plutonium that it exported to Japan for research purposes during the Cold War era, media reported. The plutonium that is stored at a fast critical assembly in Tokaimura in Japan's Ibaraki prefecture could be used to produce 40-50 nuclear weapons, reported Japan's Kyodo News, citing unnamed Japanese and US government officials, according to Xinhua. Japan has strongly resisted the demand...

Despite initial high expectations, the Indian Air Force appears to be souring on a joint development deal with Russia for a new fifth-generation fighter jet, according to the Business Standard, a major Indian business publication. The Russian prototype is "unreliable, its radar inadequate, its stealth features badly engineered,” said Indian Air Force Deputy Air Marshall S Sukumar at a Jan. 15 meeting,

“If they get a chance to really look at the F35, they would want it," Laird said. "The Indians have requested 3 times to talk to people about the F-35B, which is the true revolutionary aircraft -- and the administration never answered the mail, they've blown them off, it's typical of the Obama administration. We love our allies except if you want anything."

Preface: Leading Scientist On Fukushima Radiation Hitting West Coast of North America: “No One Is Measuring So Therefore We Should Be Alarmed” American sailors on the USS Reagan got really sick after having snowball fights with radioactive snow blowing off of the coasts of Fukushima. University of Alaska professors Doug Dasher, John Kelley, Gay Sheffield, and Raphaela Stimmelmayr theorize that radioactive snow might have also caused Alaska’s seals to become sick (page 222): On March 11, 2011 off Japan’s west coast, an earthquake-generated tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant resulting in a major nuclear accident that included a...

NEW DELHI: Injecting some much-needed thrust to its rapidly expanding strategic partnership with Japan, India has invited the Japanese forces to take part in this year's edition of the Indo-US Malabar naval war games that have riled China in the past. India and Japan on Saturday also decided to hold another joint working group meeting in March to discuss the sale of Japanese US-2i ShinMayva amphibious aircraft to Indian Navy, apart from ramping up defence ties through regular joint combat exercises and military exchanges as well as cooperation in anti-piracy, maritime security and counter-terrorism. Both the Malabar war games and...

A new Boeing Co. (BA) surveillance aircraft deployed to Japan last month isn’t yet effective at hunting submarines or performing reconnaissance over large areas -- two of its main missions, the Pentagon’s weapons tester found. Flaws in the $35 billion program included the plane’s radar performance, sensor integration and data transfer, Michael Gilmore, chief of the Pentagon testing office, wrote in his annual report on major weapons, which has yet to be released. He said the new P-8A Poseidon exhibited “all of the major deficiencies” identified in earlier exercises when subjected to more stressful realistic combat testing from September 2012...

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe isn’t overly reassuring about the prospects for avoiding a military confrontation between his country and China. Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Abe acknowledged increasing tensions over issues including military spending and their territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea. And he said he didn’t have a plan for calming things down. + “Unfortunately with China we don’t have a clearly explicit roadmap,” Abe told a group of journalists. He cited China’s broad defense buildup and muscle flexing in the South China Sea as aggravating factors. +...

The last Japanese soldier to come out of hiding and surrender, almost 30 years after the end of the second world war, has died. Hiroo Onoda, an army intelligence officer, caused a sensation when he was persuaded to come out of hiding in the Philippine jungle in 1974. The native of Wakayama prefecture in western Japan died of heart failure at a hospital in Tokyo on Thursday, his family said. He was 91. Onoda’s three decades spent in the jungle – initially with three comrades and finally alone – came to be seen as an example of the extraordinary lengths...

A Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for three decades, refusing to believe World War II was over until his former commander returned and ordered him to surrender, has died in Tokyo aged 91. Hiroo Onoda waged a guerilla campaign in Lubang Island near Luzon until he was finally persuaded in 1974 that peace had broken out, ignoring leaflet drops and successive attempts to convince him the Imperial Army had been defeated. (AFP)

PLA mobilizes 100,000 troops for N Korean border exercise Staff Reporter 2014-01-15 10:20 (GMT+8) Nearly 100,000 Chinese soldiers and thousands of vehicles from the 16th and 39th Army Groups of the Shenyang Military Region have been mobilized for a winter exercise near the North Korean border to prepare for a potential crisis over the Korean peninsula, reports the Seoul-based Chosun Ilbo. The exercise launched on Jan. 10 is being held in the border region between the Changbai mountain and Heilongjiang river, the paper said. The drill is a normal military exercise to train soldiers to fight in winter and long-range...