Posted on 07/12/2015 8:43:43 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
YOKOHAMA, Japan — Some of Japan’s biggest companies, best known for motorcycles, washing machines and laptop computers, are pitching a new line of global products: military hardware.
Quiet-running attack submarines. Amphibious search-and-rescue planes. Ship-mounted radar systems that use lasers to help pinpoint approaching enemies.
After a ban on weapons exports that the Japanese government had maintained for nearly 50 years, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Hitachi, Toshiba and other military contractors in this semipacifist country are cautiously but unmistakably telling the world they are open for business.
A maritime security exposition here in May was the first military industry trade show in Japan, organizers and participants said. And it was the first anywhere to feature the Japanese manufacturers.
“I’ve never seen them,” said Maj. Gen. Mick Fairweather, a procurement specialist with the Australian armed forces, who regularly attends such expos around the world. “It’s going to be a growing thing.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted the prohibition on military exports last year, part of a loosening of restrictions on Japan’s military power that were put in place after its defeat in World War II.
While much of the Japanese public opposes the changes, Mr. Abe says they are long overdue. The growing might of China, Japan’s close but not always friendly neighbor, has added force to his argument.
Mr. Abe is counting on increased military-related trade to help cement ties with other countries in the region that share Japan’s wariness of China. Southeast Asian nations and India are high on the list of potential customers.
Japan hopes Australia, a fellow Pacific democracy, will be a receptive market for Soryu-class submarines, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Shipbuilding. The subs, which cost about 50 billion yen, or $410 million, use ultraquiet diesel-electric drives that make them hard for adversaries to detect.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sadly, the three countries most in need of all this are out of luck.
Taiwan because of the international arms embargo.
Philippines and Vietnam because they can’t afford it.
Arms sales are very very bad when the United States does them, according to the New York Times and the rest of the Left.
Japan, you have seriously disappointed me.
Had a Japanese, Browning .22 lever-action rifle once. It had a beautiful finish and functioned flawlessly.
If I were them, I’d arm up as much as I possibly could with an increasingly hostile China in my back yard.
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