[jriemer]

Bones,

AmericanInTokyo and I have been talking about this subject for months. He's an very astute NK watcher and together, we have been posting articles about Japan's march toward "space independance" in the last year. Their most recent accomplishment is launching a two-part recon satellite over the Yellow Sea with the capabilities of our KH-11 spy sats. Japan Launches 2 Spy Sats

Since the Japanese launched their first satellite into orbit in 1970, they had the capability to launch and hit a single target most anywhere in the world. Their current crop of boosters have had multiple-insertion technology (that can be used for MIRVing) for quite some time. All they would have to do is choose a warhead; however, they are pacifists by constitutional design. If provoked, the ones with the most to fear are the NKs and their masters.

[bonesmccoy]

The Japanese have previously demonstrated much of the techniques and capabilities that we have in space.

I have been following the AIT threads, which are quite interesting.

thanks for your comments...

[The Pheonix]

Japan and all small island states with high population densities have an intrinsic disadvantage when having an all-out nuclear exchange with big continental land-mass nations like Russia and China

Russia, China, and the USA could disperse their population and industrial centres

But Japan, Britian etc would suffer much, much more damage due to a higher concentration of population and industrial centres---say 85% of JApanese poplation and industrial capacity destroyed, vs 30% for Russia

just my 2 cents worth