Intelligence Network against China

 

BERLIN/TOKYO (Own report) – In Tokyo today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will conclude a statement of principles on intelligence service cooperation with Japan more closely linking Germany to espionage structures directed against China. According to reports, the agreement will initially regulate the exchange of intelligence information, along the lines of similar agreements Japan has concluded also with the USA, Australia, India, and NATO. Berlin and Tokyo are thereby drawing closer to the US-led “Five Eyes” intelligence network, which launched an international campaign against Beijing last summer. As the Western campaign against China gains momentum, the German government, together with Japan, is also seeking to make a stand against the USA, staking its claim to an independent global policy. Therefore, Berlin is taking joint action, not only with Japan, but with Beijing as well against the Trump administration’s punitive tariffs, as Norbert Röttgen, CDU foreign policy maker explained.

Japan launches first military communications satellite

Japan’s first dedicated military communications satellite was launched on 24 January from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tanegashima Space Center in the country’s southwest, according to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) in Tokyo.

As China Stalks Satellites, U.S. and Japan Prepare to Defend Them

 

 

In May 2013 the Chinese government conducted what it called a science space mission from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China. Half a world away, Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force officer, wasn’t buying it. The liftoff took place at night and employed a powerful rocket as well as a truck-based launch vehicle—all quite unusual for a science project, he says.

In a subsequent report for the Secure World Foundation, the space policy think tank where he works, Weeden concluded that the Chinese launch was more likely a test of a mobile rocket booster for an antisatellite (ASAT) weapon that could reach targets in geostationary orbit about 22,236 miles above the equator. That’s the stomping grounds of expensive U.S. spacecraft that monitor battlefield movements, detect heat from the early stages of missile launches, and help orchestrate drone fleets. “This is the stuff the U.S. really cares about,” Weeden says.

The Pentagon never commented in detail on last year’s launch—and the Chinese have stuck to their story. U.S. and Japanese analysts say China has the most aggressive satellite attack program in the world. It has staged at least six ASAT missile tests over the past nine years, including the destruction of a defunct Chinese weather satellite in 2007. “It’s part of a Chinese bid for hegemony, which is not just about controlling the oceans but airspace and, as an extension of that, outer space,” says Minoru Terada, deputy secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.