Japan on Tuesday launched
its first military communications satellite to boost the
broadband capacity of its Self Defence Forces as they reinforce an island chain
stretching along the southern edge of the East China Sea. Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the military is
operating further from Japan's home islands as it takes on a bigger role
to counter growing Chinese military activity in the region.
The satellite lifted
off from Japan's Tanegashima space port aboard an H-IIA rocket at 0744 GMT
and successfully entered orbit, said a spokesman for Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries, which builds the launcher.
The satellites is one of
three planned so-called X-band satellites, that will quadruple broadband
capacity, unify a fractured and overburdened communications network and allow
communications across more territory. Japan and China are
locked in a territorial dispute in the East China Sea over a group of
uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
The two countries are also at odds over the exploitation of gas fields that
straddle exclusive economic zones claimed by both.
Japan, the main U.S. ally in
Asia, is concerned that a recent increase in Chinese militaryactivity in
the area is a sign it is looking to extend its military influence
from the neighboring South China Sea as a challenge to U.S. maritime
dominance. In the nine months from April to December, Japan scrambled
fighter jets to counter Chinese aircraft approaching Japanese airspace 644
times, almost double the 373 times a year earlier, Japan's Ministry of
Defence announced on Friday.
In December, China's first
aircraft carrier, the Soviet-built Liaoning, accompanied by several warships,
sailed through the passage between the Japanese Southwestern islands of
Mikado and Okinawa and into the Pacific for what China described as
routine exercises. The Tuesday launch
marks the successful resumption of a program that was halted last year by an
embarrassing mishap.
The first of the three satellites,
which was meant to go into space from Europe's Space port in French
Guiana, was crushed during a flight from Japan after a blue tarpaulin
covering its transport box blocked valves meant to equalize the internal air
pressure as the cargo aircraft descended.
The accident damaged sensitive
antennas, government sources told Reuters in July.
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