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Abandon F-16s, seek F-35s: senior military officials COST-CONSCIOUS:The rising costs associated with two F-16 programs might make waiting for the next-generation fighters more palatable By J. Michael Cole / Staff reporter Senior military officers may be considering abandoning a long-stalled bid to procure F-16C/D aircraft from the US because of rising costs and could instead reserve budgets for an eventual F-35B bid, reports said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense maintains that the air force remains committed to acquiring 66 F-16C/Ds, but the rising costs associated with the package — now estimated at US$10 billion, from an initial US$8 billion,...

TOKYO (AP) — Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation's 50nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol. Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomarinuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido went offline for mandatory routine maintenance. After last year's March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor halted for checkups has been restarted amid public worries about the safety of nuclear technology. "Today...

Any discussion of Japan and nuclear power is complicated by that country's history as the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack. That event continues to haunt the venerable Pacific nation. This is an immutable truth that one must accept regardless of which side one is on concerning the legitimacy of the US attack 67 years ago. That said, the Japanese nation nevertheless staked much of its economic destiny on nuclear power. Beginning more than four decades ago, Japan deployed over 50 nuclear power plants to feed the energy needs of its densely packed population. Very limited in domestic...

TOKYO (AP) -- It must have been a wild ride. Japanese media say a Harley-Davidson motorcycle lost in last year's tsunami has washed up on a Canadian island about 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) away. The rusted bike was found in a large white container where its owner, Ikuo Yokoyama, had kept it. He was located through the license plate number, Fuji TV reported Wednesday. "This is unmistakably mine. It's miraculous," Yokoyama told Nippon TV when shown photos of the motorcycle. Yokoyama lost three members of his family in the March 11, 2011, tsunami...

Taiwan’s Navy Gets Stealthy News that Taiwan is set to get some stealthy fast patrol boats is welcome. But without some daring personnel, it might come to nothing. Huzzah! The Taipei Times’ J. Michael Cole broke the story this weekend that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has levied funds to field a squadron of between seven and eleven stealthy Hsun Hai (Swift Sea) fast patrol boats by 2014. Computer generated images depict a sleek catamaran that resembles a smaller sibling of USS Independence, a variant of the U.S. Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship. Each new craft will reportedly displace around 500 tons...

“THE Children of Men,” P. D. James’s 1992 novel, is set in a future where the world’s male population has become infertile, and an aging Britain is adapting to the human race’s gradual extinction. Women push dolls in baby carriages. Families baptize kittens. There are state-run “national porn shops” to stimulate the flagging male libido. Suicide flourishes. Immigrants are welcomed as guest laborers but expelled once they become too old to work. The last children born on earth — the so-called “Omegas” — have grown up to be bored, arrogant, antisocial and destructive. James’s book, like most effective dystopias, worked...

Washington (CNN) -- Roughly half the U.S. Marines on Okinawa will be transferred under an agreement announced Thursday that will reduce the military footprint in Japan, easing local resentments over the amount of land being used by American forces. Some 9,000 Marines along with their family members will be transferred under the agreement, with about 5,000 being sent to Guam as part of a military buildup on the U.S. territory in the Pacific, according to a joint statement released by the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee.

Kyodo: N. Korea May Conduct Nuke Test within One Week With the international community keeping a close eye on North Korea's next move after its attempted rocket launch earlier this month, speculation is rising that the regime might be very close to conducting a third nuclear test. Citing a Russian security official Japan's Kyodo News reported Wednesday that Pyeongyang's nuclear test was imminent. The official said that although no details can be revealed, there is concrete background backing up such speculation. He added that Russia would be very disappointed if North Korea went ahead with the test just 100 kilometers...

TOKYO (AP) — A teenager who lost his home in Japan's devastating tsunami now knows that one prized possession survived: a football that drifted all the way to Alaska. Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the ball with the youngster's name inscribed on it is one of the first pieces of debris from last year's tsunami to wash up on the other side of the Pacific.

Journalists walk on the 450-meter (1,476 feet)-high observation deck of the Tokyo Sky Tree during a press preview in Tokyo Tuesday, April 17, 2012. The world's tallest freestanding broadcast structure that stands 634-meter (2,080 feet) will open to the public in May. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)

I received a copy of this email today from a trusted source: Saul, There is a little discussed chance that ALL the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima reactor accident site (4 reactors) might catch fire from a 70% within a year, probable NEW earthquake at the site in Japan. An earthquake will topple (or crack) the exposed to air, spent fuel (water) pools, resulting in complete loss of remaining critical cooling water in the pools, causing radioactive fires of the fuel rods in the spent fuel pools, emitting 85 times the radionucleides emitted from the total of the Chernobyl...

TOKYO — Japanese high-tech firm Hitachi Wednesday unveiled an electric motor that does not use "rare earths", aiming to cut costs and reduce dependence on imports of the scarce minerals from China. The prototype 11 kilowatt motor does not use magnets containing rare earths and is expected to go into commercial production in 2014, the company said. Hitachi started work on the project on 2008. Other Japanese firms, including automaker Toyota, have been working towards the same goal, spurred on by high prices of the minerals. Permanent magnet motors usually contain rare earth such as neodymium and dysprosium and are...

More shake, rattle and roll on the other side of the planet. 8.7 this morning; Tsunami warning for Indonesia, not for Japan. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000905e#summary

Japan has threatened to shoot down the rocket if it passes over Japanese airspace. In 1998, North Korea sent a missile over Japan's main island. Japan and other countries in the Asia-Pacific appear to have failed to persuade North Korea to abort a rocket launch planned for as early as this week. Reports suggest that the region could be further unsettled by a rumored third nuclear weapons test by the regime. The North insists that the launch, which could come on any morning between April 12 to 16 and will coincide with the centenary of the birth of the country's...

Two days ahead of North Korea's announced window for a rocket launch, countries are deploying vessels and planes to address the situation. An NHK helicopter on Tuesday spotted a US aegis cruiser near a southwestern island in Okinawa Prefecture. The USS Shiloh was stationary at about 80 kilometers northeast of Miyako Island. The area is near the projected flight path of what the North calls "a satellite", a de facto missile. Aegis vessels are equipped with interceptor missiles and radars capable of tracking ballistic missiles. The USS Shiloh belongs to the US Navy 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka near Tokyo....

North Korea has moved into place a long-range rocket for a controversial launch later this month - amid reports it is also planning a nuclear test. Pyongyang says the Unha-3 rocket, which it plans to launch between 12 and 16 April, will put a satellite into orbit. But opponents of the move fear it is a disguised long-range missile test. Meanwhile, South Korean officials say new satellite images suggest the North is preparing to carry out a third nuclear test. The images show piles of earth and sand at the entrance of a tunnel at the Punggye-ri site, where tests...

Chinese Navy Employs UAV Assets By James C. Bussert, SIGNAL Magazine April 2012 The Middle Kingdom learns from the example—and the hardware—of other nations. China’s navy has begun using unmanned aerial vehicles as part of its blue-water operations. At least one type has been photographed by foreign reconnaissance aircraft, and other variants have been reported. Not only has China been displaying an assortment of models at air shows, it also is incorporating advanced U.S. unmanned vehicle technology into current and future systems. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) since it built copies of U.S....

We noted days after the Japanese earthquake that the biggest threat was from the spent fuel rods in the fuel pool at Fukushima unit number 4, and not from the reactors themselves...

There are ways to reduce the threat to stability that an emerging superpower poses NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so...

Japan completed on Thursday the deployment of its ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptors in Okinawa Prefecture to prepare for North Korea's planned rocket launch sometime next week. With the arrival of the Maritime Self-Defense Force transport ship Kunisaki carrying the PAC-3 at Ishigaki Island, the interceptors are now deployed to four locations in Okinawa that also includes its capital Naha, Miyako and Nanjo. Japan is bracing itself for the rocket launch after North Korea announced last month that it will launch an ''earth observation satellite'' to mark the centennial of its state founder Kim Il Sung's birthday on April 15....