(Kyodo News International via NewsEdge) Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has drafted a bill to enable Japan to develop its own high-performance reconnaissance satellites for defense purposes to better detect foreign military moves, a major daily reported.
The LDP plans to submit the bill either to an extraordinary Diet session convening September 26 or to a regular Diet session convening next January, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.
Japan launched its third intelligence-gathering satellite on September 11, but the current legal constraints kept the government from giving it sharper resolving powers than those widely used in civilian technology fields, the paper said.
Critics say the satellite's resolving power, which can identify an object of one meter, is not enough to detect signs of missile firings by North Korea and other countries, it said.
Since Japan ratified a 1967 UN treaty on space activities, including the principle that the use of space is limited to peaceful purposes, the Defense Agency and Self-Defense Forces have remained unable to develop their own reconnaissance satellites to detect foreign military moves, the report said.
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