Japan on Tuesday adopted its first space security initiative to utilise the frontier for defence over the next 10 years.

The roadmap is based on drastically expanding the use of space for national security, ensuring the safe and sustainable use of space, and creating a positive cycle of space security and industry development.

“For the sake of national security, we will dramatically scale up the use of space systems and ensure the safe and stable utilisation of the domain,” said Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a government meeting.

According to the initiative, the government also vowed to strengthen collaboration between the Defence Ministry and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to support private companies engaged in critical space technology development.

But the Japanese government’s apparent attempt to accelerate the integration of the country’s defence and civilian sectors may provoke a backlash from opposition parties.

It will seek to criticise a series of relatively hawkish security policies hammered out by Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Analysts pointed out that under the pretext of “security”, Japan continues to strengthen the so-called “counter-attack capability” in various fields.

Meanwhile, it is widely believed among the Japanese public that acquiring such capability completely violates its exclusively defence-oriented policy. 

(Xinhua/NAN)