One of the most important strategic development technologies in space is to be able to swarm LEO, MEO and GEO with ASATs, spy, communications and defensive satellites.

Presently we are in the era of a slow-motion arms buildup with various nations including Japan flexing their muscles with cramming more capability into smaller and smaller satellites. In line with this last June’s Basic Plan for Space Policy focused Japan’s sites on  microsatellite development by universities, and UNIFORM follows on from a 4.1 billion yen FIRST program investment by the Cabinet Office in university-based nanosatellite development, which ends in 2013.

The result is the UNIFORM (University International Formation Mission) program explained below.

It is a fact that the brilliant Shinchi Nakasuka (here is a nice article at JAXA), who is the man most behind Japan’s strategic microsatellite development at Tokyo at the ISSL and UNISEC already got most of that money for FIRST and now my best guess that it will get the lion’s share for UNIFORM.

But there are actually several things going on with UNIFORM, according to my knowledge

1. UNIFORM was needed because of the failure of MicroStar, the former version run by JAXA, which was not successful.

2) Any diplomatic offensive using the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF) is welcome by Japan as a classic MOFA strategy- a regional “balancer” against and diluter growing Chinese soft space diplomacy. In particular the Japan-originated APRSAF got the reputation of being a bit of a talking shop compared with Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO) which has the reputation of getting things done.

As METI already secured a big tranche of yen for the ASNARO constellation, which is NEC’s answer  to Melco’s IGS constellation, it would seem that Japan is going gangbusters to develop small-bus technology for intelligence gathering, observation, communication and other applications.