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I'd call Japan a de-facto nuclear power, as they've easily got the technical know-how and the materials to become one at will. If they ever lost the US nuclear umbrella, I suspect they'd have them in short order. It wouldn't be particularly surprising if they have plans and some parts already in existence for that contingency.


My guess is that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries nearly qualifies as a de facto nuclear power just on its own.


My understanding is that Japan hasn't been to successful in space launch, which also happens to be the main delivery mechanism.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-IIA


For those that can't be bothered:

"The success rate of 95% of the H-2A is on a par with 96.4 percent for the Atlas V of the United States and 94.9 percent for the European Ariane 5"


H-2A is a liquid rocket that is very large, uses finicky cryogenic fuels and takes many days to prepare for launch.

The much smaller Japanese Mu series is a solid space launcher and provides a much better technology base for missiles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28rocket%29


Apparently I was wrong, I stand corrected.

Here's a list of various Japanese launch systems and their success rates.

System - success - fail - percent success

- Epsilon - 1 - 1 - 100%

- GX - 0 - 0 - (abandoned)

- H-1 - 9 - 9 - 100%

- H-2 - 5 - 1 - 80% (or 60%, one of the successes was a partial failure)

- H-IIA - 23 - 1 - 95.7%

- H-IIB - 4 - 4 - 100%

- J-I - 1 - 1 - 100% (then abandoned)

- Lambda 4 - 9 - 5 - 44%

- Lambda 4S - 5 - 4 - 20%

- M-V - 7 - 1 - 85%

- N-I - 7 - 1 - 85%

- N-II - 8 - 0 - 100%




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