On May 27, 1987, the Japanese Police Department arrested Ryuji Hayashi, director of the casting department, and Hiroaki Tanimura, director of the machine tool division of Toshiba Machinery Corporation. Toshiba Machinery Company had conspired with the Norwegian company Kongsberg to illegally export high-tech products such as large milling machines to the former Soviet Union. Ryuji Hayashi and Hiroaki Tanimura were accused of being directly responsible for this high-tech smuggling case. This case caused an uproar in the international public opinion. This was one of the military-sensitive high-tech smuggling cases that caused the greatest harm to the security of Western countries during the Cold War - the Toshiba incident.
The Soviet Union urgently needed high-precision machine tools
In the late 1960s, the spy network established by the Soviet intelligence agency in the confidential departments of the U.S. Navy continued to obtain information about U.S. nuclear submarines tracking Soviet submarines. Soviet submarines made so much noise that the U.S. Navy could detect them 200 nautical miles away. If the Soviets could not eliminate submarine noise early, no matter how many submarines they built, they would not be able to escape the fate of "falling apart" in a war. . To eliminate submarine noise, advanced propellers must be manufactured, and this requires computer-controlled high-precision machine tools. High-performance machine tools are products strictly restricted by the "Paris Coordination Committee" (composed of 15 countries including NATO countries and Japan). The committee clearly stipulates that CNC machine tools with more than three axes are strategic materials and are prohibited from exporting to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other countries. *Exports from communist countries. In order to change the dangerous situation faced by its own submarines, the Political Bureau of the Soviet Union Central Committee directed that high-tech precision processing technologies should be obtained from Western countries at all costs.
The KGB secretly planned with Japanese and Norwegian companies
At the end of 1979, the Soviet KGB finally found an opportunity after careful planning. As the deputy general manager of the All-Soviet Technical Machinery Import Company, Osipov, a senior KGB official, connected with Japan's Itochu Trading Company, Toshiba Corporation and Norway's Kongsberg Corporation through Kumagai, the director of the Moscow office of Japan's Wako Trading Co., Ltd. Under the temptation of huge commercial interests, Toshiba and Kongsberg agreed to provide four MBP-11OS nine-axis CNC large-scale marine propeller milling machines to the Soviet Union. The contract value reached 3.7 billion yen. This milling machine, which is about 10 meters high, 22 meters wide and weighs 250 tons, can accurately process huge propellers, greatly reducing the noise emitted by submarine propellers.
In order to deceive others, the Soviet Union did not order a computer control system to match the nine-axis milling machine from Japan. Instead, it asked the Norwegian state-owned weapons manufacturing company Kongsberg Trading Company to provide Toshiba with four NC-2000 machines. The digital control device was finally assembled by Toshiba and exported to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union also signed a separate secret contract with Kongsberg Company for this purpose. This CNC device is usually used with two-axis machine tools that are not subject to "Batumi" restrictions, but as long as the wiring and circuits are changed, it can be used as a CNC device for nine-axis machine tools.
The Soviet military found a treasure
One month after the signing of the secret agreement between the Soviet Union and Japan, Toshiba applied for a license to export to the Soviet Union from the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The application concealed the high performance of the nine-axis machine tool and falsely claimed that the product was a simple TDP-70/110 two-axis machine tool used to process hydraulic generator blades, thereby obtaining an export license from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
These four precision machine tools arrived in the Soviet Union smoothly and quickly came into use. By 1985, the new submarines produced by the Soviet Union were only 10% as noisy as the original submarines, allowing the U.S. Navy to detect them only within 20 nautical miles. In October 1986, a U.S. nuclear submarine collided with a Soviet submarine because it failed to detect the noise of the Soviet submarine it was tracking.
The Dongchuang Incident aroused turmoil
In December 1985, one of the parties to the secret agreement between the Soviet Union and Japan, Kumagai Kumagai of Japan's Wako Company, resigned due to a dispute with his employer and became angry. Exposed the Toshiba incident to "Batumi" Chairman Genil Taurego. Taurige immediately asked Japan to investigate the matter. When Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry investigated Toshiba, Toshiba denied the matter flatly, using false pre-signed contracts and other technical documents as evidence. After further investigation, in early 1987, the Americans had real evidence that the Soviet Union obtained precision machine tools from Japan. Under pressure from the United States, the Japanese Metropolitan Police conducted a surprise inspection of Toshiba, seized all relevant secret information, and arrested those involved.
In the following months, the U.S. government and opposition parties were furious, repeatedly condemning Japan and imposing sanctions on Toshiba. The then Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone had to apologize to the United States, and Japan also spent 100 million yen to publish full-page "confession advertisements" in more than 50 newspapers in the United States.
In addition to assuring the United States that similar incidents would never happen again in the future, the frightened Norwegian government also closed Kongsberg’s Moscow office and stopped all ongoing transactions with Eastern European countries. trading. Soon after, Norway expelled a Soviet diplomat and three trade representatives for engaging in espionage activities to steal scientific and technological intelligence.