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Japanese Stealth Fighter Announced as 'Return of the Zero'
reporter writes "According to a news article by the Associated Press, Tokyo has begun developing an indigenous stealth jet fighter that will be deployed in 2016. Mitsubishi, the prime contractor, has already developed a full-scale model, of which several pictures have been accidentally leaked to the press. The model is named 'Mitsubishi ATD-X"'. A laboratory of the French government has evaluated the "stealthy-ness" of ATD-X, and given it a high rating. Will ATD-X achieve air superiority over the F-22, which Washington refuses to sell to Tokyo?"
Well, given that the F-22 has made more than one appearance in Japan, I am certain the Japanese government is interested. However, this raises more than a few issues, specifically related to technology and sociopolitical issues as well. The JDAF (Japanese Defense Air Force) has been so named as it has been a Japanese Constitutional issue that their armed forces are for defense only and not aggression. The interesting thing about stealth technology however, is that it is almost exclusively used for aggression rather than defense if you play your strategy according to tradition.
I got a quick tour of the F-22, but no pictures allowed of the F-22 during my last visit up to Hill AFB and the F-22 is making the rounds and is being explored for possible basing in other countries, but there are technology sales issues with the aircraft as it will be almost impossible to strip the sensitive technologies out of the aircraft and make it "saleable".
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I'm pretty sure that if Japan had F-22s, they'd be based at more than just Tokyo. Why are we treating entire countries like they're just one city? I can see the 'Washington' here, since that's probably where the refusal came from, but if it's going to some place other than Tokyo (but for the purposes of Japan the country).. why refer to it as Tokyo?
Let's say things like they are. Even if Japanese were the worst plane builders in the world, they'd not sleep, eat, and would beat themselves bleeding, rebuilding the damn plane until it's better than the US one.
BANZAI!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Vanilla Ice to Japan: Drop that zero and get with the hero.
I, for one, welcome our new Japanese overlords. Well, they'll be able to take back Sakhalin from the Russians, anyway.
Several years later in the Balkan war, our own stealth fighter was downed reportedly with Russian technology. Those Russians even took part of the aircraft fragments despite US forces to destroy the entire plane.
No wonder the stealth fighter (B2 bomber) still has to be "protected" while on bombing sorties. Question is, protect it from what, if it cannot be seen? I hope the Japanese are not becoming as incompetent as we can sometimes be.
I wonder if the Japanese will make a VSTOL version like the Americans did with the F-35 JSF to fly from their first of several Aircraft Carrie.... Um Destroyer DDH 181 Hyuga (weight and size is just below the UK Invincible class aircraft carriers)
if they are ahead then why are they bugging us to buy the stuff?
While the external frame is very important to any airplane, stealthy or not, what matters is what goes into the plane and what materials is it built out of. You can't just build a life-size carbon fiber chassis and call it a stealth plane if you put a whole heap of non-stealthy stuff inside.
Stealth is a defensive technology anyway, meaning your fighter is stealthy only until a single weakness is found. You can't really say at this point if this is a project that will succeed. Or if it's even meant to succeed. I mean, would you put it past the Japanese to force the US hand to sell them to F22 by threatening to build a competitor which they might sell to god-knows-who to finance the development. the previous sentence is an artistic liberty I took to get my point across, i'm sure the F22 is more advanced than the F15 in areas other than stealth.
And stay awake in English class next time.
... what does it transform into? And at which high school will they be recruiting the pilots?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
with China becoming increasingly hostile Japan probably feels the need to load up with high tech weapons fast so they can beat China down.
As I said before being rudely modded down: "Any technology that can kill Chinese is a GOOD thing!"
Do you have any clue about what you are talking about?
Do you even understand Toyota's production method?
Do you even understand any of the factors that dictate the lifetime of a military airframe/engine?
Stop living in a fantasy world and welcome to the real world.
Japan is not 5-10 years ahead of the USA in electronics/processors and no where near 20 years ahead of the US in manufacturing. Prove to me that these numbers don't just come out of your ass. And don't go citing one off examples, because I can show you one off examples to further my point to, go look at the whole picture instead. None of your statements are true in any manner.
Not to mention, you can't just *make* something last 10x longer with some simple tech, developing a turbine that can last 10x longer then one in an F22 or an airframe chassis that can handle the stress placed on it requires huge advances in material science that require very large budgets. You think the JSDF budget comes anywhere close to the US military budget in materials science?
In case you were interested, modern American cars are just as reliable as newer Japanese cars.
"Oh no wait, Its the Japanese they are obviously smarter then us for some reason so they can come up with these things that we can't possibly fathom because we are incompetent Americans."
Go learn more, then talk.
I'll leave it to others to continue this thought with facts, but the pictures from the link look _real_ familiar. Sort of like how unoriginal that Soviet space shuttle looked.
There is no substitute for experience.
Japanese engineers killing themselves in a futile attempt to make their first home built fighter in over 50 years the best will hurt their effort to make their second fighter better.
It is analogous to the Indians (obviously dot Indians not Casino Indians) effort to produce better jet engines then GE. They are doomed to failure as they set unrealistic goals for a first effort. They will continue to purchase GE engines for the foreseeable future.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Civilian production capability and military one is complete different concept. Japan has no experience of developing their own military plane after WWII. The best experience they have is F-2, which is an enlarged F-16 co-developed with Lockhead Martin.
The "new Zero" is nowhere sexy enough of a name. I propose that it gets called the "Zig".
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
But I just had another thought as I read the posts here: what if the U.S. gov't really does have a lot of faith in Japan as a world citizen and an ally, and this is just a shitty way to get them to apply themselves more vigorously to the problem of defending the "western" world. Maybe we like the thought of a militarily-active Japan as a counterweight to China's ever-increasing political, economic, and military heft. Maybe somebody thinks "this will get them off their asses."
I dunno. Just a thought.
In fact Russia and its sphere of influence could get big benefits from cooperation with Japan. Russia has the resources, natural and human. Japan has the technology. As the US tries to hold on to more of the oil in the Middle East and South America, at what point can Russia make Japan an offer it will be hard to refuse? Look at a map of the Arctic, look at the sea ice pattern in August/September and see how far Russian resources are from the Japanese islands by, say, 2030. An awful lot of US interests could be affected in quite unexpected ways by global warming, especially when those nuclear subs have far fewer places to hide and have to travel much further under open water to get to them.
Pining for the fjords
Or perhaps 'synecdoche'. Stay awake in typing class, next time.
Bullshit!
Stealth is not "exclusively" nor "almost exclusively" for aggression, unless you watch too much "Star Trek". The ability to put fighters in the air as a defensive measure and keep their presence unknown or harder to find means they will live longer to defend. D E F E N D or D Fucking Fend.
Fighters have always been primarily about defense, bombers have been offense. Yes, fighters defend bomber groups, but most of the time they are designed to go out, meet the invaders, and take them down, i.e., the other guys' bombers or attack aircraft.
Our ability to hide our defenders until they strike is paramount. It works in poker, boxing, chess, capture the flag, etc.
So, you were "almost" right. Which, makes you W R O N G.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Can you name a single Japanese company that sells advanced microprocessors/microcontrollers? Of the top ten semiconductor companies only 2 are Japanese and neither do significant processor research. And no, Sony does not.
What are you talking about? You're pulling numbers out of your ass.
You know, there's already a word for this cute little expression. 'Stealthiness'.
...am I the only one thinking Macross and Robotech???
But what about the transforming capabilities? How many vehicle modes does it have? Will it have just the standard 2-arms and 2-legs robot mode, or will there be a third hybrid form that looks like a crab or a squid, or something?
The sensors for the F22, for example, are made by BAE Systems E&IS, and Northrop Grumman in the united states. The US military has a vested interest in insuring that key components of military hardware are made domestically. That way they can ensure the technology will not fall into enemy hands, and ensure that war abroad will not affect supply of military hardware.
It is very much like building your own state of the art, deep submicron IC fabrication plant. In the early days it was relatively easy to stay current, and in the 1970's even some universities could have a bleeding edge fab. As the technology gets more complex, the costs go up asymptotically, and the small players have to fold.
Many canadians remember the "Avro Arrow" the last fighter jet built here. To bring it into production would have taken up the entire defense budget, and once you have built enough fighters to satisfy the needs of your own air force, how do you keep the team together to maintain it and build enhanced versions? You either sell your aircraft to foreign nations, (often unstable and/or war torn 3rd world dictatorships that have disproportionately large military budgets) team up with foreign nations to increase your market and share the costs. (like the newest eurofighter) No matter how good the arrow was, (the project is still controversial) it couldn't be built economically without selling it abroad.
The Israeli's tried and failed with the Lavi project. Technically they could have done it, but it didn't make economic sense no matter how badly they wanted control and ownership of their own weapons platform.
Other countries such as Sweden and France manufacture high tech fighters - the French were notorious for selling their all over the world. I predict the project will probably fold after spending billions of dollars, and just maybe cranking out a factory prototype or two.
The US can do it simply because they are such a large country with the world's biggest military budget. Even they have run into problems where the production run was completed, yet they didn't want to lose the technology and expertise when the production line shut down and the team disbanded, so wound up buying more aircraft than the air force wanted.
My rights don't need management.
It's about time Japan got back into the jet fighter game, considering they haven't built an all-indigenous fighter since the Mitsubish F-1 (a relatively unimpressive fighter in the class of such technological heavyweights as the J-22 Orao and the Nanchang Q-5). The Mitsubishi F-2 was just a copy of the F-16 airframe with Japanese avionics.
I am so freaking happy /. has a moderation system.
While I can not speak with entire certainty about the last 60 years, I can say that there are a lot of people who feel that Japan is only an "ally" because they were forced to surrender in WWII due to a) the US dropping nukes on them (one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki ... which were the only two the US had with months required to build another one, but the Japanese did not know that) and b) Russia had finally declared war on them.
Japan entered World War II with the intent of conquering Asia. They invaded China (without ever formally declaring War since both China and Japan feared it would cause their trading partners to stop supplying them) for it's resources and eventually The Philippines which was an act of war against the US. The Japanese were notorious for committing atrocities. Germany gets most of the attention for the Holocaust but the Japanese were also quite brutal. Usually we hear about the suicide pilots who would crash their planes into enemy ships but they also raped and tortured enemies and their "creed" (for lack of a better term) was "fight to the death". They would then mutilate bodies of killed enemies stuffing their genitals in their mouths etc. This was done to demoralize the Allied troops.
Now personally I do not believe the Japanese are still like this. Their surrender in WWII was with many conditions imposed by the Allies. They initially rejected the offer but after Russia declared war on them and the 2nd nuke was dropped on Nagasaki they felt they had no choice. My history isn't 100% up to snuff but I believe that the Allies worked with the Japanese government much the same way the current US government is trying to work with Iraq to instate a new government and new, democratic, systems etc. However, those who are young can not understand the positions of the veterans and their immediate descendants who passed on their strong hatred and mistrust of the Japanese for their utter brutality in WWII. It takes time for things to change. I don't think Japan really is an "ally" of the US. I think the US government still strongly mistrusts the Japanese and wants to keep them on a very short leash to make sure that the events of WWII do not repeat themselves.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's called "synecodoche", look it up.
Fixed that for ya.
Does it really matter? It's all made in China anyway!
By any measure US stealth was an overwhelming success in the Balkan War. There was one (count 'em) loss out of 1000's of stealth sorties. No aircraft flies with absolute impunity. The question is, does stealth help accomplish the mission. The answer is a resounding yes, even against the best Russian air defenses.
an ill wind that blows no good
Come on... It is Japanese...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Nice mock up of an F22 but, there's more to an airplane than its outer shell.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
For stealth, you'd never want to have edges perpendicular to the line of flight, there's just no way that they wouldn't have a strong radar return right back where you don't want it. This so-called mockup, while it may have some features that are stealth, is clearly not the final deal.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Your comment sounded great and I would have given a mod point had I not already posted to this thread - until I got to the last sentence, which doesn't make sense (to me) whatsoever...
It seems that unmanned craft may be the next wave. They don't have to be as expensive and reliable if there is no on-board pilot. If Japan got an early beat on robotic planes, they could control the market, perhaps allowing them to make stronger deals with the US.
Table-ized A.I.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party under Koizumi supported commisioning these fighters, but the rival anti-war Democratic party is graining seats. If these trends continue, by 2016, Japan won't be budgeting enough for its military defense to actually purchase these concept fighter jets from Mitsubishi.
Sure it will own the sky but will it have thrust vectoring? will this thing turn on a dime?
History repeats itself.. over and over again. The landscape might change, but power and people and the reasons for war don't. The only problem is that we are getting better and more efficient in killing.
I'd say this news is right on schedule. The generation that remembers WWII has (mostly) passed away and all of the lessens learned are forgotten or being dismissed. For the past few years I've been reading news articles out of Germany about removing many of the safeguards that were put in place after Hitler's reign, along with a drastic increase in 'national pride.' Japan had sworn off a military, yet the reasons why are lost today.
In the year 2040 our world will experience yet another horror.
That must be the reason that stealth is needed for defense
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
You should have asked if the plane can combine with others to form a superior robot!
Sheesh, what's wrong with you realists?
LOL! Ask the Israelis about the effectiveness of Russian air defenses. It is barely worth the effort to blow up Russian military technology anymore.
an ill wind that blows no good
So looking at the model, it doesn't look like there's much room for internal bomb/missile bays. Exterior hard points defeat the entire point of stealth, so that's out of the question. What kind of payload is this thing expected to be carrying? There's not much point to building a fighter plane that can't carry any weaponry.
An interesting article on how perseverance and attention to details allowed the Serbs to down the F-117 stealth craft:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.aspx
Table-ized A.I.
Interesting that they use the F-22 as the standard against which the new Japanese fighter is compared. Although the Raptor was more expensive than the F-35a (US Air Force version of the JSF), contrary to popular belief, the F-35a is expected to outperform the F-22 in air-to-air combat due to the fact that the F-35 has more current (although less fancy) tech.
Why doesn't it make sense ? The US government has time and time again referred to itself as "THE super power". I'm not trying to knock the US, I'm just trying to offer a (possible) explanation for choosing not to sell F-22's (and possibly other military technology) to Japan. Not only that but US was a key player in developing Japan's government post-WWII. It makes complete sense (to me) that the US would look at the country as something to be controlled.
Maybe the fact that they don't supply any helmets with the thing is a hint :-).
Sorry, too much caffeine..
Insert
Even small rockets are able to evaluate the situation and hurl their warhead to their target hoping that it will hit it, if they decide they wont make it until the target- since 1970s (exocet).
we are in the era of the rocket. shoulder launched stuff can bring down aircraft. evolution of microprocessors and ai algorithms made aircraft obsolete.
even if you make an aircraft stealthy as you can do, there will be other venues to make rockets track your craft - sound, gps, visual lock and so on.
but, the defense complex is still trying to reap taxpayer cash with 20-30 year long zillion dollar worth contracts of aircraft and etc. and brainwashing to that effect. why ? cash of course.
Read radical news here
The Aviation Week article included some plausable speculation, that one point, perhaps the major point, for the indigenous Japanese effort is to grease the way for an F-22 buy.
Back in the late 40's/early 50's, after German/UK scientist Fuchs leaked US atomic technology to the USSR, the US cut the UK out of any atomic technology exchange. The UK exerted considerable effort to craft a H-bomb in house, and successfully tested a few in 1957. At that point, the US cut the UK back in on joint H-bomb development. The British bomb was a dead-end design, but it demonstrated a capability that the Russians had by that time matched, so there was no benefit to continuing the embargo.
In
Avaiation Week suspects that the Japanese might be making the same point, that "we can do this on our own if we have to". Perhaps this will aleveate fears in the US that an F-22 sale (and licensed production in Japan) will give Japanese (and later, Chinese) engineers access to designs and materials they'd otherwise have to put their own time and money into. Once their time and money have created the expertise, what's the point?
Luke, help me take this mask off
I don't see it as very likely scenario - to say the least - that Japan is going to go back to WWII behavior, and I'm a very practical human being without scruples to eat the horse I'd been riding just the other day or (too many) illusions about the world.... ;-)
> The Japan of today is not the Japan of the 1930s, and even if it were, it simply is no longer in any position to do much about it.
Culture barely changes a very tiny little every HUNDRED years.
It's a freaking DECEPTICON!!!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If they are openly showing the 22 right now, that means they are two generations ahead in what they really have as the "ace in the hole" craft. They'll have some numbers of deployed next generation, and a smaller number of working prototypes at two generations out, while three out is still being developed.
So, speculate on those. Whatcha think?
http://www.alert5.com/2007/09/more-on-japanese-stealth-video.html
YES. And, as a bonus, it'll be:
- Cheaper to produce
- Lighter
- Higher quality
- Made from recycled materials
- More reliable and more durable
- More fuel efficient
- Featuring electronics technology 5 years ahead of the USA
Even better: all the stylin' aftermarket bolt-ons you can imagine!
NOTE: If you're laughing... So did Ford, GM, Chrysler, and every major American home stereo manufacturer.
Honestly. I clicked on this hurriedly, expecting to find the resurrection of the Street Fighter franchise.
Sigh.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
Have you been reading the news lately? The Japanese have been leaking information like a sieve to the Chinese. They're pretty thoroughly penetrated. Giving the F-22 to the Japanese would be the same as uploading all of the plans to Beijing. I'm not a fan of the USA sharing its latest, greatest tech with anyone. England, maybe.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No, my side should have the very best equipment, technology, and training, so that it can overwhelmingly crush and subdue any opponent. That is how it should be. We don't go to war to fight — we go to win — as quickly and with as few casualties as possible.
You, doofuses, are so good at "seeing the other side" of every story, you lose sight of your own side. War is not "fair" — you must be confusing it with sports...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Referring to decisions from the head office by the name of the city that head office is located in is pretty much the norm.
Honestly, this is one of the dumbest complaints I've ever heard on slashdot, and I've been here a while.
This thing looks like the result of a Raptor and Fulcrum one night stand.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
You have it backwards. It was the Japanese who wanted a conditioned surrender (one condition), and they surrendered before the nukes were dropped. However, the US rejected the surrender, as they wanted unconditional surrender. It was all politics, and had little to do with actual military necessity at the time.
Japanese wanted control of Asia long before WWII or even WWI. The Russo-Japanese war was the kicker. At the time, it was European and American powers controlling Asia (which they did by force, such as in the Spanish-American war).
They developed the F-1 prior to the F-2.
The F-22 has it's own radar of course, it would be stupid to cripple the jet by not having one. However in normal engagements, it isn't going to be used. WE already see this with the F-15/16s. The F-15s impressive radar (at least when it was designed) now basically just sits off all the time, AWACS directs it instead. The F-22 works the same way, only with even greater data communication from the AWACS, and greater stealth. The idea is that opposing jets just start blowing up, that's the first warning they have that there are fighters in the area. The only radar they ever pick up is the AWACS which, while unwelcome, isn't really something you can do anything about since they are able to sit a good distance back from the battlefield and you can assume they have an escort.
The mini-AWACS capability is more or less a backup. What happens if your AWACS is shot down? What if you are in an area that it is unavailable? What if the mission is too far away? Previously, the case then was "All planes have to use their own radar and do it like we did before AWACS." Now there's another option: A single F-22 can play mini-AWACS. It's not as good as the real deal, and it does expose that F-22, but it is better than the alternative.
In case you were interested, modern American cars are just as reliable as newer Japanese cars.
Not according to Consumer Reports, who tests this stuff.
If they can forgive us for dropping two nukes on them, I think we can forgive them for what they did to us in WW II.
Japanese were also quite brutal. Usually we hear about the suicide pilots who would crash their planes into enemy ships but they also raped and tortured enemies and their "creed" (for lack of a better term) was "fight to the death". They would then mutilate bodies of killed enemies stuffing their genitals in their mouths etc. This was done to demoralize the Allied troops.
Now personally I do not believe the Japanese are still like this.
Uh, did you bother to do *any* research before you arrived at this conclusion? 20 seconds on google turns up a few hundred thousand pages documenting Japanese people stuffing genitals in mouths.
Sheesh, what's wrong with you realists? Well duh! That's like asking if it's gonna have a landing gear.
You can't take the sky from me...
The US and previously the USSR, now Russia and China, have bene in a perpetual race to build the best fighter for over 50 years now, from the days of the F-86 and Mig-15, the F-4 and Mig-21 and F-15 and Su-27/30. Each time, one side has made a major improvement and then the other side has scrambled to keep up. The Mig-15 was the best until the US cougt up with the F-86, then the Mig-21 proved to be more nimble than the F-4 and along came the F-16. The USSR built the Mach 3 Mig-25 to counter a possible Mach 3 XB-70 US bomber and the US built the F-15 to counter that. The the Soviet built the Su-27 to counter the F-15 and the Mig-29 to counter the F-16. Since the late 80's the US has been working on the F-22, which has been both the most advanced jet fighter ever and also the most expensive. It was so expensive that the actual number pruchased has been reduced by two thirds, costnig about $100 million a piece. It is also so sensitive that it will likely never be exported.
To ctach up in this never ending race, Sukhoi in Russia has been working on a similar stealth aircraft to the F-22, called the PAK FA for many years now, and the first example should be flying next year, and Shenyang and Chengdu in China have been working on similar designs, the J-xx and J-13, but I doubt that any of these weapons will ever be used against any of the other. The Russia and Chinese jets are just as sensitive, security wise, as the F-22 is. There is much more chance that the Indians using the PAK and the Pakistanis, using the J-13/14 will duke it out amongst themselves, if Russia and China ever sell the weapons to them, being as sensitive as they are, than any of those fighting against the F-22.
These aircraft are so expensive that losing just one, be it in combat or to accidents mean that you've just lost some $100 million dollars in the case of the F-22. The fact that they will almost certainly not be used in combat against any foe that a F-16 couldn't cope with means that they, along with incredibly expensive stealth ships, stealth submarines, etc, are mostly expensive white elephants, flying around, doing a lot of impressive flight demos, and then eventually being scrapped in 30 years or so when they reach the end of their service lives.
I personally think that while the Japanese could certainly develop one of these aircraft on their own, and might very well do so in the face of the J-13/xx and the PAK if the US doesn't sell them the F-22, I think that a lot of what the Japanese are doing is simply bargaining to get the US to sell them the F-22. The costs of developing an advanced stealth fighter are not to be laughed at. However, as soon as the Russian PAK and Chinese J-13/xx are in active service, the aura of invincibility of the F-22 will decrease, and then I suppose we'll move on to round 6 of the never ending race to waste people's money and lives.
We don't even need to fight. We should be smarter than that by now. Longer version of my opinion at facebook group "The New Times" or myspace.com/thenewtimes
If an F15 costs $30m, I'll bet you can get a bi-plane built today for about
$10k. Let's call it $20k due to overhead.
So let's not waste our money on all those modern fighters and *really* expand our air force with WWI bi-planes! Think of how big the USAF will be!!
Brilliant!
Of course, this thread started by wondering if it was smart to force Japan to apply their own expertise to a big military project. If they really do match or best the F-22, then I guess that technology would be what was "shared" with China. No good options here, apparently.
It has to be added, though, that saying you'll match the F-22 and actually doing it are two very different things even for a nation as advanced as Japan. They're not exactly world leaders in airplane manufacture right now.
Japan didn't enter World War Two, World War Two is an invention of Western historians (I prefer to think of it as the coincidence of two massive regional conflicts, with one great power competing in both regional theatres). Nor was Japan's original intent to claim all of Asia (that would come later - you're wrong in asserting that it began with these goals).
Japan sought to conslidate its hold on Manchukuo in order to develop resource extraction for the presumed second round of the Russo-Japanese War. The forray into North China was begun as a 3 to 6 month expedition to smash the KMT forces harassing the troops stationed in Manchukuo in order to create a military buffer zone to ensure consolidation could happen peacefully. They became mired in China, which drained their resources. The United States cut off exports to Japan, which strangled their military operations for aviation fuel and metals. After negotiations wih sinophile Secretary of State Hull went sour (he insisted that the Japanese withdraw from their Asian mainland colonies, which were obtained before Mukden), they decided that they needed to claim resource rich, developed territories held by European and American colonial authorities (The Duth East Indies, the Philippines, Indochina, etc). Assuming America would come to the aid of it's European allies, and it's Filipino colonial subjects, Japan launched at Pearl Harbor to force a settlement and keep America out of the war by decimating it's Pacific fleet.
So your history is very wrong. What about your comments on brutality?
Japanese soldiers did engage in vivisection, abuse of prisoners, toture (they loved to waterboard), and murder. What about American soldiers? One to one Americans treated Japanese POWs better, to be sure. But Americans engaged in the mass murder of civilians with the Tokyo firebombing raids, the decimation campaign (51% of all urban infrastructure in Japan was destroyed; most historic sites outside of Kyoto are reconstructions), and of course the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So you don't really hold a unique position.
Keeping the Japs on a short leash, huh? This comment is dripping with the same racism that has dogged the Japanese ever since 1878. When the Japanese decimated the Russian fleet in a surprise attack at Port Arthur, the US media was ecstatic with praise. When it happened to the US, the Japanese suddenly became sneaky and untrustworthy. This kind of sentiment led to the incarceration of all Americans of Japanese descent. After wWorld War Two, the same insults were lobbed at the Japanese by American anti-Soviet hardliners. The US government during the reverse course phase of the reconstruction, after China had fallen to the PLA and Russia had developed the bomb, the United States insisted that the Japanese revoke Article 9, but the Yoshida faction in Jimintou insisted that they retain it. They were accused of abusing the goodwill of the United States, and passing the buck on defense. During the 1980s, we heard frequently of how unfair the Japanese trade practices were; such comments were used further to marginalise and stereotype them.
If you think that Japan is somehow going to rapidly expand to grab a 19-th century, pre-Chinese nationalism empire you are both ignorant and stupid. The goal of the empire was to foster resource autonomy and to protect against the possibility of being annexed themselves by France, Britain, or America (because America was ALSO a brutal colonizer, just read up on the Filipino rebellion). Now that era is long past, and Japan is more content to trade under the aegis of the US-Japan securty treaty. Japan is more interested in leading East Asia economically (the neo-Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).
Are the Germans suddenly going to become Nazi's again? Is the US jump-start the African Slave Trade all over again? Is Britain going to invade and conquor India again?
What's that you say? No?
That's what I thought.
I agree, I don't think I chose the best words. What I meant was that the US wanted to impose certain terms on the Japanese post-surrender, and I chose the word "conditions". The Japanese could not fathom the concept of unconditional surrender and wanted conditions (as you pointed out) but the US rejected their terms and wanted unconditional surrender. I chose the term "conditions" to refer to the allies' "terms". I can see where that choice of wording would lead to confusion and I even anticipated it but at the time I couldn't think of any better words. I suppose the word "terms" is the most appropriate and what I should have used.
I don't think anything of the sort. My only post was to try and give one possible explanation for how the US government currently feels towards Japan.
None of what I said reflects my personal views and opinions and I tried to make that clear. Of course there are alternate views and I will be the first to accuse the US government of being racist. In fact, I am not American, nor do I harbour any resentment or ill feelings toward the Japanese. I think you completely misinterpreted my post. I was offering speculation as to why the US government will not sell military weapons to Japan. Nothing else.
I'd recommend reading Downfall, by Richard Frank, to get the facts straight.
The Japanese were interested in a conditional surrender with four conditions: keep the Emperor, no occupation of Japan, evacuation from occupied areas to be done by Japan on a Japanese schedule, and war crime trials of Japanese to be conducted by the Japanese. That's the minimum that would be accepted by all members of the Liaison Council, and that council had to act pretty much unanimously. The Allies offered a conditional surrender, although with rather harsh conditions. The Japanese did not surrender before the nukes. They decided to use the Soviets as intermediaries, but never could decide what to ask for. There were some unofficial feelers through other countries, which the Japanese government stepped on hard.
Given that the Japanese weren't surrendering, and couldn't even agree on a proposal to start negotiations, the US really did have to use whatever means available to force surrender. Some people claimed that Japan was going to surrender in a few more months. I regard these claims as seriously optimistic, given that even in the circumstances there were plenty of Japanese willing to stage a coup to prevent the surrender. (Even so, delaying the surrender by three months would have killed far more civilians than the nukes did.)
There has, of course, been a lot of anti-American propaganda on the subject. Don't fall for it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
synecdoche is the correct spelling
The US sells arms all over the place, to every little Islamic terrorist known to man. Cheney's been running arms to both Iran and Iraq for the last couple of years without really hiding it. Even Israel got busted for exporting nuclear technology to Iran.
Why in the world would the US balk at selling to Japan? They're a lot less threat to the US than most of the people to whom the US sells weapons. Heck, the US sold its best avionics to an Islamic theocracy, and still does -- Saudi Arabia.
The Japanese actually didn't sign the 1929 Geneva convention. Which is basically crazy. That convention prevents torture of PoWs and that PoWs get adequate food and medic supplies. And if you want to know about Japanese war crimes Google "Rape of Nanking". It's a pretty sickening event. And as there are holocaust deniers there are Rape of Nanking deniers too or people down playing that incident.
So are the Japanese the same brutal people they were in WWII? I doubt it. Would I like to find out? Hell no! History has already told me what they are capable of.
Plus what have the Japanese done in terms of reparations for WWII? Nearly nothing. They still have presidents visiting shrines with war criminals. Do you have Chancellors visiting Auschwitz?
Historically though, it's the Japanese that are more cruel and kill more people. Prior to WW2 Japan had probably killed more people in Southeast Asia than Germany came close to... and not on some "grand plan" like Germany, but just routine raping and pillaging. While Japan is our Ally and seems to be flying straight, China has a lot of bad history with them to get "payback" for. Chinese antagonism against Japan would be there even if China was 100% democratic and capitalist tomorrow.
the short leash is that if the US doesn't sell tactical planes to Japan they have no way to seriously fight back should the Chinese launch short range missiles against them. Things are heating up and Japan has been a very good kid for the last 60 years. There's no reason NOT to trust them as an ally except to keep them dependent for political leverage in the region.
Exactly what I was getting at. Finally. The issue is that Japan is very good at implementing technology if they put their govt leverage behind it. They're designing for public problems 20-50 years out and what Japan would look like then. They do it with pubic support and corporate backing and enthusiasm that the USA just doesn't get.
Unlike US defense contractors, the Japanese companies that would be tapped for military contracts have track records for excellent execution of their products... there's no reason to think that wouldn't extend to military production as well. People forget that the Japanese production methods are universal, and ingrained in nearly all their management of anything. It's only in the USA that we have some backwards idea that military products are hard to make. We just allow crappy management to spend vast sums of money and not deliver the product on time and on budget. That's not the case over there, the corporate and pubic ethos is much different bad business is not tolerated like it is here.
You force Japan's hand and you could have "gundam" level hardware in 10 years. It's not that hard, cars are built with robots faster and more accurate than you need to fight with, Asimo is only missing time resources, not tech, it's a matter of not being a necessity to put the pieces together in that fashion. All of the best CNC/robotics is built in Germany or Japan... ironically both countries that can't produce actual weapons so their companies find other things to make money.You really don't understand just how far behind the USA is in manufacturing technology. Sure we have the brightest people, but we lack govt, corporate, and personal discipline to get results. We allow the "free market" to determine our fate and allow crazy ass backwards things in our business society. What companies like GM are touting as "great advances" in the last 15 years are all things Japanese were learning and doing 40 years ago. It's not the ACT of making things, it's the discipline of LEARNING to make things that they excel at. The US still thinks business is "cowboys and indians", Japan thinks of business as "ants marching".. China is a cloud of locust.... Japanese and German companies outsource to the USA because WE are the "unwashed" cheap labor. Japan and Germany dominate the market of making the machines that MAKE the machines we use every day. The USA lost that crown about 5 years ago, we buy more advanced tooling than we sell now. The USA has lost the ability to DELIVER on innovation, the Japanese are hitting their peak but nobody talks about it over here.
It's not just Japan. We won't sell it to ANYONE, including Australia.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
More likely that the Japanese only asked to buy F-22s so that the US would say no, so that they could continue to enjoy the benefits of free American military protection.
Building their own stealth jets is probably a prestige move, maybe a business move if they want to export them.
Buick is the most reliable make along with cadilac mercury and lexus tied for second place. So obviously they do not do as well as you believe. In fact Acura and Lexus are the only japanese company that are in the top 10 makes by reliability.
Gosh~! The aircraft design shares similarities as FFR-31 Sylphid in Japanese Anime series Sento Yosei Yukikaze (Battle Fairy: Yukikaze). If you're a big fan of fighter planes, this is a must watch for you!
By any aircraft from any country? In the next 20 years? Are you kidding?
No enemy aircraft in the sky now or in the next couple of decades will ever see an F-22. Other specs don't really matter.
is....who the fuck WRITES these things?
It will probably follow the trend in recent indigenous Japanese aircraft I.E. Over weight, more expensive, less capable, shorter ranged, outdated clones of established US/EU aircraft. (See their F16 alike and SPECAT Jaguar clone).
:P
Plus, it's not like their copying the F23!
You are right in that Japan has never come to grips with the havoc they wreaked in China and Korea and all the occupied countries.
But you are wrong in two crucial aspects: their constitution and the emperor.
The 1930s constitution (which actually came from 50 years before) required the presence of army and navy ministers at cabinet meetings to have a quorum. This gave the military a veto over the government -- they held it up to blackmail many times. They can't do that today.
The emperor has been a figurehead in Japan for 1000 years. Everything was done in his name. He has held almost no power in all that time. As proof, when he finally spoke up after the two atom bombings and told the ministers they had to surrender, he made two separate recordings of the surrender speech, and one copy was stolen by junior officers in an attempted palace coup -- they claimed the emperor had been mislead by his senior officers and they were revolting to free him.
The emperor is much less important as a figurehead now than he was then. I would guess he is about as important to the government as Queen Elizabeth II is to Britain's parliament.
Infuriate left and right
You realize that Japan already occupied islands off the North American continent before we even attacked them right? They were already showing their version of a manifest destiny and had control over much of the pacific, from islands off the coast of Canada and Alaska(then Russian controller) to the South Pacific.
If you are referring to the two Aleutian islands they captured, that was six months after Pearl Harbor. The war was well under way by then. And to be pedantic, yes we had already attacked them many times by then, mostly carrier raids including the famous Doolittle B-15 raid on the home islands in April 1942, but also including surface ship attacks and submarine attacks.
Alaska was bought by the US from Russia in 1867. Japan didn't even open up to the outside world until 1854 and the Meiji restoration which began their "modern" era didn't happen until 1870. They were not even remotely capable of taking any foreign islands off the American coast before 1867.
Did you get your history from a box of cornflakes?
Infuriate left and right
It's not likely that the Japanese government will fund the development of an operational stealth fighter akin to the F22, says the Ares blog article referenced in the original post. The Japanese are just doing R&D. They're not reckless enough to develop a full program to build a F22 clone (and associated weapons and other infrastructure) when in a few years the US will probably relent and sell them the real thing. And since they will remain under the US defence umbrella for the foreseeable future, there's no need for them to rush to develop their own F22 clone either.
U.S. Public School system. I am proof the system does not work.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Just emit the right wavelength and find a dark spot moving in the sky (i.e. absence of normal atmospheric backscatter). Then launch a rocket with multi-spectral guidance system. It'll either see it visually, or through a radar (when it's close), or in infrared (it's warm, it burns fuel, you see). Check out C-400 Triumph. It shoots down anything and everything, whether it's in the stratosphere or close to the ground within the radius of 250 miles. Russians have no qualms selling this stuff to Arabs and the Chinese, either, so don't expect F-22 to ever be deployed over UAE or China. Or at least don't expect it to be deployed for long.
"Japan entered World War II with the intent of conquering Asia. They invaded China (without ever formally declaring War since both China and Japan feared it would cause their trading partners to stop supplying them) for it's resources and eventually The Philippines which was an act of war against the US."
Its true Japan was engaged in a long and brutal war with China but they invaded Manchuria in 1931 long before there was anything resembling a World War. They were seeking to gain control of a resource rich area to fuel their industrial and military expansion, in much the same way the U.S. seized the American Southwest from Mexico and the Philippines from Spain. All the European colonial powers seized their empires from someone else and use them to propel their economic success. Japan was just a little late joining the club, stepped on the toes of the old school colonial powers, and were especially brutal about it. All of the western colonial powers, including the U.S. and Japan had been carving up, exploiting and abusing China for the better part of a century prior to 1931. This exploitation of China led to the Boxer Rebellion in 1899 for example when the Chinese tried to drive out all the foreign devils who were exploiting them, German, British, American and Japanese alike,
There is some irony if you look at modern Manchuria because Japan has returned there in a huge way today, and is doing basically what it wanted to do in the 1930's but today its regained control of the region just by spending money and building factories there.
The point everyone, especially in America, seems to forget is that the U.S., the U.K. and the Dutch provoked Japan in to expanding the war in China in to the World War in the Pacific, and the attack on Pearl Harbor was anything but a surprise. They did this by embargoing oil supplies to Japan, Roosevelt on July 21, 1941, followed a few days later by the British and the Dutch. The Dutch and British oil fields in what is now Indonesia were of particular importance to Japan and the spigot from them was shut off. The Japanese basically considered that the opening salvo in the war in the Pacific. The embargo left Japan with no alternative but to seize all the oil fields in the Pacific otherwise their military and their economy would have been starved for energy, or they would have had to submit to demands from the U.S. British and Dutch which would have been capitulation in their book which is something they would never have considered. So they drove the British, Dutch and U.S. out of the eastern Pacific by seizing Singapore, the Philippines, the East Indies and its oil fields. Once again the U.S. had seized of control the Philippines itself in the Spanish American war, a war largely fabricated by the U.S. and the Hearst newspaper enterprise, to fuel an American expansion just like Japan invading Manchuria. The U.S. had also been fighting an insurgency in the Philippines for several decades early in the 20th centure, a war full of American atrocities, including torture. Japan's atrocities in China were probably on a larger scale but America didn't really have any moral high ground to stand on after what it had done in the Philippines in the early 20th century and all the western powers had done in China in the 19th century.
I think mostly what I'm saying is your post is a little bit steeped in anti Japanese propaganda originated from World War II. The allies had a lot of skeletons in their closets too and they weren't the champions of freedom and goodness their propaganda painted them to be. They won the war and it just so happens the people that win wars always paint themselves as good and right, and the people that lose usually get tarred as monsters. Stalin killed more innocent people than the German holocaust or the Japanese in China ever did but the Soviet Union wasn't on the losing end of the war so we choose to forget it.
As for Japanese brutality much of this perception ca
@de_machina
You make valid points. But instead of debunking his points using only arguments, why dont you offer some facts instead of just making blanket statements questioning his facts. Where are those examples that define the whole picture you speak about? Don't tear his point apart without evidence. You sound like one of those snotty intellectual extreme left or right wingers who thinks s/he is smarter by pedantic dismal of someone's arguement then adds some insulting cunt-like remark such as, 'Go learn more, then talk.' Yet, you haven't taught me anything. It seems by your argument you don't know shit. You have just made me dislike your fucking arrogance. Lighten up.
An AC posted a good rebuttal about the causes of the US-Japanese conflict in the Pacific in 'ww2', which I totally agree with. Japan was already heavily engaged in China long before the 'world war' came along, and the USA pretty much goaded Japan into reacting, by the blockade that they established.
.. and the subsequent rapid rebuilding of both Japan and Germany .. was all aimed to sending a big message to the Soviets, and creating strong pro-Western allied buffer zones right on the doors of the new expanded Soviet empire.
Looking at the conduct of the war in the Pacific that resulted from that, there is always this depiction that it was a very nasty affair, and the blame for that is also layed squarely on the Japanese for their unusually enthusiastic level of brutality. I can only really comment in depth on the conduct of battle between Australian and Japanese forces, having served as an Australian soldier myself, and having spoken first hand to ex-diggers who fought against the hated 'japs'.
The stats pretty much speak for themselves when you look at Japanese casualty figures in any of those battles. Most battles in ww2, you typically see the losing side suffering 20-30% dead, 50% wounded / POW. However, the Japanese have these 90+% killed, and hardly any POWs. That is not just because they were superhumanly heroic and fanatic fighters - its simply because WE preferred to murder them in cold blood rather treat them as fellow soldiers. Even then, the majority of casualties on both sides was not due to enemy fire - it was due to losses from disease and malnutrition. Believe that or not.
At least with Australian operations, battles in the Pacific were based on patrol-patrol-patrol-and-avoid-contact, followed by prepared ambushes against massed targets lacking food, ammo and clean water. No interest in taking prisoners who you consider not even human. Just machine gun them down till they stop groaning. This was not a campaign of flags, bugle calls and steadfast lines of brave soldiers facing off against each other. It was a campaign of patience, stealth, disease, starvation - and systematic murder.
Its just war - you cant go around believing that one nationality fights a fair and just fight whilst the other one fights dirty. Hollywood loves that idea, but it doesn't happen like that in real life.
Even before WW2 ended, the focus shifted to containing the USSR in anticipation of the cold war to come. The Nuking of Japan, along with the wanton destruction at Dresden
Interesting comment re Japan 'wanting control of Asia'. Considering that even after a stunning series of military victories against the Russians on the Asian mainland, the subsequent treaty of Portsmouth (which was pretty much dictated by the USA), left Japan stripped of any meaningful gains from that conflict.
.. setting the course for the subsequent 'Great War' of 1914-1945.
Its good to see more recognition of the RussoJapanese war in the West now - its always been a big deal in the East, and its now being looked at as 'World War 0'
...either.
Some did, particular Admiral Yamamoto, but many in command in the imperial navy still believed that the battleship was the ultimate naval powerhouse, and strategized accordingly (hence, the massive investment in battleships, such as, but not limited to, the Yamato class battleship, and the Kantai Kessen doctrine). Even at the Battle of Midway, the Japanese put the carriers in front, and the battleships in the rear, presumably to swoop in for the kill.
If anything, it could be argued, that the Americans realized it first, albeit due to the actions of the Japanese, by wiping out most of America's battleships, leaving the United States with mainly carriers.
Speaking of that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantai_kessen
This has far more references than I could whip out.
I agree. When your government would go out of its way to hand you grenades to kill yourselves, surrender probably isn't on the top of the list. I actually just watched some of that Ken Burns documentary today. They had actual footage of Japanese civilians jumping off cliffs after the battle of saipan. It was pretty horrific.
The Japanese battleships at Midway were a waste, indeed, meant to kill anything left standing by the time they'd have gotten there, be it crippled US carriers or the island defences. But, crucially, the core of the Midway plan was to use the island as diversion to draw in and kill the US carriers in a direct carrier-to-carrier battle.
To me, this is clear proof that they - or at least their commander-in-chief, which in the given context is/was enough - knew what they needed and wanted to do. Yes, a considerable part of their (senior) officer corps was not yet convinced - as a naval reserve officer I have a bit of a right to say that navies are very conservative communities :-) - but what matters is that who's really in charge has understood. In any case, some US officials still want to see the by now totally anachronistic battlewagons come back into service even in 2007. Idiots and fools are of all times and nations.
The problem for the Japanese at Midway was that the US flattops were already present at the scene and didn't need to be drawn in (combined with the fact that the Yorktown should not have been there at all, but that it in fact was). So, while they knew what they wanted do to, the Japanese didn't know what they were actually doing, which went on to be their downfall. At least within the scope of Midway, that is, because overall they would have lost the Pacific war in the end anyway, even if Midway would have worked out to perfection.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Jeez, talk about dense.
The facts are obvious. But attitudes like yours are why there are no mass market American stereo manufacturers, and why American cars can't compete with Japanese cars. Can you explain to us why it is that American vehicles sold in the USA can barely keep up pricewise with imported Japanese vehicles?
Whereas Japanese public school system is geared towards manufacturing magical girls en masse. I've seen numerous documents, such as "Sailor Moon", depicting their combat capabilities. Why they feel they need a new figher jet when they already have sufficient teenage firepower to blow up the planet a hundred times over is the question here.
Magical girls, android catgirls, ninjas, martial artists, giant battle robots, and even normal people can punch you to LEO - Japan is truly a terrifying military power. It is lucky for the rest of the planet that they're under constant assault by Tentacles from Beyond, or we'd already been overrun.
I guess that's what you can achieve if you really apply yourself in school.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Banzai!!!!!
This a common misconception. The average suicide bomber tends to have middle class origins. Quite a few are college educated.
to my original sentence below
A laboratory of the French government has evaluated the "stealthy-ness" of ATD-X.to create the following sentence.
A laboratory of the French government has evaluated the "stealthy-ness" of ATD-X, and given it a high rating.The modification by Zonk is a significant error. Neither Mitsubishi nor the French laboratory publicized the result of the evaluation. The result is highly classified.
But it was December 6th, 1941 in Washington, D.C.. I remember reading about it right after it happened, on Drudge.
The Japanese fighter looks almost identical to an F18 Hornet.
;-)
Maybe the DoD should internationally patent thier designs and enhancements so that other countries know what technology not to steal
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The first squadron of these planes will be designated..
Zero Wing!
What you say !!
parent is worth noting I think
What about for his dead toddler daughter? What about for his dead mother? What about for his raped and murdered sister?
War itself breeds plenty of valid reasons to fight, for those who are in it - not so much for those who are watching through CNN or Al Jazeera. Your shortlist of examples are charicatures of an enemy that selected western countries have convinced themselves exist simply because knowledge of the deeper truth would be enbearable. It belittles those people who have taken up arms in every country in history (including our/your own, I expect) to fight not for the things you cited, but simply because they have suffered all that any human can bear, and personal death no longer presents any obstacle to choice.
Hopefully not being too melodramatic. Just thought it was worth reminding you (pl) that we're not fighting images on a playstation here. They are as us - no different.
Should the tide turn one day, I expect the same mercies and considerations that were afforded to them to be returned in kind. I have children and it is a brutal thought to ponder.
Easy, easy there, big fella!
Perhaps I should add "Ranger, Dill Bobinson!"
The young fellow meant well; perhaps English is not his first or even his only language.
You do not want to come off as a looser, do you?
Its easy for you to poke fun at these apostrophipically-challenged lads.
But when the Shiite hits the fan, it's motor has to do the work of cleaning up the apostrophes. Right?
Just hang lose- you and me will clean up those dangling particles as they fall to the bottom of the message!
Gelsey-
Ahh! Warm Pinoqachole!
Do you like that one better?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'