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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?"
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 as much a defensive weapon as it is offensive, as quoted:
"I can't see the [expletive deleted] thing," said RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell, exchange F-15 pilot in the 65th Aggressor Squadron. "It won't let me put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it visually through the canopy. [Flying against the F-22] annoys the hell out of me."
On other fronts, the F-22 represents our leading edge technology (even though it's essentially 1990's tech) and is what gives us an advantage. It's not surprising the technology isn't up for export. The F-15 and F-16 both were in the same position when they were introduced, but eventually were considered for export after there advantage subsided a bit (or "lower" tech versions of them were available).
As well, the F-22 is really expensive. The United States is one of the few countries (or groups of countries) that can pull off such an endeavor. This also naturally limits its export capability, there's simply few others that could afford to buy it.
IMHO, Japan will end up with export variants of the F-35 (the USAF already has F-22 stationed in Okinawa). And continue with their F-15 and possibly be allowed to construct a variant of the F-15E to replace their aging F-4s (though their limited production of F-2 can already fulfill this requirement).
Japan has tried this move before, they eventually canceled production of their F-2 program (basically a modernized F-16) and are looking to persuade the United Stated to open up more tech for them to acquire (again, probably the F-35, though possibly future F-22 export variants).
All Japan produced planes, so far, have been based on US tech. Any other home grown R&D project would be too expensive to survive in the political arena. There's no reason to believe this ATD-X project will find the same fate.
Finally, IMHO, it wouldn't be able to beat the F-22 is most engagements. Physical performance is only one aspect of why the F-22 is the best air superiority fighter in the world. Avionics, radar, and weapon load out represent some of the others. The ATD-X would just be too expensive to match the F-22 in all areas, if it sees flight, major compromises will have to be make.
This post coming from a guy who just saw the F-16, F-15, and F-22 fly back to back at the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends.
Don't be so quick to think that an active AN/APG-77 automatically opens up the F-22 to detection. The AN/APG-77 is a statically mounted phased array radar, with electronic beam stearing capability. This coupled with the fact that it has the ability to frequency hop about a 1000 times a second gives it a very low probability of intercept. Short pulses at varying frequencies and (probably) varying pulse duration, timing ,power, etc., keep it from being detected by the enemy's RWR.
I have been told that F-15C pilots at Red Flag could not detect the F-22's scanning them at beyond visual range (BVR). Nor could the F-15C's APG-63 radar detect the F-22 at BVR. They kill numbers would confirm this, but I have no official links to back it up (other than message board postings).
[Granted the F-15C and it's avionics don't represent the top of the line in modern technology anymore, so it's a grain of salt example. But I'll also point out that the F-15 has never been beaten in an actual air to air engagement to date.]
Internally it can hold 6 AIM-120Cs and 2 AIM-9s. That's it's primary configuration for air-to-air. With everything inside it is as stealthy as possible and as efficient as possible. Externally it can carry 4 fuel tanks, or two fuel tanks and four missiles (of varying types). Obviously hooking on external weapons makes it less stealthy, as well as increasing drag.
Remember: This isn't a bomber, though it can carry two bombs if needed (as the expense of 4 missiles) it's an air superiority fighter. It is designed to be fast, light, stealthy, and to kill other planes. Maneuverability and stealth are more important than maximum payload.
One F-22 doesn't cost $360 million. That's a figure that's thrown around a lot, but that's including the cost of the entire program divided by the number of aircraft produced. Let's say that you had a program where you designed a new car. You spent $100 million in R&D. You plan on making 100,000 of the cars, and the R&D costs will be absorbed by the number of cars produced. If you make 100,000 cars, $1000 gets added to the cost of each car. If the car cost $10,000 to produce, it's now $11,000.
Let's say production is halted and you only make 10,000 cars. Now that R&D cost only gets amortized across 1/10th of the number of vehicles. Instead of the vehicle costing $11,000, it's now $20,000.
If this were being sold to consumers, the company would have to eat the cost because nobody would want to pay that much for a vehicle worth half the price. But for military projects, the military ends up footing the bill.
In reality, each F-22 costs about $120 million. The R&D and tooling cost was already spent.
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
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.