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?"

Comments

Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[BWJones]

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".

Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[meringuoid]

I'm surprised they don't do more with their Military. I think they are counting on their somewhat innocent attitude to bring the US to the rescue should they be forced into a war.

I think the US rather insisted on that. Pacifism got written into the Japanese constitution after the war, more or less at Washington's dictate. They're not allowed to spend more than some tiny percentage of GNP on defence, either.

Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[MightyMartian]

I'm not going to blame the US for the disarmament of Japan. It was a necessary thing to do in 1945. It was also necessary to make all the reforms, including a constitution which enshrined the peaceful nature of the Japanese military.

But that was 62 years ago, and in the meantime, Japan has become one of the US's most important allies and economic partners, and with the rise of China and the re-rise of Russia, I think it's important to consider that Japan may want to modify the nature of their military, and that maybe it's really in our best interests to allow them to do this.

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.

Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[mha]

I *love* to be corrected and take no offense - it is the only way to learn after all! I'll be eternally grateful to a colleague who taught me the correct "th" because at some point he couldn't stand it any more :-) NOT to say anything is what's bad.

Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[Martin Blank]

You guys are missing a critical fact here. The US and Japan both operate AWACS, leaving the active scanning to those aircraft until firing position is achieved, and perhaps not even that when modern datalinks are factored into the equation. Nobody cares if they're blasting the skies with a radar signal that the entire theater can see, because they're doing it from so far beyond missile range that anyone that tries to pop them will be seen by the AWACS and intercepted by intervening escorts aircraft which are vectored in without using their own radars until the last moment. It's like the days of old, standing high up on a hill, out of range of catapults and archers, and directing the battle in relatively high safety.

In modern air combat where AWACS are involved, by the time you're lit up by the enemy fighter's radar, it's too late, and you'd better be praying that your chaff, evasive action, and your ejection seat work.

Or maybe just a mockup?

[dgr73]

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.

Re:Japanese will beat US any time

[mangu]

The Zero was better than anything the allies had at the time, but in terms of people volume and production volume the US was non-beatable

That comparison may be valid for American vs. German tanks, but not for Japanese vs. American airplanes. Japan created what was undoubtedly its best fighter, the Zero, in 1939, and never did anything better than that. OTOH, the US kept releasing better and better planes during WWII; the P-51 had a cruising speed that was 20 mph faster than the Zero's *top* speed in level flight.

Japan beat the US in the car industry hands-down by doing just that: focus on becoming, being, and remaining better and persist until success is assured, no matter what

They did that in the video and audio industry, until everyone had all the VCRs and boomboxes they wanted. Then the focus shifted to computers and cellphones. Where is Japan now? Why is it that Sony, the unbeatable monster of audio and video equipment has to buy their phone technology from a Swedish corporation?

I think Japan has a very weak spot: they are excellent at improving existing technologies, but they cannot create new ones. When they finally dominate an industry, it becomes more or less irrelevant and a new industry dominates the economy.

I'm sure there will be better Japanese CPUs in the future to rival Intel or AMD, there'll be better Japanese cellphones than Nokia, Ericsson, or Motorola. But I'm ready to bet that by then there will exist a new gadget that no one imagines today, and that gadget will have been invented in the USA or Europe.