Slashdot Mirror
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?"
is that if you want to keep Japan "on a leash" you have to sell them the technological arms. They already are already 5-10 year ahead of the USA in electronics, processors, and 20 years ahead in manufacturing. The last thing we need is for them to feel the need to build their own weapons at this level. They're capable of buying 1 F-22 and exactly cloning it in under a year... I'd hate to see them try to "fix" the designs a la Honda or Toyota manufacturing methods. Chinese engineers don't have all tech yet so even if they get the plans they aren't quite capable of building aircraft and making them reliable.... Imagine a military aircraft built to Toyota or Honda levels of reilabiltiy and efficency... US military equipment only has field life of hundred of hours... I'd bet the Japaneese could hit that 10x without trying.
Of course with Japan's fetish for robots, I'd expect them to already be ahead of the US in unmaned flight as well. The combination of the two would put Japan as the leader in tech in 5 years for all of Asia. with China becomming increasingly hostile Japan probably feels the need to load up with high tech weapons fast so they can beat China down.
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