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?"
A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with him. As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat, stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd - a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist. I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's handsomest young stud. Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit without the benefit of a digestive tract? I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does. I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock, beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily, sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down with his piss. I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with the rich bitterness of shit. Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom. I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six orgasms in the process. I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.
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".
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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?
is a GOOD thing!
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.
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.
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.
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'
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.
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.
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.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
...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.
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.
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.
One word: December 7th, 1941
God! Who can ever trust a Jap?
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'