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

Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[BWJones]

The F-22's radar is impressive, but here is the deal... You have to go active to see targets, particularly well concealed targets and that makes you "visible" as well. If the new JDAF fighter can remain "unseen" until it gets up close and personal and is a lighter, smaller and more nimble aircraft, the F-22 may have a problem.

Smaller, faster and quieter can oftentimes triumph over larger and more complex as demonstrated in at least one Naval wargame where an entire US carrier battlegroup lost the game to a couple diesel electric subs built by the Germans.

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:Tech issues and socio-political issues.

[bwen]

Wouldn't it be a bit premature to gauge air superiority while we just have a few pictures of a model of the plane.

Modes?

[sanman2]

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?

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:Stealth? I doubt!

[GooberToo]

Several years later in the Balkan war, our own stealth fighter was downed reportedly with Russian technology.

To which I call BS. The shoot down was not a technology failure. The shoot down was a tactical failure of the worst kind. If your commanders REQUIRE that your super secret plane flies the exact same route, while low to the ground, day in and day out, over populated areas which can observe this pattern, guess what, you can create an ambush for it. No super secret Russian technology required. As a result, the plane was shot down but firing a large number of visually aimed missiles. Basic math and physics won.

Mandated operating procedures were changed and heads did roll. The cause of the shoot down was American stupidity and not a Russian developed, anti-stealth, counter measure. The Russians did loot the crash site afterwards to obtain material samples.

Re:Bullshit!

[vertinox]

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. Ummm... No.

Fighters are about air superiority regardless of offense or defense. This has been the case since WWI.

The Luftwaffe didn't send fighters over the UK to defend Germany from British Bombers, but rather attempting to keep the RAF out of the sky. Whether shooting them on the runways or when they attempted to attack the German bombers didn't matter.

Of course the Luftwaffe had its role switched to defense in 1944, but it was still attempted to gain air superiority against allied fighters and bombers.

The role of the fighter is to destroy other aircraft. It can be used in defense or offense, but its key role is not defense like SAM or Flak batteries.