Japan to Develop 6th Generation Fighter With US Help

[Hamartia Antidote]

you gotta give them something for buying all the US treasury bills.

Glad it wasn't a shipping port.

 

[monitor]

Japan need to build up its military technologically superior to Chinese to balance in the region .

 

[S10]

Japan need to build up its military technologically superior to Chinese to balance in the region .

Technological superiority requires economical superiority. China is currently the world's largest industrial power, largest economy by PPP and has the largest number of graduates in STEM fields. Did I mention largest number of patents filed too which indicates pace of innovation? If anything, Japan is falling further and further behind.

It's like saying I need to be richer than Bill Gates. Nice to say, unrealistic to actually do.

 

[UKBengali]

Hello UKBengali,

I think I read have read an article, a National Interest article, speculating that as well.

It certainly possible. Initially, Japan had about 200 F-15Js to form the role as strong air-superiority which was then. As you may know, the 100 non-modernized F-15Js will be replaced by F-35As and F-35Bs while the modernized F-15Js are to be further upgraded to include multi-role ground attack ability. Upgrading them for multi-role is probably two points, one it expands the roles the JSDF can do with multi-role ground attack which would probably have triggered "too offensive in nature" before the reinterpretation of the constitution in 2014 but also F-15Js are just not going to be very superior in their original role of air-superiority anymore. So it may make sense that Japan produces more F-3s than the "about 100 planned" amount in the end.

But there's one other advantage of the vintage F-15Js over the F-3s in my opinion. It's for scrambles. Japan scrambles jets a lot because China and Russia often fly their military aircraft towards Japanese air space in recent years. For example, in Naha air base, 20 F-15Js were stationed, but in order to deal with the increasing frequency of PLAAF aircraft activity, the number of F-15Js was doubled to 40, in 2016 if I remember correctly. They rarely intrude territorial airspace, but that is only 22km or something beyond land territory, so jets need to be scrambled ahead of that since opposing jets could cross 22km in a very short time. With so much scrambling, maintenance becomes a very important part. It's probably safe to say that the F-15Js are much easier to maintain than what would become expensive stealth F-3s. Another point is if F-3s are always being scrambled, then it gives the opposing aircraft a lot of chances to practice detecting F-3s and a better idea how to develop improved detection methods against F-3. So better to not be using the F-3 for the role of scrambling. But since even after the modernized F-15Js get their next upgrades for multi-role, they are still going to become old and so I was thinking that maybe F-15X might be worth Japan to look into since it looks like the USAF is going to pick some of these up.

But your point about increasing production total so as to reduce cost per aircraft is a true point. Actually, I think this may have been a real beneficial point if Japan had joined the Tempest program. If I recall correctly, the Tempest program has the UK, Italy, and Sweden so far. That's perhaps 300 fighters right there. Add in Japan, then its 400 if Japan sticks with the "about 100". 500 if Japan goes for 200 in the end. F-2 was really expensive because the US side was a bit of a haggler then it cost went up more than necessary. But that was the 1990s and the SU had just collapsed and China had a small GDP and outdated military. In the current geopolitical landscape, the US may not haggle so much in the F-3 program.

But it does look like the UK-Japan joint effort for a new AAM is under way which will combine UK thruster missile technology like that on the meteor missile with Japan's seeker technology. Should result in a very potent AAM. The F-3 weapon bays will no doubt be designed to load these.

I am not convinced that it is a good idea to buy F-15Xs instead of F-3s in order to reduce the chances of China/Russia getting information on how best to detect the F-3.

The less capable F-35s can be sent instead if that is a worry.

The cost of developing the F-3 will come to anything from 20-30 billion US dollars and so say 25 billion US dollars at a medium figure. If only 100 F-3s were built, this will mean that 250 million dollars would just be the development cost of each F-3!

In my opinion best to replace the latter build F-15Js with F-3s and then Japan will have something like 220-240 F-3s to spread the huge development costs over. Even with US assistance, Japan will be able to export to countries like Vietnam in order to try to recoup the development cost somewhat. I am sure that Japan will be able to find a few more buyers as well if it tried hard enough.