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– ( Aviation Week & Space Technology, February 15-28, 2016) The wing was large and slender by fighter standards, offering high fuel volume and low drag due to lift but penalizing acceleration.… The key factor was that the high-endurance design provided more aircraft on station than would be available from an alternative fleet of high-performance fighters. These studies concluded that range, or endurance is the most important metric for survivability, a very interesting result indeed.Īirframe developers…appear to have settled on something close to the 2013 configuration for the F-3 that emphasized endurance and weapons load over flight performance… That design, 25DMU, described a heavy fighter with a belly weapons bay for six ramjet missiles about the size of the MBDA Meteor. These studies clarified the approach to be taken for the next aircraft to put into service, the F-3 program, ostensibly a successor to the F-2, although the role to be played is more of an air superiority or air dominance fighter, rather than a strike fighter.
AIR COMBAT MANEUVERS JAPAN SERIES
So stymied, the JASDF and supporting Ministry of Defense personnel conducted a series of design studies in order to establish detailed requirements. The export of the F-22, however, was outlawed by the Obey amendment to the 1998 Defense Authorization Act (a useful summary of this debate is here). This shows MHI’s depth of capability.Īlso in the previous post, I could not help but include the “F-22J,” a hypothetical fighter that has been requested by the Japanese government numerous times, as the air power threat from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has grown. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) won a contract to build the wing for the Boeing 787, a job that Boeing now considers a core competency, and is unlikely to outsource again (they kept this task in house for the more recent 737 MAX, and 777X aircraft).
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Domestic Production of business, and civil aircraft – “Japan domestically produces the YS-11 passenger plane as well as the FA-200, MU-2, FA-300, MU-300, BK-117, and other commercial aircraft, and is an active participant in international joint development programs with partners such as the American passenger aircraft manufacturer Boeing.”.This pattern was repeated in 1987 with the F-2 and its clear design basis on the F-16. Domestic military aircraft production – Japanese designed aircraft, while independent, unique designs, also leveraged certain Western designed aircraft as their inspiration, such as the T-1 and eventual F-1 follow-on and the clear resemblance to the British Jaguar.Through these projects, the Japanese aircraft industry revived the technical capabilities necessary to domestically manufacture entire aircraft.” state-of-the-art fighter planes, from the F-86 to the F-104, the F-4, and the F-15. Licensed production of US military aircraft – “Japan has engaged in licensed production of U.S.
AIR COMBAT MANEUVERS JAPAN LICENSE
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Japan has also invested significant sums in its domestic aerospace manufacturing capability over this same time period. In my previous post, I discussed the progression of aircraft in use by the Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) since World War II. A schematic rendering of Japan’s proposed F-3 fighter
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