The F-35 Is Old News: Japan Is Already Reaching For 6th Generation Fighters
Key point: When Jane’s asked a Japanese official what the top five priorities were for the F-3, he listed “capability for future air superiority” first.
Japan’s 2019 Mid-Term Defense review quietly revealed that after years of hesitation, Tokyo has decided to press ahead with development of its own domestically designed sixth-generation Mitsubishi F-3 air-superiority stealth fighter, rather than purchasing an additional foreign stealth design to supplement its growing fleet of F-35s.
In February 2019, the Japanese Ministry of Defense explicitly
these intentions to
Jane’s. Reportedly, F-3 performance requirements are set to be released in the 2020 budget, with development officially beginning in 2021 and a first flight targeted for 2030.
The new F-3 jets would then begin replacing Japan’s over one hundred home-built
—heavily upgraded (and over-priced) F-16s—starting in the mid to late 2030s.
Later, a Japanese television feature in March 2018
of advanced high-thrust XF 9-1 turbofan engines and Active Electronically Scanned Array radars under development for the F-3 program. The special also revealed a projected program development cost of 5 trillion yen—equivalent to nearly $45 billion U.S. dollars. Cost per-plane could easily exceed earlier-cited figures of 20 billion yen ($179 million).
Tokyo’s Stealth-Fighter Odyssey
In 2016, Japan achieved a technological milestone when it flew its Advanced Technology Demonstrator, the X-2
Shinshin. In development since 2007, the ATD cost $350 million and featured innovative composite ceramic/silicon carbide skin and powerful vector-thrust turbofans for extreme maneuverability and super-cruising flight speeds. The Shinshin, described in greater detail in
, supposedly had a radar cross-section the size of a ‘
.’
But the ATD was a tech-demonstrator, not a prototype for an actual fully-equipped fighter plane. When Tokyo initially balked at the estimated $40 billion, it froze further development and issued Requests For Information to foreign aviation firms.
The concept of a hybrid of the F-22 airframe with the F-35’s more advanced avionics seemed particularly attractive; but the bill for such a plane remained extremely high at an estimated $215 million per aircraft. Japan also courted Grumman, which decades earlier developed an
, and British BAe, which is currently developing the
.
Either option would have meant committing to build more fifth-generation fighters instead of looking ahead to sixth-generation designs such as the
and European
.
Furthermore, advanced military aviation industries are very difficult to start up again after lengthy interruption as experienced engineers retire, factories close and technologies become outdated. If Japan didn’t start developing a stealth fighter now, it might become impossible to do so in the future, sinking Tokyo’s hopes of breaking its long-standing dependence on U.S.-based defense companies....... to read further,