EURO-JAPANESE STEALTH FIGHTER?

A couple of things have sparked my imagination into thinking about the potential of a joint European and Japanese stealth fighter project.

The first was this Flight International article – http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/05/23/206813/Eurofighter+Typhoon+could+be+going+Japanese+with+entry+into+F-4EJ+fighter+replacement.html

The Eurofighter consortium is looking at options to develop a Japanese-specific variant of the Typhoon as one possible approach to contesting Tokyo’s expected medium-term competition to replace its Mitsubishi/McDonnell Douglas F-4EJ fighters.

Eurofighter says it does not believe Japan would see licence-manufacturing arrangements for the basic Eurofighter model as an acceptable industrial option.

This got me thinking about a new variant of the Typhoon or even a new airframe with existing and future Typhoon systems to save costs. My thoughts quickly turned to my favourite fantasy aircraft the UK’s Replica project, which is unfortunately just a RCS test airframe, and the possibility of co-operation on a Japanese stealth fighter based on the Typhoon and Replica.

Then Don Chan posted this link which appears to show the Japanese equivalent of the Replica 🙂 http://www.jda-trdi.go.jp/topics.html

It is of course extremely unlikely that such a project would ever happen but I think it would make an excellent replacement for Japan’s F-4 and F-15 fleets and some European countries might be interested in a few stealth fighters that have high commonality with their Typhoon fleets. Maybe the UK and France would like some carrier based versions 😀

A project like this would be a good opportunity to improve on the shortcomings of existing aircraft. I would expect this fighter to have better range and weapon bays that can fit at least 8x AMRAAM/ALARM or 2x AMRAAM/ALARM and 2x Storm Shadow sized weapons.