The problem for the Japanese is that the defense sector of any country is supported by the government and export sales. Japan can’t export weapons under its constitution, and it’s domestic defense market is relatively small.

Even if they could export aircraft, the aerospace industry today is extremely competitive and dominated by established players. Whether it’s a new fighter or a new airliner, they’d have to go into a market dominated in the 1st world by the likes of Boeing, airbus, EADS, Lockheed, Russian, and Chinese manufacturers.

Trying to build an indigenous fighter from the ground up probably seems like a daunting and extremely expensive risk to them.

You’re always going to run into this problem in a free society where civilians require information to make decisions about national policy. Taken to its extreme, we could be fighting a war in Iran or another nation without anybody but the President and the pentagon knowing about it here.

The Iranians would know about it, of course. They’d say they were being attacked, and the military would say they were lying. So now, who do the civilians and the rest of the world trust more? The Iranians who would be telling the truth, or the Pentagon who would have been lying?

More news on the new Iraqi Air Force.

Talk about making a sacrifice for the Iraqi air force. On Jan. 16, U.S. Air Force officers and their counterparts from the fledgling Iraqi air force gathered at a ceremony marking the presentation of three refurbished C-130E Hercules transports to the Iraqi air force.

As part of the ceremony, members of the Iraqi delegation followed tradition by sacrificing five sheep. Blood from the sheep was then collected and used to paint the sides of the aircraft. Bloody hand prints could be seen on the sides of the plane.

gkozak

The articles I’ve read haven’t mentioned the markings at all. The American officer who was organizing the process talked about his near-term goal being the formation of something called the ‘1st Iraqi Airwing’. Whether that would be part of a separate branch or part of a combined services organization, he didn’t say. So far it doesn’t sound like the U.S. has made a decision on the overall organization of the Iraqi armed forces.

Because they wanted it back when they did the FS-X programme (what became the MHI F-2, thanks to pressure from DC) back in 1982-7. . . The point about going for a new and indigenous design is industrial and political. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

I don’t deny the national pride that comes with producing an indigenous fighter, but the result of the F-2 program was huge cost overruns in development that can’t be mitigated through huge production runs and export sales. They’ve had a similar issue with their indigenous OH-1 helicopters.

Their defense budget is already under pressure, and they’ve decided to invest heavily in missile defense. Seems like it would be hard for them to justify a whole new program, with all the huge financial risk that would entail, to replace 100+ F-4s.

savage-rabbit

True, but only if they actually had that capability. Contrary to what people think, they don’t have WMDs. Haven’t had any since the old testament days a couple of thousand years ago.

F-22 as air superiority fighter for the next fifty years. That’s an interesting idea. Have we reached the technological limits for fighter design? Or will some technological breakthrough make the F-22 obsolete or pointless long before then, the way a battleship’s big guns were made largely pointless by creation of the aircraft carrier?

The Navy’s MMA program is a conversion of a Boeing 737, so it’s possible to convert an airliner for the MP mission. It’s not a cheap program, though. I saw somewhere that it’s projected at $20 billion for 108 planes. But naturally this comes with gold plating….