Japan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Especially with a country like Japan where they buy everything from A to Z - like they did with their F-35 purchase. They bought everything for maintance etc in a single deal. Wouldn't be surprised if that's the case here as well.
Another article I read included these details:

PAcific Sentnel said:
The following non-MDE items will be included with the purchase of the four (4) x KC-46A airframes: twelve (16) AN/ARC-210 UHF Radios, six (12) APX-119 Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) transponders, initial spares and repair parts, consumables, support equipment, technical data, engineering change proposals, publications, Field ServiceRepresentatives' (FSRs), repair and return, depotmaintenance, training and training equipment, contractor technical and logistics personnel services,U.S.Government and contractor representative support, GroupA and B installation for subsystems, flight test and certification, and other related elements of logistics support. The total program cost is estimated to be $1.9 billion (includes all MDE and non-MDE values and above and below the line charges.

See:

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0000 AIR_KC-46A_Refuels_F-35.jpg
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
The largest ever Chinese exercise into west Pacific thru Miyako Straits. This kind of exercise will become routine in the future. Clearly they are sending message here

Over 40 China’s H-6K bombers, Su-30 fighter jets and air tankers flew through Japanese islands on Sunday while heading to large-scale military drills in the Western Pacific.

Warplanes of the People's Liberation Army conducted long range drills after flying over the Miyako Strait that lies between the Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa, the Chinese Air Force said in a statement.

The jets carried out early warning, sudden assault and aerial refueling exercises, which all aimed to check the forces’ blue-water combat capabilities, according to the Chinese military.

As the first group of eight Chinese aircraft, including two fighters, flew over the Miyako strait on the Sunday morning, Japan scrambled fighter jets in response, Kyodo news agency reported citing the country’s defense ministry.

The Miyako Strait sits tightly between Japan’s Okinawa and Miyako Islands, and is one of the few routes that China can use to get into the Pacific. Beijing has been using the strait since May 2015.

Despite claiming that the group that flew next to Japanese borders Sunday was massive, the state military noted that the Japan’s airspace wasn’t violated.

The long range drills became the second event of its kind Beijing has undertaken this month. On September 12, some 20 Chinese aircraft flew in the area using the Bashi Channel, which rests between Taiwan and the Philippines.

However, the latest exercises are considered to be the biggest in the recent memory, according to analysts. “This is very rare – the large number and variety of aircraft have not been seen before,” Beijing-based military expert Li Jie said to South China Morning Post.

China conducted “routine” patrols in the so-called Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, which Beijing established in 2013. Upon flying into ADIZ any aircraft is supposed to identify itself with the Chinese authorities. To “carefully monitor and judge the foreign military aircraft” entering the zone,

China began patrols in the area, so it could also “respond to different threats in the sky and to protect national airspace," according to military. “Regular long range drills in the Western Pacific and patrols over the East China Sea air defense identification zone were for the Air Force to protect China's sovereignty and national security, China's air force spokesman Shen Jinke said, according to a statement posted on the Ministry of Defense website.

The news comes as tensions over territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas are escalating. Some analysts suggest that China’s latest drills is a message to Tokyo, which has recently declared it is ready to participate in patrols in the South China Sea.

“It is a warning from Beijing to Japan: if you are coming to meddle in the South China Sea, then I’m going to flex my muscles at your doorstep,” Macau-based military analyst Antony Wong Dong said to the South China Morning Post.

Recently the relations between China and Japan soured because their standoff over the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, which they both consider a sovereign territory. 55 ... 80

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SamuraiBlue

Captain
“It is a warning from Beijing to Japan: if you are coming to meddle in the South China Sea, then I’m going to flex my muscles at your doorstep,” Macau-based military analyst Antony Wong Dong said to the South China Morning Post.

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Meaningless chest thumping for domestic consumption. Basically all planes were under surveillance with escort by JASDF and SAMs ready to be fired in case of an emergency.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
DO NOT LET THIS TURN INTO A CHINESE vs JAPAN discussion.

What the Chinese did with their deployment should be posted on the Chinese deployment thread...not on the Japanese military thread, particularly not with an "in bold" warning to Japan.

Anymore of that discussion will be deleted and the initial post moved (without the warning) to where it belongs.

DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS MODERATION
 
this is interesting:
Unmanned Wingmen For Japan’s Piloted Force Planned For 2030s
Japan lays out a plan for pilotless combat aircraft to help fighters
Air-combat maneuvers will be far more challenging than strike missions for artificial intelligence, so countries planning autonomous warplanes are generally looking at trying air-to-ground first.

But to many Japanese ears, unmanned strike sounds too offensive—in both senses of the word. Probably for that reason, the country’s defense planners are proposing to leap directly into air-to-air automation. Limiting the challenge, they propose high-performance robotic aircraft that would fly as helpers for manned fighters; a pilot would issue commands. And at first the aircraft, called Combat Support Unmanned Aircraft or unmanned wingmen, would fly ahead as sensor carriers, only later taking on the role of shooting.

This family will appear in the 2030s, according to a technology road map for pilotless aircraft published by the defense ministry’s purchasing office, the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA). The ministry previously discussed concepts for unmanned wingmen but has now advanced its plans. The road map will also include a ballistic-missile defense (BMD) type that would go into service in the 2030s.

Japan’s Pilotless Helper for Air Combat
The aircraft would fly ahead of and under the control of a manned fighter
At first it would be a sensor carrier
Later, it would be a shooter and missile sponge


The plan divides unmanned aircraft into five types, including the two simplest—small, portable ones and those that operate with line-of-sight communications—which Japan already has in service. A third category, which the country is still working on, are those that need relay communications by satellite, such as types the U.S. has relied on for years, like the
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and
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and the
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Q-4 in various versions. Then there are pilotless combat aircraft and, lastly, aerostats and solar-powered airplanes, both for extremely long endurance.

ATLA says resources will be directed toward the third category, for ballistic missile defense, and the fourth, for air combat, meaning that they have priority.

The agency makes no mention of the BMD aircraft carrying weapons. Instead, the type seems to be envisaged as a sensor carrier, presumably using an infrared detector descended from the Airboss system that was tested in 2007. A simple concept design in ATLA’s road map document shows that it would be of a conventional configuration for high-altitude, long-endurance operation, with an extremely slender wing and what appears to be a twin pusher propeller-engine installation, similar to the
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Condor of the late 1980s. The sensor is shown in a turret in the upper nose (see concept, page 21).

The ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute (TRDI) first discussed the concept of the unmanned wingmen at least six years ago. It then conceived of such aircraft entering into service in the 2040s and working with a suitably upgraded version of the country’s proposed next fighter, the F-3. The first version of the F-3 is expected to enter service around 2030.

ATLA now says Japan will “acquire high-autonomy technology to realize an unmanned wingman for the F-3 in 15 to 20 years.” Entry into service before 2035 is probably not intended, since the agency proposes that technology be demonstrated in fiscal 2029–33. In that case, the F-3 would still get an upgrade to make it compatible with unmanned wingmen, but the modified version would appear sooner than was previously planned.

The first type of unmanned wingman to appear would be a sensor aircraft. ATLA’s concept drawing shows three flying ahead of a fighter with which they would have a data link. This is the concept that would be achieved in 15-20 years.

More than 20 years from now, there would be a second type—or perhaps a second version, using the same airframe and engine as the first. It would fire weapons. Also after 20 years, the sensor type or version would take on the role of a missile sponge. Since the sensor-carrying wingman would have to cost much more than missiles fired at it, and could not possibly accept hits, ATLA must expect it to routinely defeat attacks in the sponge role, using maneuver and electromagnetic countermeasures.

ATLA shows two concept designs for the unmanned wingman in low-resolution pictures that may or may not bear some resemblance to what is eventually deployed. One has a broad body, blended into a stubby wing that has perhaps 45-50 deg. of backward sweep on the leading edge and moderate forward sweep on the trailing edge (see concept, above). The design is shown operating in all three roles. The other concept design, with a longer, skinnier body, has about 60 deg. of sweep on the leading edge and a conventionally aft-swept trailing edge. It looks fast, except it has the draggy and unstealthy feature of a large underslung pod extending almost to the nose, presumably carrying a radar. This design is shown only as a sensor aircraft.

The unmanned wingman would be under the control of the F-3 pilot but would devise its own tactical maneuvers, reporting back its planned moves. That suggests that the pilot would give general instructions, such as where to search or what to attack, and the drone would work out how best to execute them. It would do things that a piloted aircraft could not, the agency says, probably meaning it would pull maneuvers that a human could not withstand. That would contribute to surviving enemy missile volleys.

The progression from only searching to attacking and dodging is consistent with expectations outside Japan on the likely evolution of artificial intelligence and its capacity to choose maneuvers.

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, for example, has published a technology sequence in which an optionally manned
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E/F would progress from the current capability of automatically holding altitude and navigating by waypoints to performing “basic air traffic maneuvers” and takeoffs and landings. Later the fighter would be autonomously capable of basic maneuvers needed for maintaining a relative position with a flight leader—presumably, a manned fighter. That looks like the level that the Japanese unmanned wingman needs for the sensor role.

For the next degree of difficulty, Saab lists aerobatics, such as rolling and looping, and then tactical turns executed in relation to the flight leader. Last, and hardest, are maneuvers for beyond-visual-range combat, such as cranking and pumping. That is probably something like what the Japanese believe they need for an unmanned wingman that attacks the enemy or attracts and dodges missiles.

Power and propulsion studies for the unmanned wingmen are to begin in fiscal 2019. The technologies Japan must develop are high agility, meta-materials (with properties not found in nature) for stealth, morphing structure and bistatic radar.

With that radar technology, a transmitter is separate from the receiver, but the acquisition agency does not say which aircraft will do what. One possibility is that the sensor wingman will transmit and the shooter wingman will receive. But it would also be possible for the manned fighter to be the silent receiver, or for it to transmit safely in the rear of the drones while they silently close in for the kill.

The F-3 is likely to have much greater range than the unmanned wingmen. The sensor drones could be of moderate size, however, so they could conceivably be carried near to the combat zone and air launched. ATLA says that in 2011 Japan completed development of a jet-powered reconnaissance drone that can be launched in the air and then land on a runway. An
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can carry two, each weighing 750 kg (1,650 lb.).

Alternatives would be to use inflight-refueling—which could be repeated often on each mission, since there would be no tired pilot aboard—or perhaps to accept that many unmanned aircraft must be built to support frequent shuttling to and from the combat zone where on-station time would be short.

The latest concept for the F-3, devised in 2014, envisages a fighter with great endurance and armament at the expense of maneuverability.

The unmanned recon drone launched by an F-15 was a product of Fuji Heavy Industries, Japan’s specialist in unmanned aircraft. The company is presumably well placed to build the unmanned wingman, too, although rival
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is the national specialist in combat aircraft.
source:
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WINGMAN_1_JapaneseMinistryOfDefense_0.jpg

The Japanese defense ministry envisages unmanned wingmen firing missiles, searching for targets and luring and defeating missile attack. Source: Japanese Defense Ministry
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
this is interesting:
Unmanned Wingmen For Japan’s Piloted Force Planned For 2030s
Japan lays out a plan for pilotless combat aircraft to help fighters

source:
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WINGMAN_1_JapaneseMinistryOfDefense_0.jpg
Look slike the Japanese will go ahead and do what the US planned for the F-35C and the UCLASS.

Good. it is a very GREAT concept and the technology to make it happen exists and was ready to be tested in the field before the Obama appointees decided to turn the UCLASS into a tanker.
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Look slike the Japanese will go ahead and do what the US planned for the F-35C and the UCLASS.

Good. it is a very GREAT concept and the technology to make it happen exists and was ready to be tested in the field before the Obama appointees decided to turn the UCLASS into a tanker.
Not a new idea since several years yet envisaged for a duo Rafale, Neuron or the definitive UAV.
 
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