Japanese Stealth Fighter

Parallels with South Korean Proposal

Japan's Shin Shin technology demonstrator actually parallels some concept development work that has been ongoing in South Korea. Like Japan, the Korean government has been talking about a "go it alone" strategy for their next generation fighter - partly because some politicians believe in it (and don't know any better), and partly to give themselves some leverage when negotiating with the United States.

However, the Korean Development Institute, a government-funded economic think tank, recently published a report that concluded in clear terms that South Korea cannot afford to develop the KF-X fighter into a viable warplane:


The $10 billion price tag for the KF-X (envisioned as a full-scale fighter rather than a demonstrator), is simply beyond what the Korean government could envision itself funding. To the surprise of no one, the program will be stillborn before it ever leaves the concept phase.

On the one hand, Japan does have a much larger economy than South Korea ($5.1 trillion GDP in 2007, compared to $0.8 trillion for South Korea). Unlike South Korea, Japan could probably afford a program of this scale if they were truly committed to it. Proponents of following the ATD-X with a full scale fighter development effort, however, would face some of the same hurdles as their South Korean counterparts:

• A development price tag in the tens of billions of USD;
• Little or no prospect for recovering that investment through export sales;
• A US-built fighter (the F-35) that was being produced in greater quantities with a lower fly-away cost.

Japan appears to be following a more prudent policy with the ATD-X, developing a technology demonstrator that will keep their options open for later, while also giving them credibility when they want to negotiate with the US for greater participation in whatever US-developed fighter they might want to buy.

It will be a number of years before any of us can tell whether Japan's strategy will bear fruit. Meanwhile, it definitely will bear watching.

Japan did something similar back in the 1980's with Aegis. They asked us for Aegis and we said not no but heck no! So Japan began a program to develop their own system comparable to Aegis. Well, it's one thing to buy an advanced system and another thing entirely to be able to design, test, manufacture and bring to operational status an advanced system. So the USN rethought their original decision. Maybe we didn't want the Japanese to have that hard won knowledge gained from trying things in the OT&E environment, making mistakes, breaking things and learning how things work. Better to sell a fully assembled system, even if it is your best stuff. Think of it this way. Anyone can buy a BMW Seven Series. There is quite another level of skill to correctly repair this computer intensive beast of a car. But to design test and build one is a skill very few have. In the case of Aegis the USN didn't want Japan to develop those special skill so we eventually sold it to them. Japan may be doing something similar with this airplane.