Japanese Stealth Fighter Announced as 'Return of the Zero' 526
reporter writes "According to a news article by the Associated Press, Tokyo has begun developing an indigenous stealth jet fighter that will be deployed in 2016. Mitsubishi, the prime contractor, has already developed a full-scale model, of which several pictures have been accidentally leaked to the press. The model is named 'Mitsubishi ATD-X"'. A laboratory of the French government has evaluated the "stealthy-ness" of ATD-X, and given it a high rating. Will ATD-X achieve air superiority over the F-22, which Washington refuses to sell to Tokyo?"
Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Interesting)
I got a quick tour of the F-22, but no pictures allowed of the F-22 during my last visit up to Hill AFB [utah.edu] and the F-22 is making the rounds and is being explored for possible basing in other countries, but there are technology sales issues with the aircraft as it will be almost impossible to strip the sensitive technologies out of the aircraft and make it "saleable".
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Should be?! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, my side should have the very best equipment, technology, and training, so that it can overwhelmingly crush and subdue any opponent. That is how it should be. We don't go to war to fight — we go to win — as quickly and with as few casualties as possible.
You, doofuses, are so good at "seeing the other side" of every story, you lose sight of your own side. War is not "fair" — you must be confusing it with sports...
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Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The history of every major galactic civilization has passed through three distinct and recognisable phases: those of survival, inquiry, and sophistication. Otherwise known as the 'How', 'Why', and 'Where' phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question: "How can we eat?" The second by the question: "Why do we eat?" And the third by the question: "Where should we have lunch?" The history of warfare is similarly subdivided though here the phases are retribution, anticipation, and diplomacy. Thus, retribution: "I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother." Anticipation: "I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother." And diplomacy: "I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it." Meanwhile, the Earthman Arthur Dent, to whom all this can be of only academic interest, as his only brother was long ago nibbled to death by an okapi, is about to be plunged into a real intergalactic war. (hitch-hiker, Fit the Sixth.)
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The F-22 demo
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So maybe you're right, but "the best defense is a good offense" is utterly and completly offtopic.
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:4, Informative)
That "tradition" has nothing to do with stealth technology and everything to do with historical accident. The first two stealth aircraft were a light bomber and a heavy bomber. And both of them are produced by a country that hasn't had to defend its own territory since the nineteenth century. Anyway, the predominant military doctrines adopted by the Western world have been based more on attack than on defense ever since after WWI, because (a) defensive strategies proved useless and wasteful in WWI and (b) everyone in the West read von Clausewitz, and Clausewitz's idea of defense turns out to be regrouping and counterattack.
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Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the US rather insisted on that. Pacifism got written into the Japanese constitution after the war, more or less at Washington's dictate. They're not allowed to spend more than some tiny percentage of GNP on defence, either.
Zonk Incorrectly Edited My Article: Major Error (Score:5, Informative)
to my original sentence below
to create the following sentence.
The modification by Zonk is a significant error. Neither Mitsubishi nor the French laboratory publicized the result of the evaluation. The result is highly classified.
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Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not much a fan of military response, but it's not exactly unknown that as a country, we will fight back, often with excessive force and utter disregard for anything but our own interests.
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Interesting)
But that was 62 years ago, and in the meantime, Japan has become one of the US's most important allies and economic partners, and with the rise of China and the re-rise of Russia, I think it's important to consider that Japan may want to modify the nature of their military, and that maybe it's really in our best interests to allow them to do this.
The Japan of today is not the Japan of the 1930s, and even if it were, it simply is no longer in any position to do much about it.
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Honestly, for the amount of shit (rightfully so in some situations) that we've taken for having bases in the region, I'd opt for letting them beef up their offensive and defensive capabilities. Let them pay for the $600 hammers for awhile.
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"In our best interests" to "allow" them to do this? Who the hell do you think we are?
Japan is perfectly able to make their own decisions. Not only that, but they act in their own best interest
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Who the hell needed hindsight? One had only to look at how well the Soviets had faired in the region to predict with high degree of accuracy what would happen if we stuck our noses in. (And not just Russia. Historically speaking, the same thing had happened to pretty much any other invader.)
But no, Bushy-boy had a bee in his bonnet for Saddam and was certain that once we demonstrated that might of the US that everyone would drop their weapons and
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It was a tremendous error in judgment for the Empire of Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, although it was a political play by US leaders to goad Japan into an attack that could be used to rally support
Your history is warped and wrong (Score:4, Informative)
If you are referring to the two Aleutian islands they captured, that was six months after Pearl Harbor. The war was well under way by then. And to be pedantic, yes we had already attacked them many times by then, mostly carrier raids including the famous Doolittle B-15 raid on the home islands in April 1942, but also including surface ship attacks and submarine attacks.
Alaska was bought by the US from Russia in 1867. Japan didn't even open up to the outside world until 1854 and the Meiji restoration which began their "modern" era didn't happen until 1870. They were not even remotely capable of taking any foreign islands off the American coast before 1867.
Did you get your history from a box of cornflakes?
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
Smaller, faster and quieter can oftentimes triumph over larger and more complex as demonstrated in at least one Naval wargame where an entire US carrier battlegroup lost the game to a couple diesel electric subs built by the Germans.
Modes? (Score:5, Funny)
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Dummy... (Score:4, Funny)
Sheesh, what's wrong with you realists?
Some questions don't need asking (Score:5, Funny)
Sheesh, what's wrong with you realists?
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Informative)
I have been told that F-15C pilots at Red Flag could not detect the F-22's scanning them at beyond visual range (BVR). Nor could the F-15C's APG-63 radar detect the F-22 at BVR. They kill numbers would confirm this, but I have no official links to back it up (other than message board postings).
[Granted the F-15C and it's avionics don't represent the top of the line in modern technology anymore, so it's a grain of salt example. But I'll also point out that the F-15 has never been beaten in an actual air to air engagement to date.]
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:4, Informative)
Depends how much you value the lives of your pilots, and the prestige that comes from an aura of invincibility.
Right now, the US air force has a reputation for being unbeatable. Nobody can compete with the US in the air. I don't think the Iraqi air force even bothered to leave the ground during the last war. What would be the point? It's suicide. That gives you a big bonus advantage - if your kit is that good, suddenly it doesn't need to be, because nobody's even going to dare try it on. Same thing happened back in the Falklands: the Argentines feared to engage Harriers in air combat, and that meant the British got away with only having about a dozen of them on site.
If you give the enemy a chance, he'll go for it. He'll take risks for his country or his ideology or his faith or his friends; he'll accept the likelihood of death for the chance of bringing down a Yankee imperialist. Sure, you'll still win. Your planes are still better than his. But no longer so much better that nobody tries to take them on. You get casualties. You get pictures on the news of American planes as burned wreckage on the ground, you get pilots dead or captured, you get this much more often. Depending on your priorities, this may well be worth the extra money to avoid.
After all, for the likes of America, or Britain, or indeed Japan, people are very expensive and need to be preserved. Recruiting is very hard right now, but building planes is comparatively easy - so build the best plane you can, to protect the few pilots you have. If you're China, with people in huge numbers willing to go to war for low pay, the equation might come out differently.
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Recruiting is very hard right now, but building planes is comparatively easy - so build the best plane you can, to protect the few pilots you have.
One F-22 costs ~$361 Million.
181 of them costs $65.4 Billion.
It costs somewhere less than $5 Million to train a pilot.
You can offer million dollar signing bonuses for pilots, expand your training program up the whazoo and buy gobs of older, cheaper planes with $65.4 billion.
F-15s cost ~$30M & F-16s cost ~$45M
Even if you go 300% of those values, to accomodate spare parts, training ground crews, hanger space, flying costs, etc etc etc it is still a bargain and you can have a vastly expanded Air Force.
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Informative)
Let's say production is halted and you only make 10,000 cars. Now that R&D cost only gets amortized across 1/10th of the number of vehicles. Instead of the vehicle costing $11,000, it's now $20,000.
If this were being sold to consumers, the company would have to eat the cost because nobody would want to pay that much for a vehicle worth half the price. But for military projects, the military ends up footing the bill.
In reality, each F-22 costs about $120 million. The R&D and tooling cost was already spent.
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
You argument makes no sense. That $360 million per copy is money that didn't go to other weapons systems and its money that got tacked on to the national debt or taken out of tax payers pockets. THAT IS WHAT AN F-22 COST US, and you can't spin it any other way. Just because its sunk cost doesn't change the fact is money tacked on to the national debt, for which we the U.S. had to borrow money and is paying interest. The F-22 R&D program went on far longer than it was supposed to, suffered huge overruns, pretty much the standard procedure for every big Lockheed contract.
At the moment that kind of money would have been better spent on patrol vehicles for Iraq designed to withstand IED's. It could better go to repairing all the M-1's and Bradley's that were completely worn out in Iraq. If we actually needed an armored fighting force for an emergency right now, the U.S. doesn't really have one. The Army and Marines are completely broken with most of their working equipment tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the rest in depots in the U.S. broken down and and worn out.
The problem with the Air Force is that it has completely outstripped every adversary to the point they are mostly just squandering money competing with themselves. Russia and China are the only two potential adversaries that could even remotely challenge the U.S. in the air. The odds of China and the U.S. going to war now are really slim. China is every Republican businessman's wet dream, a gigantic pool of dirt cheap labor to profit from. China is bleeding the U.S. white in trade deficit the old fashioned capitalist way. They are so mutually dependent economically a war is the last thing on their minds. Russia is getting rich off its oil and gas reserves. It has no reason to throw all that away in a foolish war. It can control Europe just by threatening to turn off the gas pipelines in the middle of winter.
So who exactly is the F-22 or B-2 needed to fight? They are ridiculously expensive cold war relics, which are almost completely worthless in a world in which all of America's enemies are using unconventional warfare, like hijacked planes, suicide bombers and IED's. No one is foolish enough to go one on one with the U.S. in a conventional war, everyone has figured out its really cheap and easy to tie the U.S. up in knots with unconventional methods.
They are also to expensive and to big a trophy target to risk them by sending them
The A-10 is probably the most useful airplane the U.S. has in the real wars the U.S. is fighting now, its ancient and dirt cheap but it does the job that needs done in the real wars American is fighting now.
That Red Flag exercise was really telling, it was mostly F-22's beating F-15's. F-15's have had complete air superiority in every war they've been in. At this point the Air Force is just beating itself at enormous expense to the American tax payer. No on else is really even trying any more. Most fighters being built by other countries are for potential wars against countries which aren't the United States and to maintain some pretense that they could defend their air space against the United States if they had to when they probably couldn't, even against F-15's, F-18's and F-117's.
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And it does tak
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:4, Interesting)
In modern air combat where AWACS are involved, by the time you're lit up by the enemy fighter's radar, it's too late, and you'd better be praying that your chaff, evasive action, and your ejection seat work.
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Unless you have AWACS [wikipedia.org] tracking the targets and emitting their positions to you.
I've been told here in slashdot that the F-22 which get run out of ammo do go away from the battle field and act as AWACS for the rest of still fighting F-22s.
So the F-22 is a very powerful weapon, specially when combined with AWACS.
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Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:5, Informative)
"I can't see the [expletive deleted] thing," said RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell, exchange F-15 pilot in the 65th Aggressor Squadron. "It won't let me put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it visually through the canopy. [Flying against the F-22] annoys the hell out of me."
On other fronts, the F-22 represents our leading edge technology (even though it's essentially 1990's tech) and is what gives us an advantage. It's not surprising the technology isn't up for export. The F-15 and F-16 both were in the same position when they were introduced, but eventually were considered for export after there advantage subsided a bit (or "lower" tech versions of them were available).
As well, the F-22 is really expensive. The United States is one of the few countries (or groups of countries) that can pull off such an endeavor. This also naturally limits its export capability, there's simply few others that could afford to buy it.
IMHO, Japan will end up with export variants of the F-35 (the USAF already has F-22 stationed in Okinawa). And continue with their F-15 and possibly be allowed to construct a variant of the F-15E to replace their aging F-4s (though their limited production of F-2 can already fulfill this requirement).
Japan has tried this move before, they eventually canceled production [f-16.net] of their F-2 program (basically a modernized F-16) and are looking to persuade the United Stated to open up more tech for them to acquire (again, probably the F-35, though possibly future F-22 export variants).
All Japan produced planes, so far, have been based on US tech. Any other home grown R&D project would be too expensive to survive in the political arena. There's no reason to believe this ATD-X project will find the same fate.
Finally, IMHO, it wouldn't be able to beat the F-22 is most engagements. Physical performance is only one aspect of why the F-22 is the best air superiority fighter in the world. Avionics, radar, and weapon load out represent some of the others. The ATD-X would just be too expensive to match the F-22 in all areas, if it sees flight, major compromises will have to be make.
This post coming from a guy who just saw the F-16, F-15, and F-22 fly back to back at the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends [pbase.com].
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Wrong! (Score:3, Informative)
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Mitsubishi fighter: http://inventorspot.com/files/images/P-DN-061116-02E.img_assist_custom.jpg/ [inventorspot.com]
F22: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_F-22_10-Oc_Over_Mountains_lg.jpg/ [defenseindustrydaily.com]
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Actually, the best defense lies in making your positions as unassailable as possible (there are a variety of ways to do this). Victory is found by waiting for the other guy to screw up and exploiting his mistakes while trying not to make exploitable mistakes of your own.
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That means the best defense is to make sure your enemy is rich - because THEN he/they WILL fear airstrikes. The poorer they are the less they fear your attack, because it's only the life - a miserable one - which they've to loose. It's *mostly* the poor guys who're recruited as suicide bombers...
Re:Tech issues and socio-political issues. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm trying, I really am. BUT, WTF!!! Do you mean "LOSE"? How can you post an otherwise reasonable reply and not know the difference between "lose" and "loose"? I don't mean to loose the grammar Nazi buried in me on you but I can't stand it! I guess I have a screw loose in that area. Even more excruciating, your post WAS otherwise insightful. I guess I have nothing to lose but karma.
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Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fighters are about air superiority regardless of offense or defense. This has been the case since WWI.
The Luftwaffe didn't send fighters over the UK to defend Germany from British Bombers, but rather attempting to keep the RAF out of the sky. Whether shooting them on the runways or when they attempted to attack the German bombers didn't matter.
Of course the Luftwaffe had its role switched to defense in 1944, but it was still attempted to gain air superiority against allied fighters and bombers.
The role of the fighter is to destroy other aircraft. It can be used in defense or offense, but its key role is not defense like SAM or Flak batteries.
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cool as ice (Score:2, Funny)
Or maybe just a mockup? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stealth is a defensive technology anyway, meaning your fighter is stealthy only until a single weakness is found. You can't really say at this point if this is a project that will succeed. Or if it's even meant to succeed. I mean, would you put it past the Japanese to force the US hand to sell them to F22 by threatening to build a competitor which they might sell to god-knows-who to finance the development. the previous sentence is an artistic liberty I took to get my point across, i'm sure the F22 is more advanced than the F15 in areas other than stealth.
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The real problem (Score:5, Informative)
Many canadians remember the "Avro Arrow" the last fighter jet built here. To bring it into production would have taken up the entire defense budget, and once you have built enough fighters to satisfy the needs of your own air force, how do you keep the team together to maintain it and build enhanced versions? You either sell your aircraft to foreign nations, (often unstable and/or war torn 3rd world dictatorships that have disproportionately large military budgets) team up with foreign nations to increase your market and share the costs. (like the newest eurofighter) No matter how good the arrow was, (the project is still controversial) it couldn't be built economically without selling it abroad.
The Israeli's tried and failed with the Lavi project. Technically they could have done it, but it didn't make economic sense no matter how badly they wanted control and ownership of their own weapons platform.
Other countries such as Sweden and France manufacture high tech fighters - the French were notorious for selling their all over the world. I predict the project will probably fold after spending billions of dollars, and just maybe cranking out a factory prototype or two.
The US can do it simply because they are such a large country with the world's biggest military budget. Even they have run into problems where the production run was completed, yet they didn't want to lose the technology and expertise when the production line shut down and the team disbanded, so wound up buying more aircraft than the air force wanted.
Go Japan! (Score:2, Interesting)
Trailing edges of wing and tail are wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Thad
How to take down a stealth fighter (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20051121.aspx [strategypage.com]
Round 5 in the jet fighter evolution race. (Score:4, Informative)
To ctach up in this never ending race, Sukhoi in Russia has been working on a similar stealth aircraft to the F-22, called the PAK FA [wikipedia.org] for many years now, and the first example should be flying next year, and Shenyang and Chengdu in China have been working on similar designs, the J-xx and J-13 [sinodefence.com], but I doubt that any of these weapons will ever be used against any of the other. The Russia and Chinese jets are just as sensitive, security wise, as the F-22 is. There is much more chance that the Indians using the PAK and the Pakistanis, using the J-13/14 will duke it out amongst themselves, if Russia and China ever sell the weapons to them, being as sensitive as they are, than any of those fighting against the F-22.
These aircraft are so expensive that losing just one, be it in combat or to accidents mean that you've just lost some $100 million dollars in the case of the F-22. The fact that they will almost certainly not be used in combat against any foe that a F-16 couldn't cope with means that they, along with incredibly expensive stealth ships, stealth submarines, etc, are mostly expensive white elephants, flying around, doing a lot of impressive flight demos, and then eventually being scrapped in 30 years or so when they reach the end of their service lives.
I personally think that while the Japanese could certainly develop one of these aircraft on their own, and might very well do so in the face of the J-13/xx and the PAK if the US doesn't sell them the F-22, I think that a lot of what the Japanese are doing is simply bargaining to get the US to sell them the F-22. The costs of developing an advanced stealth fighter are not to be laughed at. However, as soon as the Russian PAK and Chinese J-13/xx are in active service, the aura of invincibility of the F-22 will decrease, and then I suppose we'll move on to round 6 of the never ending race to waste people's money and lives.
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Seriously, people, stop referring to countries and decision made by countries with the name of the capital city. You don't sound smart, you aren't clever, this isn't a bad movie.
Japan is making an aircraft. Not Tokyo. Shut up and go away.
It's called "synecodche", look it up. (Score:2, Informative)
What I'm wondering is... (Score:2)
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Re:Stealth? I doubt! (Score:5, Funny)
Precisely. All that equipment we're carrying to detect gaseous anomalies - the thing's got to have a tailpipe!
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They're also fairly easy to detect from the ground (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stealth? I doubt! (Score:5, Insightful)
To which I call BS. The shoot down was not a technology failure. The shoot down was a tactical failure of the worst kind. If your commanders REQUIRE that your super secret plane flies the exact same route, while low to the ground, day in and day out, over populated areas which can observe this pattern, guess what, you can create an ambush for it. No super secret Russian technology required. As a result, the plane was shot down but firing a large number of visually aimed missiles. Basic math and physics won.
Mandated operating procedures were changed and heads did roll. The cause of the shoot down was American stupidity and not a Russian developed, anti-stealth, counter measure. The Russians did loot the crash site afterwards to obtain material samples.
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If your commanders REQUIRE that your super secret plane flies the exact same route, while low to the ground, day in and day out, over populated areas which can observe this pattern, guess what, you can create an ambush for it.
We've heard that before. There is always spin. Guess what, it's even happening in IRAQ now. So instead of saying, "yes, it's not as stealth as we thought it is", our air force officers span the incident as if the technology itself is fool proof!
That aircraft is not as stealth as we think it is. From insiders, and I have access to some of them, they will not fly an un-escorted "stealth fighter" even at night.
Stealth is validated (Score:2)
By any measure US stealth was an overwhelming success in the Balkan War. There was one (count 'em) loss out of 1000's of stealth sorties. No aircraft flies with absolute impunity. The question is, does stealth help accomplish the mission. The answer is a resounding yes, even against the best Russian air defenses.
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Why do you think we scream when Russians send technology to Iran? I guess it's because we do not have all the answers to their technology.
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They tried that once [wikipedia.org]. It worked for a few months, then it was downhill for three years until they gave up.
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The military game is not about volume and mass production anymore, as it was back in those days. The Zero was better than anything the allies had at the time, but in terms of people volume and production volume the US was non-beatable, at least once they were awake, something Admiral Yamamoto predicted very accurately when he said "I can run wild for six months ... after that, I have no expectation of success." The Pacific half of WWII was one of attrition. (The other half of it also was one, actually, once
Re:Japanese will beat US any time (Score:4, Interesting)
That comparison may be valid for American vs. German tanks, but not for Japanese vs. American airplanes. Japan created what was undoubtedly its best fighter, the Zero, in 1939, and never did anything better than that. OTOH, the US kept releasing better and better planes during WWII; the P-51 had a cruising speed that was 20 mph faster than the Zero's *top* speed in level flight.
Japan beat the US in the car industry hands-down by doing just that: focus on becoming, being, and remaining better and persist until success is assured, no matter what
They did that in the video and audio industry, until everyone had all the VCRs and boomboxes they wanted. Then the focus shifted to computers and cellphones. Where is Japan now? Why is it that Sony, the unbeatable monster of audio and video equipment has to buy their phone technology from a Swedish corporation?
I think Japan has a very weak spot: they are excellent at improving existing technologies, but they cannot create new ones. When they finally dominate an industry, it becomes more or less irrelevant and a new industry dominates the economy.
I'm sure there will be better Japanese CPUs in the future to rival Intel or AMD, there'll be better Japanese cellphones than Nokia, Ericsson, or Motorola. But I'm ready to bet that by then there will exist a new gadget that no one imagines today, and that gadget will have been invented in the USA or Europe.
Re:Japanese will beat US any time (Score:4, Informative)
That comparison may be valid for American vs. German tanks, but not for Japanese vs. American airplanes. Japan created what was undoubtedly its best fighter, the Zero, in 1939, and never did anything better than that. OTOH, the US kept releasing better and better planes during WWII; the P-51 had a cruising speed that was 20 mph faster than the Zero's *top* speed in level flight.
The myth that Japan entered the war with the Zero and left it at that is simply that - a myth. The Zero was being replaced throughout 1943, 1944 and 1945 with better aircraft, with the only problem being that toward the end of the war Japan could not produce enough of them to sustain a defensive force.
Re:Japanese will beat US any time (Score:4, Insightful)
The Japanese surpised the US at Pearl Harbour, not only because it was a sneak attack, but also because it proved once and for all that in naval warfare the era of big-guns was over and the airplane would rule. In contrast to the Nippon Kaigun, the US navy had not yet understood this at the time, but the Pearl Harbor attack forced them into it. Many navies had carriers in 1940-1941, but only the Japanese understood what they were good for. That's not exactly an example of "take an existing success and improved it to perfection", but of a "change the paradigm". Actually, an American general saw the light in the 1920s as well, but was not believed in the US and court-martialled for his persistence. (So yes, it could be argued that the Japanese heard the idea from him, and I cannot prove that they had it already, but Mitchell's idea was not generally believed to be a good one. And that crucially is what the Japanese understood before embarking on their naval building programs.)
Interestingly, the ever-imaginative rocket-inventing Germans - who by the way also invented the true submarine (their revolutionary Type XXI) for replacing the "boats that also could dive if really needed" that everyone else was using, completely failed to see the importance of carriers throughout the war. With that I want to point out that it is not correct to extrapolate from one (actually even misunderstood) failure to do something to a general caracteristic. Carrier building and developing the correct doctrine to use them effectively takes time, and since the Germans didn't have a real navy in between 1918 and roughly about 1936 they didn't have that time. It doesn't make them idiots, though.
The Japanese collapse started at the combined battles in the Coral Sea and Midway (exactly after the six months predicted by Yamamoto), where they crucially lost most of their carrier fleet and experienced pilots. They simply did not have the resources to replace those. At that moment in time, the US was dangerously close to running out of carriers as well (just imagine Midway going the other way), but they had the resources to build many more in no time and they had the people to man them.
And on top of all that there is the entire Japanese oil shortage thing that prevented them from doing many things they would have liked to do. What use it is to mass-produce new planes (assuming for a moment you can do that) for carriers that you no longer have and can't build and that you couldn't effectively operate anyway for lack of oil and pilots.
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Really? They pretty much created the commercially-available hybrid automobile. (Sure, they didn't invent it, but the idea for hybrid gas/electric powertrains has been around for a very long time).
They also created one of the most impressive technologies in modern photography, image-stabilized lenses. (I think Canon did it first, but now Canon, Nikon, and Panasonic all make IS/VR/OIS/wha
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Those jobs are basically paid by your taxes and subsidized by your kids in the near future.
Creating even more jobs in the US military is in fact the best example yet I've seen for the phrase "shooting yourself in the foot". You need to figure out which you need more: have some fun shooting, or your foot.
US being in h
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This is in contrast to spending on the welfare state, which is technologically-averse, and more specialized in political screeching, as well as staging public unrest. Now that's an example of taxpayer dollars shooting taxpayers in the foot.
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This is in contrast to spending on the welfare state, which is technologically-averse, and more specialized in political screeching, as well as staging public unrest. Now that's an example of taxpayer dollars shooting taxpayers in the foot.
Your contrast is wrong. US has no money for welfare or mil
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The consumer sector should be a better judge of consumer needs than military spending. Sony can pay for Sony's R&D - justifying military expenses on the basis that innovation will 'trickle down' to the civilian sector is absurd.
At best,
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Now, there is the point that military spending must not tend to zero: if it does, it doesn't matter how great your economy is, you'll very shortly find yourself paying for someone else's mili
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The USA spends a shitload on our military. The Japanese spend nearly zero.
I am sitting here typing on a computer designed partly in Japan. Sitting next to me is a cell phone designed by Koreans, and a digital camera made by Japanese engineers. The piece of glass on front of it was designed by Germans, and built in a Japanese factory.
I've got an American car. It doesn't work too well, especially when compared to Japanese cars.
I'm a physics grad student. The US gave up building the next-gen particle acc
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_F-1 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_F-2 [wikipedia.org]
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But I just had another thought as I read the posts here: what if the U.S. gov't really does have a lot of faith in Japan as a world citizen and an ally, and this is just a shitty way
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Japan entered World War II with the intent of conquering Asia. They invaded
Re:the real issue (Score:5, Informative)
I'd recommend reading Downfall, by Richard Frank, to get the facts straight.
The Japanese were interested in a conditional surrender with four conditions: keep the Emperor, no occupation of Japan, evacuation from occupied areas to be done by Japan on a Japanese schedule, and war crime trials of Japanese to be conducted by the Japanese. That's the minimum that would be accepted by all members of the Liaison Council, and that council had to act pretty much unanimously. The Allies offered a conditional surrender, although with rather harsh conditions. The Japanese did not surrender before the nukes. They decided to use the Soviets as intermediaries, but never could decide what to ask for. There were some unofficial feelers through other countries, which the Japanese government stepped on hard.
Given that the Japanese weren't surrendering, and couldn't even agree on a proposal to start negotiations, the US really did have to use whatever means available to force surrender. Some people claimed that Japan was going to surrender in a few more months. I regard these claims as seriously optimistic, given that even in the circumstances there were plenty of Japanese willing to stage a coup to prevent the surrender. (Even so, delaying the surrender by three months would have killed far more civilians than the nukes did.)
There has, of course, been a lot of anti-American propaganda on the subject. Don't fall for it.
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Who is Japan's primary enemy? (Score:2)
In fact Russia and its sphere of influence could get big benefits from co
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Re:Payload!? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember: This isn't a bomber, though it can carry two bombs if needed (as the expense of 4 missiles) it's an air superiority fighter. It is designed to be fast, light, stealthy, and to kill other planes. Maneuverability and stealth are more important than maximum payload.