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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 0150.PDF
Eastern enigma Persuaded by US pressure, and financial prudence, to abandon development of its own next-generation support fighter, can the Japanese aerospace industry emerge as a world-class contender on the back of technology developed to modify the F-16? Peter Middleton reports from Tokyo, Nagoya, and Gifu. What is the uncharitable definition of a Japanese airline hostess? She is the one carrying the designer handbag but living in a rabbit hutch. The apocryphal story illustrates one of the enigmas which still surround the Japanese. They are acquiring the most desirable trappings of "Western" success, but are hemmed in by lack of space. They also retain many of their ancjent cultural traditions at home, along with more recen tly acquired taboos about nationalism, militarism, and the export of armaments. The Japanese aerospace industry exhibits parallels with the hostess. It has acquired some of the most desirable tech nology through licence-building upmarket Western products, ranging from F-15s to P-3s (with everything from Patriot to SH-60J to follow), but it is cramped by circumstance. Unlike Japanese living accommodation, it does not lack physical space (the gleaming floors of Mitsubishi's Nagoya plants extend for acres), but Government policies have narrowed its horizons. Although the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Miti) encourages the development of civil aircraft, it refuses to fund the prodigious cost of modern airliner development except in partner ship with American companies, notably Boeing, for whom Japanese industry is a subcontractor on 767 fuselages, and with whom it will develop the 7J7. So, apart from old YS-11 twin- turboprop airliners, Mitsubishi Mu-2s, Diamonds (Beechjets), and the German/Japanese BK.117 helicopter, the industry has been almost entirely militarily orientated. Some 80 per cent of its output has been for the Japan Defence Agency—not only from licence prod uction, but also from home-grown programmes such as the T-2 trainer, F-l Japanese aerospace will rely heavily on the new SX-3 (FS-X) support fighter, above, which, although based on the F-16, will draw upon tech nology gained from the control-configured T-2, top right, and a broad range of experience with such diverse programmes as the XT-4, and the Asuka Stol research transport, right yl^ H .> FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 23 January 1988
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