Japan is considering building its own fighter jets after years of playing second fiddle in a US construction partnership, a report said earlier today, in a move likely to stoke fears of its military resurgence among Asian neighbours.
Japan´s attempt in the 1980s to build its first purely domestic fighters since World War II faced US resistance and resulted in joint US-Japan development and production of the F-2.
But joint F-2 production ended more than two years ago and the last of the fighters are due to be retired from Japan´s air defence force around 2028, it added.
The defence ministry plans to seek about 40 billion yen ($387 million) in state funding for the next year starting in April 2015 to test experimental engines and radar-dodging stealth airframe designs for a purely Japanese fighter, the report said.
According to its medium-term defence programme, the Tokyo government will decide by the 2018 financial year whether to go ahead with the all-Japanese fighter project.
There is a growing need for Japan to develop a long-haul, high stealth fighter jet in the face of China´s increasing assertiveness in the East China Sea, where the two countries are locked in a dispute over a group of Tokyo-controlled islands.
Japan is considering building its own fighter jets after years of playing second fiddle in a US construction partnership, a report said earlier today, in a move likely to stoke fears of its military resurgence among Asian neighbours.
Japan´s attempt in the 1980s to build its first purely domestic fighters since World War II faced US resistance and resulted in joint US-Japan development and production of the F-2.
But joint F-2 production ended more than two years ago and the last of the fighters are due to be retired from Japan´s air defence force around 2028, it added.
The defence ministry plans to seek about 40 billion yen ($387 million) in state funding for the next year starting in April 2015 to test experimental engines and radar-dodging stealth airframe designs for a purely Japanese fighter, the report said.
According to its medium-term defence programme, the Tokyo government will decide by the 2018 financial year whether to go ahead with the all-Japanese fighter project.
There is a growing need for Japan to develop a long-haul, high stealth fighter jet in the face of China´s increasing assertiveness in the East China Sea, where the two countries are locked in a dispute over a group of Tokyo-controlled islands.
