"The JASDF is on the edge of becoming a major tool of power projection," said Michael Auslin, a Japan security expert with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "With its fighter selection process, it will signal whether it intends to be qualitatively competitive with leading air forces around the region over the next generation."
Japan — with 362 fighter jets, mostly F-15s, F-4s and F-2s — is already one of the top air powers in the region.
But planners have long been concerned by the increasing age and expense of maintaining the fleet — along with this country's ability to match the improving air capabilities of neighboring Russia and China. Japan has been using the F-15 as its centerpiece fighter since the early 1980s, though they have been updated over the years. Japan flies about 200 of the planes.
But we won't sell Japan's first choice:
Because of its sensitive technology, the U.S. Congress has opposed selling the F-22 abroad. Budget restraints in the United States have further forced Washington to drastically reduce its own orders for the pricey plane, whose future is now cloudy.
So Japan has other choices in mind:
With the F-22 out of the picture, Japan has set its sights on three jets as its next mainstay fighter — the Lockheed F-35, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet and the Eurofighter Typhoon. The hotly contested deal for more than 40 "F-X," or next generation, planes is worth upwards of $8 billion. The first planes are expected to begin arriving in 2016.
Japan is likely to go with one of the American options.
Actually, I'd think that Japan is likely to go with two American options. If the F-15s are old, the F-4s are positively ancient. And the F-2s are basically F-16s, if newly built. Nice planes but an older basic design. Plus no more are being built.
So Japan needs replacements for both the F-15 and the F-4. Given the threat of Russian and Chinese advanced warplanes coming on line in future decades, the F-35 seems to be the logical choice to replace the high end of their fighter fleet. But the rising costs of the F-35 may mean that they can't buy nearly 300 of the planes to replace both the F-15 and F-4. So it seems likely that the Japanese would continue a high-low using some F-35s with F-18s to supplement them. I assume the Typhoon really isn't in the running since the need to operate closely with American forces argues for American designs.
Actually, I don't know why Silent Eagles aren't in the mix for the low end of a new high-low mix for Japan with the F-35. But I'm not an air force hardware guy so I confess that I may not know enough about the platforms to really judge whether an updated but old F-15 design has room for growth the way a more recent F-18 design does.
But the F-35 has to be the main choice. Japan is an air power in the region only because of plane and pilot quality. Numerically, China has more advanced designs than Japan does now. Unless Japan decides to go for quantity, quality is the only way to defend their place as a major regional air power. The F-35--assuming it works as advertised--is the only real option that Japan has (us too, for that matter).
