Until recently, the British BAe and Rolls-Royce, and to a lesser extent, the Europeans of the FCAS project, believed they had a real chance of supporting Tokyo in its new generation hunter program FX. But according to the economic site Asia.nikkei.com, the Japanese authorities have finally decided to favor cooperation with the United States at the expense of that with the United Kingdom in this area, although it was at one time considered a leading challenger in this issue. An official announcement to this effect should be made this year.
Even if Japan turns again to Washington for its new fighter program, the Japanese authorities seem determined not to repeat the same mistakes as in the past. Indeed, the American authorities repeatedly hindered the modernization of the Mitsubishi F2, a Japanese aircraft derived from the American F16, by blocking the export of certain technologies. This is the reason why Taro Kono, the Japanese Minister of Defense, announced unambiguously that most of the technological developments of this new program will take place on Japanese soil, the latter cannot, therefore, be subject to external arbitrations.
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