While all of us, with genuine interest, continue to closely monitor and analyze the situation that has developed in recent weeks in the Syrian theater of military operations, where the upcoming deliveries of anti-aircraft missile systems of the S-300PS (or PMU-1) modification to Damascus will put a “fat” question Any attempt by the Allied Air Forces and the fleets of the Western coalition to carry out another massive missile attack on the most important fortifications of the Syrian army and industrial facilities of the republic, a surprise from Washington was outlined in the Asia-Pacific strategic direction. Here, the Pentagon, using the lines of military-technical support of the US allies, as well as foreign military sales, is preparing to challenge the actively strengthening regional dominance of the tactical air force components of the transitional and 5th generation of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Chinese Air Force. This became known on April 18, 2018 from the Reuters news agency, citing sources in the US Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin.
According to the eminent resource, at the moment, representatives of Lockheed, as well as high-ranking specialists from the US Air Force, have begun consultations with the Japanese defense department regarding a project to develop a promising 5th generation multipurpose fighter for the Japanese Air Defense Forces based on existing products. We are talking about a machine that combines the anti-aircraft potential of a fighter for gaining air superiority F-22A "Raptor" and the advanced architecture of the element base and software onboard avionics of the stealthy multifunctional fighter F-35A "Lightning II".
This event cannot be associated solely with the lobbying of American defense products about American officials from the Japanese Defense Ministry. The whole catch is that the project of the 5th generation Japanese fighter ATD-X, recently brought to the construction and first flight test of the technological demonstrator, still has an uncertain future, since for the final refinement of the airframe, EDSU and the armament control complex of the future F-3 it is necessary an allocation of more than $ 40 billion. This amount should also include the costs of erecting the corresponding facilities of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the large-scale production of F-3. Consequently, the ATD-X "Shinshin" project is currently not coordinated with the five-year defense plan of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, which will be finally formed only by the beginning of 2019; according to information from Reuters on November 15, 2017, work on the project is "frozen". Whether the defense department and the Japanese parliament will agree to allocate such funds for the continuation of the ATD-X project is still unknown.
A much simpler and at times less costly option is the direct purchase of Lockheed aircraft kits of the 5th generation F-35A multipurpose fighters through Foreign Military Sales (FMS) for $ 135 million per unit, their further assembly in workshops "Mitsubishi Heavy Industry", and then further contracts with "Lockheed" for the purchase of new hybrids F-22A and F-35A. Moreover, it is not the first time for the Japanese to sacrifice their defense technological self-sufficiency. For example, the purchase of 42 cars will cost Tokyo about $ 5.7 billion.dollars, which is 7 times cheaper than just bringing the ATD-X program to production samples of the "first stage". As for the hybrid F-22A and F-35A, which today is actively imposed on the Japanese Defense Ministry and the Air Defense Forces, it, without a doubt, looks even more attractive to them.
It is well known that back in 2007, the Japanese side made a request to purchase promising 5th generation F-22A "Raptor" fighters from the United States, but the US Congress rejected it due to the unacceptability of the transfer of critical technologies; Moreover, even its simplified export modification was not proposed with the possibility of installing a less advanced Japanese airborne AFAR-radar J / APG-1, represented by 800 gallium arsenide (GaAs) -based MMIC transceiver modules. The Japanese have long dreamed of "Raptor", and now they are offered a more advanced modification with a network-centric "filling" from the F-35A, and even without multibillion-dollar infusions from their own budget! Naturally, all this looks extremely tempting, which is what Washington expected. Tokyo's long-standing interest in export-banned US military equipment becomes Lockheed Martin's back-to-back "jump airfield" in the event of an increasingly likely failure to sell the F-35A to the Turkish Air Force. But these are only economic moments.
A much more important detail of such a proposal on the part of the Americans can be considered Washington's desire to establish parity in the combat potential of transitional and 5th generation tactical aviation with the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Chinese Air Force in the western part of the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to the fact that at the Russian Far Eastern air bases (Dzemgi, Domna, Central Uglovaya, etc.), the number of multipurpose tactical fighters and transitional fighter-bombers Su-30SM, Su-30M2, Su-35S continues to increase every year, and Chinese avb - no less perfect J-10B, J-11B and J-16, programs for the development / fine-tuning of the 5th generation machines - Su-57, J-20 and J-31 are in full swing. The first two vehicles are distinguished by a huge range of more than 2000 km (depending on the combat load in the internal weapons bays and the presence of external underwing PTBs), which is about 2 times more than the F-35A sold today to the Japanese side.
The radars of these machines, which are distinguished by an active phased array with an increased energy potential, are also about 2 times ahead of the AN / APG-81 proposed by the Americans in terms of range. So, if Н036 "Belka" is able to detect a target with EPR 1, 5 - 2 sq. m at a distance of 350 - 400 km, the Lightning APG-81 does this only from a distance of 150 - 160 km. Moreover, we have a trump card in our hands - side-scan antenna modules N036B-1-01L / 01B, which bring the view sectors up to 270 degrees, and allow scanning airspace in the rear hemisphere. The F-35A also has a "bonus" - an optical-electronic system with a distributed aperture AN / AAQ-37 DAS, represented by 6 high-resolution infrared sensors.
They will be able to detect Su-57 or J-20 by contrasting jet torch at a distance of over a hundred kilometers; but there is one "but": such a result can be achieved only in the afterburner operating modes of the turbojet engine, while at the maximum the DAS capabilities will decrease to several tens of kilometers. As for the nomenclature of operating modes, here both our and Chinese radars have approximately equal capabilities with the APG-81: there are synthetic aperture modes (SAR), tracking of moving surface objects (GMTI), and possibly an inverted synthetic aperture.
Even in spite of the fact that there is no official information in the open press about the possibility of using groups of transmitting-receiving modules of the station N036 "Belka" and Chinese airborne radars in the mode of radiation of directional interference or bypassing enemy interference using "dips" in the directional diagram, in practice, AFAR (as opposed to passive AFAR) allows you to do this. Looking at such pale capabilities of the F-35A (in addition to the poor performance) supplied by the Japanese Air Force, it is not surprising that the United States strives to cross the Raptor and Lightning for the emergence of a much more dangerous tactical fighter, equipped as the most "eared" the AN / ALR-94 raptor radiation warning / electronic reconnaissance station, as well as full-fledged "network" capabilities for exchanging tactical information with other types of tactical aviation via radio channels MADL (for F-35A) and "Link-16" (for linking with aircraft AWACS system AWACS and "Aegis" -ships). Channel of information exchange IFDL, in order to maintain safety in the advanced tactical link of the US Air Force 5th generation, most likely will continue to be used only by the crews of the F-22A. New details about the appearance of the advanced American "hybrid" for the Japanese Air Force will not be known until 2020.
