F-16.net

] The little F-1 was short on everything, endurance, warload etc.

WRT the F-1, F-2, and F-16 in Japan, before I played Gaika no Gouhou: Air Land Force for Japanese Windows, a turn-based war game published by Koei on 31 May 2002; I knew relatively little about modern Jap military hardware, except what I'd read or seen in Jap giant monster movies.

The background of Gaika no Gouhou
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin ... 82395.html
is a fictional modern Japan that, after WWII, is divided and occupied by Japanese, Russian, UK, and US forces. The US force is sub-divided into two forces: USA/USAF and USMC/USN.

The player begins with hardware from one of these forces, but can acquire money to buy hardware from the other forces. The objective is defeat all forces and re-unite Japan. {snore}

Anyway. During the game, I was fascinated/impressed by the F-1, because it had everything: some bombs for air-to-mud, some missiles for air-to-air, a bit more missiles for long-range anti-ship, and fastest repair rate... albeit the game mechanics were quite concise and simple, and nowhere as complicated as Harpoon or Star Fleet Battles.

The game also had the F-2, but I didn't invest enough into the Jap force for the tech level at which I could acquire it. I tried all forces and chose/began with the US Marines/Navy, because I obviously knew this force had the best fighter in the game, the F-14 with missiles that shot one hex farther than the Russian MiG-31, and way farther than the F-16 and F-22 of the US Air Force/Army in the game.

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Newbie Joined: Feb 15, 2008 Posts: 7 Status: Offline

We (the Japanese) were going to build it on our own until the USA stepped in.....

Elite 1K Joined: Apr 26, 2004 Posts: 1198 Status: Offline

Sorry to hear that.......

Exactly how did the USA prevent Japan from "building it on their own"? It would be interesting to see how it would come out, considering the unique Mitsubishi-designed part of the F-2 (the co-cured composite wing) leaves something to be desired.

Lockheed Martin's involvement in Taiwan (IDF) and Korea (T-50) was as Technical Advisors who more or less did all the heavy lifting on those projects. In Japan, the LM team was there as co-workers with absolutely no decision making authority. I was one of them and it was frustrating to see much of our input ignored.

The Japanese are great people and I made many lasting friendships, but basically MHI did not want us there.

As I said before, when I was playing Falcon 3.0 and its add-ons, and researching the F-16 and FS-X, I read:

"The Japan That Can Say No", by Ishihara Shintarou (current governor of Toukyou) and (the late) Morita Akio.
About the same time, I also read Morita Akio's biography.

"The Keys to the Kingdom", by Jeff Shear.

Unlike millions of other Chinese Netters, I'm a rational, sane Japan-basher. 8D

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What do you guys know about the F-2