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 Joined: Apr 26, 2004 Posts: 1175 Status: Offline

Sorry to hear that.......

Veteran Joined: Mar 24, 2007 Posts: 379 Status: Offline

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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Forum: General

What do you guys know about the F-2