Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

148 • JOINT DEVELOPMENT OF FSX
Matsuoka in May rewrote the Draft Understanding so as to significantly
change its character. The changes were in no way acceptable
to the United States, which, in June, submitted its own proposal. The
terms contained in this proposal were considerably stronger than
those of the original April document, and the Japanese government—wrongly—seized
on this as evidence of the stiffening of
Washington’s position. The American proposal, moreover, coincided
with the outbreak of the Soviet–German war. Tokyo responded to
this development by advancing its troops into southern Indochina,
which, in turn, prompted Washington to freeze Japanese assets in the
United States and to place an embargo on oil. These actions virtually
guaranteed that the Japanese–American negotiations of 1941—
and of course the efforts of the John Doe Associates—ended in war.
See also WORLD WAR II.
JOINT DEVELOPMENT OF FSX. The Fighter Support X (FSX) is
an F2 support fighter plane for Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force
(ASDF) that was co-developed with the United States. Initially, the
ASDF and Japanese engineers in both the public and private sectors
insisted on domestic production of the plane, but the United States,
which strongly desired to sell its own fighters to Japan and feared that
Japan might become a serious competitor to the U.S. aerospace aircraft
industry, raised strong objections.
In October 1987, Japan compromised by agreeing to Japan–U.S.
joint development of a fighter plane based on the U.S.-made F16.
This was the first time the United States and Japan had ever decided
on joint development of a fighter. In return for abandoning its hope
of domestic development, Japan was permitted to acquire most of the
technology used in the F-16 joint development; however, owing to
opposition from the Congress, Japan was forced to develop its own
flight-control computer software.
The direction of technology flow was not one way. The codevelopment
agreement obligated Japan to provide the United States
with Japan’s own cutting-edge technologies used in, for example,
radar, shipbuilding, digital flight control, ducted rocket engines, ceramic
engines for military vehicles, shallow water acoustic sound
systems, and ballistic missile defense. Because of limitations imposed
by Japan’s arms export regulations, the United States was not
allowed to export U.S.-made arms that incorporated any technologies