Thread: Should Japan Rearm?

Originally Posted by lnvanry

DOMS, the real reason why Japan isn't arming itself in the manner you are referring to is b/c its against their constitution, according to the current gov'ts interpretation.

I know that they have the weapons and that it's their constitution that's holding them back. I just think we'd be better off with Japan as an offensive ally.

Originally Posted by ALBOB

McDonnell/Douglas sold two F-15 figherts to Japan almost 40 years ago. (Minus the Secret Squirrel shit the DoD said they couldn't have.) Japan then outfitted thier entire Air Force with perfect replicas of those two. You'd think M/D would have been pissed that thier product was copied. Nope, that was allowed in the originals sales contract. But they were very careful to include verbiage that made it mandatory that follow-on maintence and upgrades were to be performed ONLY by M/D personnel. That contract is still alive and well. The only thing that's changed is that M/D is now part of Boeing.

The precedent has been set.

Japan entered the contract through licensed production...every contractors dream. This is isn't uncommon with Japan and US contractors. Japan pays through the nose to the pay an upfront license fee (could billions in this case...not familiar with the details) then they pay a royalty fee per unit produced. The contractor licenses the blueprints for the tech data that the USG will allow them to (ie Secret, Confidential, or company proprietary data only...TS data can never be released). There are some parts that will be classified TS and no customer can have access to the data package...the contractor will then simply export the hardware in pieces and the customer will simply assemble it. The customer typically cannot export the product that is made under license.

Japan more than any other country for two reasons:

1. they can afford the enormous upfront costs (until recently they were the 2nd largest economy in the world)

1. They create lots of jobs through this process. Lots of engineers, technicians, program managers, etc

Japan has a very unique industrial context. They government generally doesn't procure defense articles directly from US contractors. The contractors sell the components, assembly pieces, and tech data to a Japan trading company (Mitsubishi Heavy, Mitsubishi Corp, Mitsubishi Electric, Itochu, etc) and the trading company then assembles it and then sells (for a profit) the final product to the MoD in Japan, the end user. This helped build the Japanese industry into what it is today. It also removes or at the least reduces the requirement for offset agreements (totally different conversation, but feel free to check it out on wiki, they have a decent description).

Japan really is the best int'l customer...hand over fist. I guess thats assuming you can actually get in that market, but once your in...you're golden with very good profit margins. Much better profit margins than the US as they audit defense contractors through fixed firm pricing contracts (usually 15% at max). On the flip side, the USG is the most important and best customer all around. They are our protection and warfighters, plus the US defense budget is prolly 10x the 2nd largest defense budget...I think thats China right now.