Free Republic

There’s aircraft designers, and then there’s ace designers. There are thousands of engineers around the world producing planes, but ace designers only come along once every few decades. The United States had Kelly Johnson, the designer of the SR-71 Blackbird. Germany’s Willy Messerschmitt produced a line of famous fighter planes. The Soviet Union’s Mikhail Simonov created the muscular Su-27 fighter-bomber to compete with America’s F-15 Eagle. Each of these aces were highly skilled, but they also owed much of their success to circumstance. They came along when their respective governments invested millions — or billions — of dollars into transforming brainpower into cutting-edge combat...

EU bosses are pushing to resolve a clash between industry and environmental policy with a new strategy to phase out funding to export coal technology to developing nations, ahead of a meeting of leading economic powers on the issue. The European Commission, the EU executive, urges tougher rules on when subsidies, known as coal export credits, can be used in a paper seen by Reuters, ahead of interim talks this week. Political pressure is growing to reach agreement on restricting the coal subsidies before United Nations climate change talks in Paris at the end of the year. But opposition is...

A Japanese government team is in talks with at least two top British firms to help a Japanese consortium land one of the world's most lucrative defence contracts, sources in Tokyo said, a $50 billion (£32 billion) project to build submarines for Australia. Germany's ThyssenKrupp (TKMS), a rival bidder, is wooing anxious members of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ruling Liberal Party with the economic and political benefits of its proposal. Two Japanese government officials and a company source in Tokyo said Babcock International Group and BAE Systems had approached the consortium of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries with...

According to the Japanese Ministry of Defense (MoD) request for proposal (RfP) to bidding contractors, the 27DD destroyers will incorporate a number of design changes compared to the first batch of Atago class guided missile destroyers. 27DD AEGIS Guided Missile Destroyer technical specifications and layout First, the hull of 27DD has been enlarged to an empty displacement of 8,200 tons compared to the original Atago's 7,700 tons. It is believed in the Japanese defense community that the enlargement of the hull was conceived in order to provide a necessary growth space for advanced naval weapon systems that are currently under...

At China’s very farthest limits, a town sandwiched between North Korea and Russia stands at the heart of Beijing’s plan to revitalise its bleak, frigid northeastern rust belt. Beijing has a vision of turning the nondescript outpost of Hunchun into a regional Asian trading hub and is spending tens of billions of dollars to turn it into reality. Less than 70 km away in North Korea, the port of Rason offers access to the sea and a shorter trade route to Japan, one of China’s biggest trading partners, than almost any of its own harbours. But the ambitious plan relies...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Saying they felt a "deep sense of ethical responsibility for a past tragedy," executives from a major Japanese corporation gave an unprecedented apology Sunday to a 94-year-old U.S. prisoner of war for using American POWs for forced labor during World War II.At the solemn ceremony hosted by the Museum of Tolerance at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, James Murphy of Santa Maria, California, accepted the apology he had sought for 70 years on behalf of U.S. POWs from executives of Mitsubishi Materials Corp.

The U.S. Navy's newest combat ship, the USS Little Rock, slid into the waters of Marinette Marine Shipyard in Wisconsin on Saturday morning. .. the 378-foot-long, 3,000-ton littoral combat ship with only a 13-foot draft is ideal for the missions the Navy faces in shallow waters around Pacific Rim, where the Navy is increasing presence as it keeps an eye on China, which is expanding its naval forces and its presence in the South China Sea. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the launching of the Little Rock is emblematic of the Navy's commitment to have a fleet of 304 ships...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine Corps' top aviator flew to an Arizona air base this week as part of a final effort to certify the combat-readiness of an initial squadron of 10 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35B fighter jets, their pilots and technicians. Marine Corps officials were due to brief Lieutenant General Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation, on a week-long review which included operational and simulator flights in five core mission areas, an inspection of the maintenance department, and academics for both pilots and technicians. If Davis is satisfied, he will brief Marine Corps Commandant General Joseph Dunford, who...

Researchers have discovered fragments of fossilized dinosaur eggs in Southern Japan, according to a June 29 report in the journal Cretaceous Research. The 90 eggshell fragments once housed five different types of dinosaurs, all of them small. “We know from the eggshells that small dinosaurs were roaming Japan’s landscape in the Cretaceous Period [65 to 145 million years ago],” Darla Zelenitsky, an assistant professor of paleontology at the University of Calgary and study co-author, told Foxnews.com. “Many of the bones known from Japan are from larger dinosaurs, but we now know (from the eggshells) that small dinosaurs were also an...

A Japanese parliamentary committee approved legislation that would expand the role of Japan’s military Wednesday after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc forced the vote in the face of vocal protests from opposition lawmakers and citizens. Opposition lawmakers tried to stop the committee vote as hundreds of citizens protested outside. The unpopular legislation was crafted after Abe’s Cabinet adopted a new security policy last year that reinterpreted a part of Japan’s post-World War II constitution that only permitted the nation’s military to use force for its self-defense. The bills in question would allow Japan to also defend aggression against its...

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Some of Japan’s biggest companies, best known for motorcycles, washing machines and laptop computers, are pitching a new line of global products: military hardware. Quiet-running attack submarines. Amphibious search-and-rescue planes. Ship-mounted radar systems that use lasers to help pinpoint approaching enemies. After a ban on weapons exports that the Japanese government had maintained for nearly 50 years, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Hitachi, Toshiba and other military contractors in this semipacifist country are cautiously but unmistakably telling the world they are open for business. A maritime security exposition here in May was the first military industry trade show in Japan,...

Japan is interested in joining a NATO missile building consortium that would give Tokyo its first taste of a multinational defense project, a move the U.S. Navy is encouraging because it could pave the way for Japan to lead similar partnerships in Asia, sources said. The 12-country NATO consortium oversees development and shares the costs of the SeaSparrow missile, an advanced ship-borne weapon designed to destroy anti-ship sea-skimming missiles and attack aircraft. The missile is made by U.S. weapons firms Raytheon (RTN.N) and General Dynamics (GD.N). In May, Japanese naval officers traveled to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in...

While several Chinese security-scenarios are discussed in defense circles, China’s Taiwan dilemma is still the primary driver for Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) acquisition. Resolving China’s Taiwan issue has been the PLA’s justification for double-digit budget increases over decades. The force needed to deal with a U.S. military intervention during a Taiwan contingency far outweighs that required to handle China’s other external security goals. The Taiwan issue is reflected in the PLA Navy’s (PLAN) undersea force structure, which in recent years has heavily prioritized the construction of Type-39A Yuan-class conventional submarines (SSK). According to Naval War College professor and PLAN watcher...

Today just three countries operate long-range heavy bombers. Russia has 170 or so Bears, Backfires and Blackjacks. America fields 160 swing-wing B-1s, radar-evading B-2s and stalwart B-52s. China’s bomber force is smaller with around 130 H-6s. And most of the H-6s, copies of Russia’s Cold War Tu-16, lack the long range and heavy payload that many of the Russian and American bombers boast. But that’s changing. After years of work, the Chinese air force has reportedly outfitted two regiments—together possessing around 36 bombers — with a new, much more capable “K” version of the H-6. The H-6K is Beijing’s B-52 — a far-flying, fuel-efficient...

Nearly $3trillion wiped off Chinese stock markets in just the last few weeks Government and investors launched campaign to prop up tumbling shares Experts draw parallels with the credit booms that led up to the 1929 crash Analyst: 'I've never seen this kind of slump before. Don't think anyone has' China's tumbling stock markets plunged even further today, intensifying fears the country was tail-spinning towards the biggest financial disaster since the 1929 Wall Street crash. Almost $3trillion (£2trn) – more than the entire economic output of Brazil – has been wiped out since markets went into reverse just a few...

A fast-flying, heavy strategic aircraft is needed and long overdue, defense experts say. "Please try your best to develop new bomber aircraft." That was the last wish of the dying Lieutenant General Liu Yudi, 92, a flying ace from the Korean War and a former senior officer of the People's Liberation Army air force. Lying on his deathbed in the PLA Air Force General Hospital in Beijing, the legendary war hero used his last strength to write those words on a piece of paper and give it to General Ma Xiaotian, the air force commander who came to bid him...

Archaeologists have discovered the wreck of a Mongolian ship that was part of a fleet dispatched by Kublai Khan to invade Japan in the 13th century. The ship is the second to be located off southern Japan from two massive armadas – each reputedly made up of more than 4,000 ships and with an invasion force of 140,000 men – sent by the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty to conquer Japan in 1274 and 1281. Both invasion fleets were destroyed by devastating typhoons, with the storms going down in Japanese history as "kamikaze", or divine wind, that saved the nation...

Runway could be used for military purposes, US think tank says Johnson South Reef features a small port and two helipads. China has nearly finished building an airstrip that could be used for military purposes on one of its biggest artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, according to satellite images released by a US think tank yesterday. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said images taken on June 28 by DigitalGlobe showed China had almost completed the construction of a 3,000-metre airstrip at Fiery Cross Reef, which China calls Yongshu Reef. The defence ministry refused to...

MOSCOW, June 16 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday Russia's nuclear arsenal would be would increase by 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015. Speaking at Army-2015 Expo, an international military trade show near Moscow, Putin said the new missiles could "overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems," adding a new long-range early-warning radar "to monitor in the western direction" was also being prepared. It was a reference to plans by NATO to permanently place troops and heavy armaments in Poland, a Russian neighbor and former Warsaw Pact country. In reference to apparent plans to reinforce NATO's...

A giant gorilla with brooding good looks and rippling muscles is causing a stir at a Japanese zoo, with women flocking to check out the hunky pin-up. Shabani, an 18-year-old silverback who tips the scales at around 180 kilograms (400 pounds), has become the star attraction at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Nagoya, striking smouldering poses the movie model in "Zoolander" would be proud of. "He often rests his chin on his hands and looks intently at you," zoo spokesman Takayuki Ishikawa told AFP on Friday. "He is more buff than most gorillas and he's at his peak physically....