The territorial violation by China is the latest in a series of events amplifying tensions between Beijing and Japan.
A Chinese military surveillance plane breached Japanese airspace off the country’s southwestern coast on Monday, marking what Japan’s defense ministry described as the first known incursion by China’s military into its territorial airspace.
According to a ministry official, a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft briefly entered Japanese territory near Nagasaki Prefecture around 11:30 a.m. on Monday. In response, Japan’s Self-Defense Force put fighter jets on high alert and issued a warning to the Chinese aircraft.
While Chinese planes frequently appear in international airspace around Japan, this incident represents the first confirmed entry of a military aircraft into Japan’s territorial airspace.
The 183 was cancelled, no? And yes, there are always lots of goofy sci-fi projects on the go. My favourite to date is MARAUDER, because it was cool and especially because of the acronym. It’s extremely unlikely that any of those will be produced at scale, though, let alone deployed anywhere. TBH I’m far more concerned about cyberwarfare and the negligent approach to cybersecurity in infrastructure than I am about high-tech weapons.
Maybe yes, maybe no. There’s no official decision yet but it exists and that means it or something like it will soon find its way into the inventory. I agree that there’s always lots of small scale high-tech demonstrators but things like E-SHORAD (Laser Air Defense system) are already out there. The combined cycle rotating detonation jet engine already exists at Hermeus (and they supposedly got it from Lockheed), Rapid Dragon exists, Manta Ray exists.
I agree with you on CyberSec. It’s a real and urgent problem.
I thought the laser CIWS was deemed a failure and shelved too? Or are you referring to something different? I’m not familiar with that jet engine, but it looks like a new and improved scramjet. Rapid Dragon is just putting missiles on a pallet instead of on a pylon, so I’d hardly call it groundbreaking… And this is the first I hear about Manta Ray. It looks cool, but I wonder how they get a signal to it when it’s deep underwater?
I don’t know about a laser CIWS but the Army already has DE M-SHORAD units deployed.
You could say that, just like you could say a 2024 Mustang GT is just an upgraded Model T. :)
Combined Cycle Combustion has been worked on for at least 40 years now and adding Rotating Detonation to it is on another planet of complexity. In the end it’s a Jet Engine with fewer moving parts capable of efficient output at speeds from Zero to Mach 5+.
It’s not the weapons system that breaks ground, its the capability that it enables. A single stealth plane of any type can be hundreds of miles forward of cargo planes and relay targeting data for dozens or hundreds of missiles dumped out of those cargo planes.
Manta Ray is an amazing platform that solves some real operation challenges for the US Navy and I predict they will end up deploying hundreds of them. How it communicates seems to be a secret right now but I’m sure it will come out eventually.