Mitsubishi X-2 Shinshin: Japan's new 5th Generation Stealth Fighter Jet

This Thursday, Japan’s new Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency revealed the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Advanced Technology Demonstrator – Experimental (ATD-X) fifth-generation fighter technology demonstrator, now dubbed X-2 and unofficially named ‘ShinShin,’ to the media at a heavily guarded hangar at a regional airport near the city of Komaki, in Aichi Prefecture. It has previously been showcased once already in May 2014.

The X-2 is the country’s first domestically produced full-scale test model—a technology demonstrator—of a new indigenous stealth fighter jet design, which has been under development at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plant in Toyoyama since 2009, with total program costs estimated at 39.4 billion yen (around $331 million).

The aircraft—an “advanced technology demonstration unit,” according to the Defense Technical Research and Development Institute –unveiled to the press will not be armed and is slated to be retired in three years, after having undergone extensive tests of advanced fifth-generation fighter technologies, for which Japan’s Defense Ministry has allocated 2.3 billion yen ($19.3 million) in the next fiscal year alone. It will be a testbed platform for multiple technologies including next generation electronically scanned array radar systems, multi-dimensional 3D thrust vectoring concepts, and fine-tune the aircraft’s stealth capabilities. (The X-2 features a special carbon-fiber composite material that absorbs radar waves.)

Video by CNN

Specifications (ATD-X)

General characteristics

• Crew: 2

• Length: 14.174 m (46 ft 6 in)

• Wingspan: 9.099 m (29 ft 10 in)

• Height: 4.514 m (14 ft 10 in)

• Max takeoff weight: 13,000 kg (28,659 lb)

• Powerplant: 2 × IHI XF5-1 low-bypass turbofans dry, 49.03 kN (11,023 lbf) with afterburner

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