Tokyo – Japan is moving into a large-scale upgrade program that appears to be enormously enhancing the air-to-air capabilities of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries F-2 fighter with an improved radar and advanced medium-range missile. The work is going ahead in two parallel areas: integration of the Mitsubishi Electric AAM-4B missile and an upgrade of the company’s J/APG-1 radar to the J/APG-2 standard.

Comac is hiring 40-60 foreign experts to help it with the development of the C919 narrowbody airliner, and will go back to the market for more if it judges that the first group contributes to keeping it on track. One major role of the foreigners is managing suppliers, which has been a considerable challenge for Comac, says a senior program official.

“The question is: Can China buy its way into commercial aircraft?” asks a senior Western aeronautical engineer who, thanks to painful experience in the past decade, knows a thing or two about the challenges in developing an airliner. With the Comac C919 now approaching the halfway point of its eight-year development cycle, the answer still seems to be “maybe, since China is not yet aiming at building a world-beater.”