Stealth Aircraft Round Up

Japan plans to fly a prototype by 2014. That's pretty ambitious. See a bit more here.

Apparently, the Russians are planning midlife (or early life) engine upgrade for the PAK-FA/T-50 fighter once it is in frontline service. Supposedly, the avionics of the PAK-FA are ... incredible. Not necessarily in a positive meaning of that word...The Russians are also working on the PAK-DA program to build a new bomber by 2017. There's a bit of an update over the older information here.

Somehow I missed posting this earlier, but the Chinese may have other stealth aircraft to reveal here shortly beyond the J-20.

India is now working on (besides the PAK-FA with the Russians) an equivalent of the F-35. Its very early in the game, but...

The US has kicked off a relatively near term next gen bomber program (and here). The idea being to actually start fielding the bomber circa 2018, if I am reading this stuff right. That's shockingly quick given the timeline for the F-22 development (1983-2005? IOC), F-35 (1995-2015+ IOC) and others. In fact, this very aggressive timeline has led to a lot of speculation that the airframe has already flown (and originally here) and that all they are doing is ironing out the bits requiring integration rather than developing new tech. There is a lot of speculation as to what the capabilities will be: lasers? drone control? hypersonic missiles (in a role like the SRAM)? What is its true purpose as well?

Japan. Russia. China. India. USA. Where is Europe?