U.S., Japan : Jet Fighter Pact Widens Rift Over Sharing of Data

Scant attention was paid over the past decade when Japanese industry forged ahead with the task of making mundane commercial products out of “new materials”--high-technology compounds spun off from U.S. defense research.

But now the technology, improved and refined by Japanese makers of golf clubs, industrial ceramics and fishing rods, is about to circle back to its originators as an innovative wing design for a jet fighter.

The arrangements for what will become a landmark reverse-transfer of military technology did not come easily, however, and not without raising hackles about “techno-nationalism,” a phrase some analysts use to describe a syndrome of mutual suspicion and mistrust that is straining relations between two of the world’s closest allies.

Although U.S. and Japanese officials agreed in October, 1987, that defense contractors from both countries would jointly develop Japan’s next-generation support fighter, the FSX, final details for sharing the workload were not settled until Jan. 12.

Negotiations had snagged over how the Japanese would hand over technology for the radical design of the aircraft’s wings, which will incorporate sophisticated carbon fiber materials. But more was at stake than the industrial secrets of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the lead contractor.

Festering beneath the surface of the dispute over the FSX wing were complex questions of U.S. national security and the competitiveness of America’s high-technology industrial base, which has been losing contests to its Japanese rivals on a number of commercial fronts.

In essence, the American side perceives a stubborn reluctance on the part of Japanese corporations to pay back a technological debt to the United States. Much of what Japan now has to offer, analysts say, has grown out of commercial applications based on U.S. technology that has been acquired at nominal costs over several decades.

Signs of Arrogance

In June, Japan took a symbolic step to remedy the imbalance by signing a science and technology agreement with the United States that opens government laboratories and provides $4 million to invite U.S. scientists here.

Still, there is a growing fear--on both sides of the Pacific--that Japan is losing sight of its technological indebtedness and that recent achievements in the marketplace have bred arrogance among some Japanese engineers and corporations.

“Technological arrogance is catching like a cold, especially among younger engineers,” said Makoto Momoi, a defense analyst and former official of the Japan Defense Agency. “They don’t remember that we were born with the abacus, not the computer.”

Mitsubishi, which obtained the foundation for its postwar aerospace technology from U.S. licensing agreements, at first demanded that it be allowed to go it alone in developing the FSX, without American help or interference.

Its position reflected “nationalistic pride in Japan’s superior technology,” said a veteran U.S. observer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Their argument was, we built the Zero, which was in its day the best fighter in the world. We can do it again.”

Only after much pressure was applied by U.S. officials did the Japanese agree to base the FSX design on technical data provided under license by General Dynamics Corp., which makes the F-16, America’s front-line fighter. The U.S. aim was to help offset Japan’s bilateral trade surplus and also to maintain compatibility between the weaponry of the two military allies.

General Dynamics and its U.S. subcontractors will be awarded about 40% of the work on six prototypes for the $1.3-billion project and will have rights to any new technology used on the plane. But Mitsubishi balked at allowing the U.S. firm to acquire the technology for the wings by actually building some at its own plant in Ft. Worth, a move considered a crucial learning step.

Prepared to Cooperate

Mitsubishi spokesman Takayoshi Furuya said both contractors ultimately were satisfied with the arrangement to have General Dynamics build two sets of wings and denied there was ever any intent to block the technology transfer.

“Our aim is to build a good plane, not to fuss about who gets what share,” Furuya said. “We were prepared to cooperate with General Dynamics from the beginning. We just wondered why they couldn’t acquire the technology here in Japan.”

Japanese analysts say the dispute over the FSX underscores a fundamental weakness in U.S. industry that is at the core of simmering techno-nationalism. Despite America’s formidable prowess in basic research, American firms are overly reliant on Pentagon contracts and defense-related government research funding. At the same time, they are short-sighted when it comes to investing in commercial development that would allow them to fully exploit their wealth of high technology.

“When the new materials first came out, Japanese industry started with the simplest of applications,” said Hajime Karatsu, a professor at Tokai University’s Research & Development Institute. “Only after they had confidence about building a better fishing rod did they think about using it in aerospace.”

Karatsu, formerly an engineer with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., cites Japan’s dominance in the market for computer memory chips as the classic example of how its electronics firms leapfrogged their American mentors.

When integrated circuits first came out, Japanese companies devoted themselves to mass producing electronic calculators, spurring a demand for memory chips that created economies of scale and fostered constant reinvestment in production equipment. The Japanese perfected production techniques by selling to a booming commercial market while U.S. companies made their chips in lower volume, and on antiquated machinery, for the Pentagon’s missiles, Karatsu said.

Sees Some Limits

Japan’s decisive victory in the chip war has sparked dire warnings that the United States is now dependent on a foreign country for a crucial supply of military components and high technology.

The high-tech alarm is expected to gain increasing attention in the coming year, as U.S. policy-makers focus on restoring competitiveness to American industry. Already, in a textbook show of techno-nationalism, Japanese firms have been denied participation in Sematech, a government-sponsored research project begun last November, in which U.S. companies are pooling their efforts to catch up in the development and production of advanced memory chips.

Sematech was inspired by research consortiums that the Japanese and European governments sponsored in the 1970s, said Andrew Procassini, president of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Assn.

“Techno-nationalism is not a U.S. invention,” Procassini said. “We’re learning it from other people.”

Industry Scolded

The critical battle in the U.S.-Japan technology showdown appears to be taking shape in the development of superconductors, which allow electricity to flow without resistance and that have an array of potential applications in such products as magnetically levitated trains and compact supercomputers.

The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment warned in a report last June that although the American government will spend $95 million on superconductor research in fiscal 1988, half that will go to military research with limited commercial applications. The agency also scolded U.S. industry for emphasizing short-term profits over long-term payoffs in its research and development programs.

The Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, declared in November that the United States was “already well behind the Japanese in the development of superconductivity applications” and urged a major boost in spending.

In another display of techno-nationalism, scientific conferences sponsored by the U.S. government have been closed to Japanese and other foreigners. Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) summed up the mood when he said last year: “America can’t afford to let other countries reap the lion’s share of rewards from our superconductivity research program.” In contrast, the Japanese government has gone out of its way to show it does not intend to promote superconductor research as a national contest.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry, calling for “competition and cooperation,” has urged foreign companies and scientists to join its research consortium, the International Superconductivity Technology Center.

American Indifference

But so far, not a single American or other foreign firm has decided it would be worthwhile to pay the $800,000 initiation fee necessary to participate in the research and have full access to results, according ot a MITI official. Six foreign companies, including four from the United States, have signed on as associate members with limited rights--and far lower fees.

The flip side to Japanese technological arrogance, analysts say, is American indifference, which they describe with another buzzword: “techno-isolationism.”

U.S. engineers and scientists have been slow to take advantage of opportunities to work in Japanese labs, even after last year’s science and technology pact, while their Japanese counterparts still flock to the United States for advanced study at the top universities.

“Americans are in general less concerned about what happens in Japan,” one U.S. analyst said. “There’s a ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome, a feeling that if it isn’t generated in a U.S. lab, it doesn’t have scientific validity.”

That attitude could prove costly as Japan, propelled by massive civilian research spending, threatens to overtake the United States or widen its existing lead in such key technological fields as supercomputers, biotechnology and laser optics.

Data on U.S. patents, meanwhile, suggest Japan is evolving from a stage of mimicking and improving upon foreign know-how to one in which it is creating its own. But many Japanese complain of being unable to shake off the copycat reputation, or the suspicion that they owe their success to a free ride.

“The United States has a lot of pride,” and even a trace of racism, said Noboru Makino, chairman of the Mitsubishi Research Institute. “It’s the WASP mentality. Americans still have a sense that people with Oriental faces must be doing something unfair to make such good things.”