Missile Launch : Japan is rapidly developing the capability to compete with the United States in the international market for advanced weapons.

In a research laboratory at Hughes Aircraft, scientists are trying to get missile guidance systems to think like humans, using artificial intelligence to locate and destroy targets such as bridges or helicopters.

The new system, known as automatic target recognition, could mark a breakthrough in weaponry and is being touted as the sort of technology that will keep U.S. aerospace ahead of foreign competition.

U.S. arms producers will need all the scientific firepower at their disposal. A contest is rapidly approaching with a new competitor, a leader in consumer electronics that is brimming with licensed weapons technology from the United States and driven by a national goal to be an international power in aerospace.

Japan, although long constrained by a post-World War II government policy against weapons exports, is undertaking a massive buildup of research and manufacturing capability in advanced missiles. A key advantage will be Japan’s existing strength in electronics.

The debate over the FSX aircraft program, under which U.S. and Japanese companies will jointly develop a new jet fighter, has focused American attention on Japanese ambitions in aerospace. But Japan is far closer to developing a missile industry than a combat or commercial aircraft industry, experts say.

Once Japan is capable of building and exporting missiles in competition with the West, it is a foregone conclusion that Japanese policies forbidding such exports will be set aside, U.S. experts say.

“It is clear that they are rethinking that policy because they wouldn’t have undertaken the study and then the sponsorship of all the technological research that is going on today in their industry, clearly and openly advertised to posture themselves for the aerospace market,” said Theodore W. J. Wong, president of Hughes Missile Systems Group in Canoga Park, one of the leading U.S. builders of tactical missiles.

“It would be far cheaper for them to just buy,” Wong added. “It has to be because of a world market, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t plan to start exporting. It is illogical to think otherwise.”

Officials at Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry publicly stated in 1987 that they were setting a goal to seek future export growth in aerospace. Since then, they have set out ambitious plans for a broad range of new programs, including tactical missiles.

Japan produces four major tactical missiles under U.S. license--the Sparrow, Sidewinder, Hawk and Patriot--that represent mainstream, though not the most modern, American missile technology.

In a significant departure from its past practice of producing U.S.-designed systems, however, Japan has begun to put much greater emphasis on developing its own missiles. It is designing at least three tactical missiles, the XAAM-3, XSSM-1 and Keiko. In addition, it is producing four of its own tactical missiles.

And on the drawing boards are even more advanced systems, including an antiballistic missile system designed to shoot down missiles launched from either the Korean peninsula or the Chinese mainland, said Larry Dickerson of Forecast International, a market research firm in Newtown, Conn. Japan is expected to spend at least $7.57 billion over the life of the program.

U.S. missiles are, in many cases, the best in the world. The United States enjoys a lucrative market for tactical missiles in 45 neutral and allied nations. Customers include armed forces in nations as North Yemen, Tanzania, Norway, Switzerland and Kenya.

Japan Concentrates Resources

U.S. domestic spending on missile procurement and research is nearly $20 billion annually, though that figure includes substantial amounts for strategic nuclear missiles and space-launch systems. Tactical missiles, alone, account for about $6 billion. In comparison, all types of Japanese missile spending in the current year total $1.27 billion. Japan keeps secret its missile research budget.

But Japan is leveraging its money by concentrating resources. Its three top aerospace firms hold 70% of the Japanese defense market, and they have agreed to specialize in separate areas.

“Everything they are doing in building product capability and research is for the purpose of creating a sustainable industry that would have a heavy international component to it,” said John R. Harbison, a vice president at the consulting firm Booz-Allen & Hamilton.

By comparison, the U.S. industry is spread thin, with the three largest firms holding only 14.75% of U.S. prime defense contracts. With defense spending on the decline, aerospace firms are troubled by excess capacity and an inability to raise adequate capital from U.S. investors.

While the U.S. industry is undergoing a painful contraction, the Japanese military and commercial aerospace industry is projected to grow from $7 billion currently to $25 billion or $30 billion (not including inflation) by 2000, Harbison estimates.

Moreover, if Japan alters its policies against international arms sales, “exports and growth would be staggering,” he wrote in a recent report. Harbison predicts that Japan will emerge as the technology leader in some segments of the aerospace industry far faster than expected.

Missiles play to Japanese technical strengths. About half the value of a tactical missile is in its electronic guidance system; the other half is in its airframe, fuse, warhead and rocket motor.

Japanese missile producers are virtually household names in this country, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Nissan Motor Co., Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Toshiba (Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co.).

Japanese commercial electronics use many of the same components as missiles, such as compact electric motors, power supplies and a host of other equipment.

A compact disc player, for example, closely resembles a missile guidance system. A compact disc player has a laser that must precisely track a moving target. An infrared sensor reads the reflection off the compact disc and a sophisticated electronics module translates the digital signal into music. All of these components are integral to many missile guidance systems, except that in a missile the digital signals are converted into guidance commands to send a powerful warhead at an enemy target.

One particular area of Japanese technical leadership is in production of an electronic component called a charge-coupled device, used in commercial optics such as video cameras, said Shirio Yokoyama, general manger of Mitsubishi’s one-man Los Angeles office. Such devices are critical in optically guided missiles, as well.

“The fact of the matter is that they have some very crucial building blocks in hand,” Wong said. “Their electronics are competitive without a doubt with anything in the world.

“If the Japanese are very competitive in making electronics from a worldwide basis, I shudder to think what it means in terms of their ability to compete if they choose to put together a processor for the next generation radar,” Wong added. “It would be tough. It would be damn tough.”

If Japan ever achieves technical superiority over the United States in weaponry, it would likely pose profound and novel questions for the Pentagon. Would the Pentagon buy Japanese weapons? Would Japanese companies set up plants here to supply the Pentagon? Would the United States continue as a global power if U.S. industry could not maintain technological superiority? The United States hasn’t begun to address such questions.

Yokoyama asserts that Japan already has achieved parity with the United States. “We are one of the best missile manufacturers in the world,” he said.

U.S. experts disagree with that assessment, saying that the current generation of Japanese missiles is not up to U.S. capabilities. Wong refers to current Japanese designs as “camels,” which in the engineering world is a less-than-perfect horse.

“Their missiles tend to be simple because, while they can build an individual component that is sometimes on a par with ours, they lack the ability to put all those together in a cohesive whole,” said Ed Cobleigh, assistant director for marketing at the Hughes missile group. “Tactical missiles are very interactive designs. The size of the seeker determines the size of the warhead, which determines the size of the rocket motor.”

Question of Funding

The Pentagon declined formal requests for interviews on Japanese missile developments, but some military experts give Japanese industry low marks.

“They (the Japanese) tried to get us interested in the ASM-1 (air-to-air missile),” said Lawrence A. Skantze, a retired general and former commander of Air Force research and procurement. “The general feeling was that there wasn’t any technology there that we weren’t aware of. This was in 1985 or 1986.”

At least some U.S. experts believe the Japanese are under-funding their missile research efforts and will be hard-pressed to compete with the most modern U.S. missiles.

“I’m not worried about the Japanese,” said an analyst with a major missile producer, who asked not to be quoted by name. “With all the money we are spending in this country, we should remain competitive.”

But domestic defense critics chortle at such self-confidence, saying that U.S. missile firms are acutely vulnerable to Japan because U.S. missiles are unreliable and inaccurate.

“The only successful missile we have ever built is the Sidewinder, and it was developed 30 years ago,” said Thomas Amlie, an Air Force analyst and former technical director of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. “If Japan wants to get into that market, they will do to us what they have done in every other product.”

In fact, the reliability of U.S. tactical missiles, as measured by the so-called “probability of kill,” is far from perfect, though foreign-made missiles aren’t any better.

In the current fiscal year, the Pentagon is buying more than 16,000 tactical anti-aircraft missiles, or roughly enough to shoot down every Warsaw Pact aircraft more than twice.

High Failure Rates

The inventory, which is classified, has been building up for years. Pentagon missile bunkers contain tens of thousands of tactical anti-aircraft missiles, which cost between $50,000 and $1 million each.

A lot of missiles would miss their targets in battle. First, hitting a target is a difficult one; for every improvement in missiles over the years, there have been countervailing improvements in missile defense. Second, complex missile electronics and rocket motor systems are vulnerable to malfunctions.

“These things have fairly high failure rates,” said Harbison, the Booz-Allen expert. “To the extent that they can improve the reliability, the Japanese could be very successful.”

Since last summer, for example, the Army has declined to accept deliveries from General Dynamics of Stinger RMP missiles. “There was a problem with the microprocessor’s software,” an Army spokesman said. About 6,000 missiles are in storage at the firm’s Rancho Cucamonga factory, and the Army is withholding a portion of contract payments. General Dynamics declined requests for interviews.

Missile designers have been trying to improve performance for four decades, ever since Hughes Aircraft invented the first guided air-to-air missile, called the Falcon. Research at Hughes in automatic target recognition is aimed, at least partly, at improving missile accuracy.

Wong, the Hughes missile chief, calls the research his own “old Oriental trick,” because Hughes is dedicating itself to an effort with a potential payoff only in the distant future. Such persistence often has been the driving force of Japanese business success, while some U.S. firms have been faulted for being shortsighted and surrendering too easily after initial failure.

“What we really want to do is dial in a mission to a missile, such as telling it to go kill a bridge or go kill a dam,” Wong said. “It is my opinion that is going to be the key to the next generation of missiles.”

Hughes scientists have demonstrated, for example, the potential for an artificial intelligence guidance system to find a bridge, analyze the structure and then aim for its weakest point.

“Bridges tend to be very, very hard targets,” said Charles A. McNary, a manager in the Hughes missile imaging guidance design laboratory. “You can send hundreds of missiles against a bridge and unless you hit a vulnerable point, you are not going to take that bridge out.”

Pentagon Seal of Approval

Even if Japan can match such American weapons technology, it faces a number of other hurdles.

Unlike consumers of stereos, cars or televisions, armed forces tend to be reluctant to buy unproven products. Despite domestic critics, the U.S. forces are widely respected around the world. When the Air Force buys a missile, for example, it puts an implicit stamp of approval on the weapon that helps sell it abroad.

“People say that if the Pentagon buys something, it must be good,” said Dickerson, the Forecast Associates analyst. “If somebody says the Japanese Defense Force bought this thing, well, who cares what they think.”

Another major hurdle to being an effective international competitor will be anti-military public sentiment in Japan and abroad. Noting that “a lot of people remember World War II,” Japan will have to go slowly, Harbison said.

Yokoyama, the Mitsubishi official, said Japan has no intention of exporting its weapons; any change in that posture, he said, would be decades away.

But some experts doubt that it will take that long. Despite the widespread misconception that Japan’s constitution bans weapons exports, Japan has nothing more than a policy forbidding such exports and that could readily change, U.S. expert believe.

“There seems to be a growing sentiment for Japan to take back its rightful position in Asia,” Dickerson said. “One day, people are going to wake up and say we could make a lot of money exporting weapons and here we have this arms industry already in place.”

Times staff writer Sam Jameson contributed to this story from Japan.

U.S. DESIGNED MISSILE MISSILE TYPE: Harpoon MISSION: Tactical air-to-surface anti-ship missile DEVELOPER: McDonnell Douglas MAX. RANGE (IN MILES): 62 miles SPEED: Supersonic (Mach 0.75) WEIGHT (in lbs): 1400 pounds JAPANESE DESIGNED MISSILE MISSILE TYPE: ASM-1 MISSION: Tactical air-to-surface anti-ship missile DEVELOPER: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries MAX. RANGE (IN MILES): 45 to a possible 75 miles SPEED: Supersonic (Mach 0.9) WEIGHT (in lbs): 1300 pounds U.S-JAPAN MISSILE ALLIANCES U.S. missile co-production agreements

U.S. Missile Type developer Hawk Mobile surface-to-air Raytheon guided weapon system Patriot Land mobiles surface-to-air Raytheon guided weapon system Sidewinder Air-to-air Raytheon Sparrow Air-to-air or Raytheon surface-to-air

Missile Japanese Max. range developer (in miles) Hawk Mitsubishi 25 Heavy Industries Patriot Mitsubishi Over 65 Heavy Industries Sidewinder Mitsubishi 4.7 Heavy Industries Sparrow Mitsubishi 60 Heavy Industries

Weight Missile Speed (in lbs.) Hawk Supersonic 1,398 (Mach 2.5) Patriot Supersonic 2,000 (Mach 3-4) Sidewinder Supersonic 187.5-191.0 (Mach 2.5) Sparrow Supersonic 503 (Mach 2.5 plus jet speed)

Japanese-designed missiles in production

Missile Type KAM-3D Portable surface-to-surface anti-tank missile KAM-9 Extended range surface- to-surface anti-tank ASM-1 Tactical air-to-surface anti-ship Tan-SAM Surface-to-air short range

Missile Developer Range (miles) Speed Weight (lbs.) KAM-3D Kawasaki 1.2 280 feet 34.5 Heavy Industries per second KAM-9 Kawasaki 2.5 656 feet 72.6 Heavy Industries per second ASM-1 Mitsubishi 44-75 Mach 0.9 1,342 Heavy Industries Tan-SAM Toshiba 4.3 Supersonic 220 (Mach 2.4)

Japanese-designed missiles in development

Missile Type Developer XAAM-3 Air-to-air anti-aircraft Mitsubishi Heavy Industries XSSM-1 Air-to-surface or surface- Mitsubishi to-surface anti-ship Heavy Industries Keiko Surface-to-air shoulder-fired Toshiba anti-aircraft

Aircraft co-production agreements P-3C Orion: Lockheed and Kawasaki F-15J and F-15 DJ Eagle: McDonnell Douglas and Mitsubishi F-4EJKai: McDonnell Douglas and Mitsubishi F-104: Lockheed and Mitsubishi Helicopter co-production agreements KV-107-IIA: Boeing and Kawasaki S-61 and SH-3 Sea King: Sikorsky and Mitsubishi UH-1H and Fuji-Bell 204B-2: Bell Helicopters and Fuji Sources: General Dynamics, The World’s Missile Systems, Forecast International, Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft 1988-89, Jane’s Military Logistics 1988-89