As for combat aircraft... the usual path, even if for Japan it was rather complicated.
Subsonic trainer
Armed subsonic trainer
Supersonic trainer
Light combat aircraft
Had the Jaguar been a a more agile, not underpowered aircraft, the T-2 and F-1 might have been slightly better.
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And now, for something entirely different...
Somewhat astonishingly, in March 1971 of the 8 big Kereitsu - Ataka - contacted the US state department with an offer to takeover the SST project from Boeing.
They wanted to build Boeing 2707-300s ! This wasn't taken seriously and went nowhere.
In the days when Flight International archive was available for free (sigh) I looked for Ataka and found the following
- They had a deal with the British to sold Beagle aircraft
- They made a deal with Dassault to sell Falcon 20s on the Japanese market
- They were partners with Grumman in their Tomcat bid to the JASDF
So Ataka seemingly had strong aerospace ambitions.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataka_%26_Co.[/URL]
Except they stretched too thin, made bad investments and went under in the same decade.
