From our other sites
The story
When a “domestically made drone” — led by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and used by the Self-Defense Forces and police — was taken apart for inspection, it turned out that many of the components forming the aircraft’s core, including the flight control system, GPS, and various sensors, were made in China. Given that huge sums of public money have been poured into building up domestic development and mass-production capacity in the name of economic security, the finding raises serious doubts about what “domestic” actually means in practice. On 5ch threads, discussion ranged from where to draw the line — can something merely assembled in Japan really be called domestic? — to criticism of the policy failures of successive administrations, with the conversation eventually spilling over into a broader debate about Japan’s economic policy as a whole.
A teardown inspection of a “domestically made drone” developed under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s leadership found that the majority of its electronic components were foreign-made, with parts from Chinese companies built into key technologies.
METI has cited economic security as grounds for requesting enormous budgets to build up domestic drone development and mass-production capacity, but in practice it looks like the concept of “domestic” is simply being stretched well past its breaking point.
(Freelance writer: Tsutomu Murakami)
Source: diamond.jp / Original article here
What people said
Didn't develop a single thing lol
Did the development budget just vanish into middlemen's pockets? lol
The whole point was to leech off the subsidy money lol ("chu-chu" = slang for siphoning off government funds)
A name like "Soten" (Azure Sky) already screams China
Do you have any idea how many decades our industries have been getting robbed by other countries?
They probably still think Tokyo University ranks above Peking University or Tsinghua
Japan gave up on manufacturing and chose to be a tourism-first country instead
The media kept hyping up guys like Takafumi Horie, who openly looked down on manufacturing.
If it's not actually domestic, just don't call it that
What does "other countries do it too" have to do with anything lol
Our country's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry 🤣
Yeah, this is hopeless
Ryosei Akazawa
https://x.com/ryosei_akazawa/status/2120350970471436317?s=46
@ryosei_akazawa
To help small and medium-sized business owners learn about METI's wage-hike initiatives, introducing our new character: "Chin-Age Anago"! More reveals to come (^^) Raising wages, including the minimum wage, has been my lifelong, consistent commitment. Even our timid #ChinAgeAnago will do its part to help shake off the deflationary mindset so wages can rise with confidence — we'll make sure the groundwork for wage growth is fully in place! (the character's name puns on "chin-age" = wage hike, and "anago" = eel)
https://gzo.ai/i/R73shJm.jpg
Drones, AI, humanoid robots, 6G, batteries, EVs —
there's plenty we ought to be learning (stealing) from them
but since we're a country that's obsessed with saving face, that might be a tall order
What's actually needed is manufacturing and scaling up the electronic components that go into drones.
but somehow China and South Korea left us in the dust without us even noticing
I hear a lot of factories don't want to make parts that could end up used in warfare
I don't think they've even gotten to the point of admitting "we got left behind"
The story that "we're the victims, constantly having tech stolen from us" is just more comforting — it keeps the national ego intact
Why's everyone acting shocked now lol
Japan used to look down on China for being "just an assembly shop"
and now the roles have completely flipped
Give it time — the goalposts will shift just like with eel, where if it passes a flight test in Japan that'll count as "Made in Japan" too (a jab at the eel industry, where foreign-raised eel briefly finished in Japan gets relabeled domestic)
Apparently they haven't had a single success story in decades
Say what you want, but METI is staffed by the cream of the crop, Japan's elite
You think some random yakuza, construction worker, or host club guy would do better? This isn't a TV drama lol
How do you all feel about that reality?
That's never happening lol
If China restricted exports of processed food, the restaurant industry would be wiped out.
Propellers, motor, battery, lights, casing, landing gear, cables, antenna, camera, compass, Japanese-language manual
(Made in China)
Flight controller, obstacle sensors, gyro sensor, accelerometer, barometric sensor, GPS system, radio transmit/receive system, motor control system, Remote ID
Well, as long as the manual's Made in Japan, guess we're fine
Is that the list that's on the next page?
Context and Key Points of This Debate
METI has framed dependence on Chinese-made drones as a national-security risk, and has poured budget into projects supporting domestic parts procurement and airframe development. What this teardown inspection exposed is that the flagship “domestic drone” itself relies on Chinese-made parts for the core systems that govern the aircraft’s decision-making — flight control, GPS, and sensors — a result that contradicts the very goal of reducing dependence on China. On the threads, a debate over definitions (“can something that’s merely assembled here count as domestic?”) ran alongside a debate over accountability (which administration’s policies caused the delay), and the two arguments never really converged. One point that tends to get overlooked is that a part’s country of origin and who actually owns the design and system integration are separate questions, and there remains a genuine institutional challenge in how to gradually raise mass-production capacity and the domestic-content ratio over time.
*This article was compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “METI-Led “Domestic Drone” Used by the Self-Defense Forces and Police Turns Out to Be Almost Entirely Foreign-Made! Teardown Reveals Chinese Products Used in Core Technology and Key Components.”
Leave a Reply