TOKYO/LONDON -- About an hour by train from downtown Tokyo, two five-story office towers in the quiet suburb of Akishima are an unlikely hub for Japan's jet engine industry. Inside, 2,000 employees of IHI, Japan's largest maker of jet engines, design everything from turbines for business jets to fan modules for Airbus and Boeing passenger liners.
In a high-security room in the west tower, a new project has begun. There, freshly recruited workers are designing advanced stealth engines for one of Japan's biggest postwar defense projects: a sixth-generation fighter plane. The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a tri-nation project with the U.K. and Italy, is to be the backbone of a future Japanese air force.
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