U.S. arms-sale chief discounts F-22 sale to Japan

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. government arms-sale official on Friday all but dismissed prospects for supplying the United States' premier fighter jet to Japan or Israel, even if a sale is cleared by Congress.

Designing an export version of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s (LMT.N) radar-evading F-22 Raptor could cost more than $1 billion and be "prohibitively expensive" for any would-be foreign buyer, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, head of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

"If (export) were to be considered, which it's not, it essentially would have to be redesigned, rebuilt, retested and then go into production," Kohler, who oversees government-to-government arms sales, told Reuters in a brief interview.

The issue matters to Lockheed and its F-22 partners -- Boeing Co. (BA.N) and United Technologies Corp.'s (UTX.N) Pratt & Whitney unit -- because overseas sales could extend the production line beyond 2011, when the last of the 183 Raptors currently planned is due to be sent to the U.S. Air Force.

Any redesign, Kohler said, would require degrading the aircraft's capabilities and making them tamper-proof to keep the technology exclusive -- a process he said would take years.

"This airplane was built to give us an edge way into the future, and that's why it's not exportable."

Japanese military officials are eyeing the F-22, the U.S. Air Force's primary air superiority fighter, as part of their response to growing regional missile threats, among other things.

The first F-22 overseas deployment was to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan, this year. Twelve are still in the region. The aircraft goes for $136 million per copy, not including development costs.

"BECOMING COMPELLING"

"I'm aware the Japanese are interested in the F-22," Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an April 17 interview with Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. "I'm also aware of our concerns about what we export and don't export in our high-end technology.

"We're committed to the defense of Japan, so we'll work our way through it," Pace said, according to an official transcript. "I think we all need to be concerned about both ballistic and cruise missile defense."

Loren Thompson, an analyst close to the Pentagon and to military contractors, discounted Kohler's comments as having been overtaken by senior Air Force officials' latest thinking.

"Strategic reasons for sharing the plane are becoming compelling," including cruise missile defense, said Thompson, of the Arlington, Virginia-based Lexington Institute, a research firm.

Another motivating factor, he said, is a belief that Japan may be willing to fund development of a new version that would be more of a bomber.

Israel is also widely reported to have shown interest in acquiring the F-22, which entered the U.S. combat fleet in December 2005, 20 years after it was conceived to battle Soviet MiG fighters over Europe.