Merry Christmas... and meet Japan's Newest Air Superiority Fighter!

The Mitsubishi Starcrest F-9A Suisei marks Japan’s first indigenous stealth fighter, developed through a landmark partnership between Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Starcrest United. Conceived as a next-generation air superiority fighter, the Suisei leverages Starcrest’s expertise in stealth airframe design, propulsion technology, and advanced fire control systems, while Mitsubishi provides Japanese avionics, weapons integration, and mission systems to ensure complete operational sovereignty. Designed to excel in the Indo-Pacific theater, the Suisei incorporates low-observable shaping, advanced sensor fusion, quantum-resistant datalinks, and 2D thrust vectoring engines, granting it both supermaneuverability and survivability against the most advanced threats. By blending domestic innovation with Starcrest’s proven combat technologies, the F-9A Suisei represents not only a leap in capability for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, but also a defining moment in Japan’s aerospace history — its first true step into the era of indigenous 6th-generation airpower.

Promotional image that aired on Japanese Twitter.

At the heart of the F-9A Suisei’s design is its cutting-edge stealth architecture, which combines Starcrest’s advanced shaping techniques with Japan’s proprietary radar-absorbing technologies. The airframe features serrated intakes, internal weapons bays, and blended fuselage-wing geometry, reducing radar cross-section across multiple threat bands while maintaining aerodynamic efficiency. To complement its low-observable shaping, the Suisei is coated with a next-generation radar-absorbent material (RAM) developed jointly by Mitsubishi and Starcrest, capable of dynamically adjusting its electromagnetic absorption profile to counter evolving radar threats. This dual-layered approach — shaping to minimize returns and adaptive coatings to absorb residual signals — ensures the Suisei can operate deep into contested airspace, achieving true first-look, first-shot, first-kill capability against even the most advanced adversary systems.