Sep. 12 at 3:53 PM
$RCAT
The procurement facts check out; the budget math doesn't. "1,078 systems / ¥70.085bn" appears in none of the FY2026 MOD, MOF or Diet budget docs. The actual narrow-area UAV lines are 189 systems (¥4.4bn) + 767 systems (¥3.5bn) = 956 systems, ¥7.9bn (~
$51M). The 767 are JDXS-H20 (ACSL SOTEN via Nippon Tokuso), a different drone entirely. And ¥726bn is
$4.7BN, not
$470M; ¥70bn is
$456M, not
$70 M
The 173 award was ¥1.25bn, so ~¥7.2m (~
$47K) per system, not
$65 K. It was an open competitive bid, and JDXS-H1 is the JGSDF's narrow-area UAV slot, not a Black Widow designation: H1/H1-B was SkyRanger. Any follow-on gets re-competed.
The training tender is 13 sites × 20 soldiers = 260 novices for 173 two-aircraft systems (~13 per site). That's crew training for this order, exactly the "concurrent contract for spare parts and training" the PR mentioned.