Has there actually been any talk of the Japanese and Italian of developing their own demonstrators?
Testbeds such as the C-2 and 757 Excalibur, yes. But some news on demonstrators apart from FCAD would shed some light. Afaik, none have surfaced.
Core parts should be more or less the same among all three nations, so any demonstrators in theory should be similar in appearance with possible minor differences.
We haven’t seen the X-2 in a while so it’s likely the image posted above is just the X-2. Contours appear similar to it. One could estimate the height of the plane using the truck tires below to help determine.
Maybe the X-2 is undergoing some additional testing relevant to the program, or maybe it’s simply being moved.
I can’t speak for Italy, but iirc Japan is kinda developing their own, which makes sense as they want to integrate some of their own weapons and systems - maybe even composite-bonded structure, which is currently not present on UKs “Tempest” demonstrator as far as I know.
it was a concept shown at DSEI japan 2023, but ditched because the lambda design wings werent favouring for greater range + likely that they didnt think the increase in stealth was worth the decrease in range
“lambda” wing yeah its rather weird but radar energy from a flat edge reflects into a narrow spike perpendicular to it and If the leading and trailing edges (and other edges like panel lines and bay doors) are parallel to each other, all the spikes land in just a few directions normally designers point those away from where threat radars are likely to be, typically the nose and tail sectors basically you have a more streamline airframe structure wich reduces this spikes, issue is that this its very dependant on direction so they are not even sure if it works as well on side or rear aspects or lower POV’s
