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The A10 isn't a plane. It's a tank they managed to make fly.

http://www.aircraftresourcecen...

This fricken plane is airworthy with half a wing and an engine missing. Could the F-35 do that?

I have no idea but an F18 can. I found this link that essentially backs up what I remember.

http://www.aircraftresourcecen...

I read about it in a Navy Safety magazine that I can not remember the name of now. Flightline? Regardless, the story is even more intense than what that web page shows.

One pilots radios in for an emergency landing and ATC grants permission. The second pilot radios in for emergency landing and ATC tells him he has to go to a different airfield because they are dealing with an emergency already... and the second pilot lands anyways because there is no way he is making it to another field. It is absolutely amazing that both pilots not merely lived, but landed their planes safely. Just wow.

The pilot of the plane that had half of a wing missing had no idea half of his wing was gone until he landed and saw the destruction (apparently, he was more interested in landing than surveying all of the damage while in flight). The avionics compensated for all of that damage. Amazing.

"You have to remember the intake flow to one of these engines is traveling at or near supersonic speeds."

The shape of the F-16 intake decelerates supersonic intake air to subsonic so it won't destroy the engine.

Fighter intakes

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/101-200/walk133_F4F_phantom/images/Mvc-0049.jpg

and those on the now-defunct Concorde

http://www.concordesst.com/powerplant.html

often used variable ramps to handle the problem. The F-16 does it without moving parts, quite an accomplishment at the time.

You may not realize this, but a passenger jet is FREAKING HUGE. One missile isn't going to take out a jet with 2, 3, or 4 engines.

Size has nothing to do with it. If you put an air-to-air missile up the exhaust pipe of any passenger airliner, that plane is coming out of the sky in pieces. Probably some fairly large pieces, to be certain, but no airplane that currently exists is going to be able to keep flying after a large explosion removes one engine, the support structure, and a good chunk of the wing or tail spar (depending on where the engine was that you blew up).

The only hope an airplane has is that the missile will mostly miss its intended target and just make a big gaping hole in something without blowing up, like what happened in Baghdad when some terrorists shot a small SAM at a DHL Airbus A300, and even that very nearly took the plane down.

I mostly agree with your other points, but to say that an air-to-air missile designed to blow up airplanes is not going to do its job just because we're dealing with a slightly larger airplane is silly. For example, an F-15 or MiG-29 is roughly the size of a 50-seat regional jet. A missile designed to have enough power to take out a military fighter won't have any trouble taking out a civil airliner.

p

Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.

Only through dumb luck.

Example 1.

Example 2. (Be sure to scroll down and read about the Israeli 757 that was fired upon in Kenya.)

Example 3. (Ok, not a passenger plane, but the terrorists apparently thought it was... and it is a common airliner.)

It's only a matter of time, and everybody knows it.

You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.

Sure, you could buy a Saab Viggen, or you could buy a Saab Viggen.

Or maybe a Kawasaki motorcycle, or a Kawasaki satellite.
How about a Countach, or a tractor

Even software or hardware
Or the other guys

Lots of companies diversify. MS is plenty big enough to both if they choose.

you can get your on a Viggen