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I'm not entirely sure whether you're trolling, or if you genuinely believe the uninformed jetsam you wrote there.

Failed yet again by my local main-stream media. I dont recall any coverage of the event, but i guess thats to be expected from a group of conglomerate advertisers

Well, of all the failures among news outlets, it was reported twice before on that awful "Slashdot" site. One of those even linked CNN as a source, but they're hardly mainstream, are they? There was, of course, also coverage on Fox News, which in turn links to coverage on the Wall Street Journal. On the other coast, the LA Times also ran a Bloomberg-syndicated story.

thanks to the sausage-factory machinations of our federal government, im sure we'll never be privy to so much as a general idea of what this satellite was designed to do

Well, let's go gather a few facts, and guess. First, its contract details are all secret, which strongly implies it's for military purposes. It was aimed for low-earth orbit at 51 degrees inclination, which would put it over many places of military significance. Indeed, a more knowledgeable source theorizes it's for space-based radar, which would certainly be in accordance with recent US military doctrine of "get more pictures, engage from further away, and use fewer people".

Flint Michigan looks set to go another year without clean water

...which has absolutely nothing to do with spaceflight, or the military, or anything related to this discussion. Not only are the military branches and intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from assisting Flint, the restoration efforts are already underway and progressing as expected. What the fearmongers like yourself conveniently ignore is that essentially Flint has had to rebuild its entire water system due to the years of neglect, and as of last year, the vast majority of test samples are clean. There's still work to be done, but the situation is no longer a failure of government.

Congress brand oversight. ... Well it wasnt as prevalent for this 3.5 billion dollar satellite

Which is perfectly normal for classified projects, regardless of where they go. Since part of OPSEC is to minimize dispersal of classified information, there are bipartisan committees that debate classified projects in great detail, and their unclassified comments are usually distributed to the other congresspeople.

it did such a bang-up job of everything from the timely restoration of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina

...which isn't in Congress's authority, since once the national emergency has passed, the authority goes back to the state per the Tenth Amendment...

to ensuring healthcare for our veterans is the best in the world

...which isn't mandated by any law, or even really practical, and still not directly under Congress's authority, being wholly delegated to the Veterans Health Administration, itself wholly under the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is itself organized under the Executive branch under the President...

one can on

Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway & Belgium all thank you for your good wishes.

They sure need them, because their Collectivism is killing them and their performance is pathetic. For just one sign, consider the fact, that these countries (with the possible exception of Finland) haven't been bombed/destroyed in the WW2. Which means, their standards of living ought to be, if Socialism really was so grand, well above that of the US. It is not — not even in Norway, for all their vast oil exports propping up the GDP.

And that's despite their spending much less on military — to the point, the otherwise decrepit Russia can overrun them in a matter of weeks.

That train left year ago. He's delusional if he thinks a race is even an option. The US is years behind and isn't even in the running. Hell we've just started to realize this is something we ought to /start/ training professionals for. We've still got people trying to outlaw security tools.

http://breakingdefense.com/201...
http://blog.hackerrank.com/whi...
http://www.techinsider.io/nort...
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/he...
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/...

We're years behind the competition, where professionals have been getting trained and put to work for many years. We're just getting to the point of having courses in hacking, never mind college degree based level training. How the hell are we going to enter a race when only a handful of three letter agencies even have professional hackers in their employ? This isn't the kind of thing your going to call up your local friendly pen-test company for. You can't win a race you refuse to enter.

This is simply not correct. The F-35's operating cost is nearly as low per hour as the old, much less advanced F-16, which has had nearly half a century to refine. See the line item above for maintenance, $10k per flight hour? The F-22 by contrast takes $33k maintenance per flight hour. Just the maintenance line item alone for the F-22 costs more than all O&S costs for the F-35 combined.

This isx utterly retarded. Pilots learn to use analog instruments, I'm pretty sure the navy has enough back ups. Just seriously, get in the sea

http://breakingdefense.com/201...

The last few generations have come to rely on technology. If the tech breaks, YOU are fucked. The boys and girls who understand physics, and have studied the ancient arts are a lot less fucked, so they might survive to fuck each other.

Far fetched claim, you say? Have you read any news, or watched any videos of the air shows around the world? Gen5 and Gen6 aircraft are flying, today. We can't get our shitty Gen5 into service, because it's a non-flying piece of shit. Pilots used to claim that they could fly a brick, if they had enough power. But, I never heard a pilot claim that he could fly a fuckiing turd - and that's the F-35, a huge god-damned turd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Dang - look at this - I'm way behind, myself. INDIA is a co-developer of a Gen5 fighter!
http://www.defensenews.com/sto...

Even Pakistan seems to be in on the act
http://breakingdefense.com/201...

This list is interesting, in that there are ten contenders, some of which only offer photos of static model planes.
http://www.wonderslist.com/fif...
Note that the Chinese offering is photographed while landing on an AIRCRAFT CARRIER - something the F-35 doesn't seem capable of doing yet.

http://english.chinamil.com.cn...

Last but not least: http://breakingdefense.com/201...

"“a guy with maybe 100 hours in the F-35 versus a guy with 1,500+ Viper hours? I’ve seen thousand-hour F-16 guys in two-bag D-models beat up on brand new wingmen in clean, single-seat jets. It happens. It’s the reality of the amount of experience in your given cockpit.

“Let’s see how it [the F-35] does when guys who are proficient in developed tactics do [sic] against guys with similar amounts experience–the realm of the bros in the operational test or Weapons School environment.”

I'm not sure the Joint Strike Fighter is designed for dog fights in the first place. I think they're conceived to engage enemy aircraft beyond visible range and function more as a networked fighter platform. In a lecture on flying the F-35, David Berke made the point that to be tactically successful in an F-35 he had to change his approach to combat flying versus his previous experience flying Hornets. He described the learning curve as: 1 month loving it because it was new, followed by 6 months hating it because he felt like he didn't know what he was doing anymore, followed by another 6 months during which he got the hang of the new approach.

There's also talk that the F-35 could be getting a new engine in the 2020s which will improve its performance.

Seriously, you are going to tell the pilot: "ok you have to spend ALL of your fuel before you land...because if you don't it will burn all of your skin...that is, if you are lucky not to catch fire". At least kamikaze pilots didn't have doubt about their plane flying them to death.

As for Valkyire, for a plane that costed more then 10x its worth in gold it should be expected operational use, not the gathering of "aeronautical data". No mather what was the change in military doctrine, after building working prototypes, couple of more planes could have need used for fast-response operations. If you think that is unreasonable, I will remind you that sr-71, plane that had similar flying characteristics, but much lower cargo load was in use until 1998. Which brings us to real reason - plane had problems: pieces of intake flew into the engine, wheels would lock up on landing, and electric currents where causing corrosion of the plane damaging the structural integrity. One of the problems that Concord technicians noted was difficulty in maintaining 2 internal engines...I can only imagine what would they say about Valkyires 6. The one prototype that survived was limited to 2.5mach speed because the honey-comb panels wouldn't really sustain 3+mach speeds.

Tomcat? Best time-to climb performance? No. Manuverability per size? Hell no. Phoenix missile was awesome, but plane doesn't take credit for it. For its service best plane that it took down was MIG-23...which is on this very list of "fails". For the way it looks, the plane is pure pornography, but for anything else...

And F-35....you are really going to defend that one? The one that can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run?. The one that its cost is in the trillions? Seriously? Don't need to google, just check slashdot for the list of fails here, here and here it has been already discussed in the detail.

I expect most Europeans don't want to be left out of the fun.

Putin in nuclear threat against Europe

No Longer Unthinkable: Should US Ready For ‘Limited’ Nuclear War?

Outside the US, both established and emerging nuclear powers increasingly see nuclear weapons as weapons that can be used in a controlled, limited, and strategically useful fashion, said Barry Watts, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, arguably the Pentagon’s favorite thinktank. The Cold War “firebreaks” between conventional and nuclear conflict are breaking down, he wrote in a recent report. Russia has not only developed new, relatively low-yield tactical nukes but also routinely wargamed their use to stop both NATO and Chinese conventional forces should they overrun Moscow’s feeble post-Soviet military, Watts said this morning at the headquarters of the Air Force Association. Pakistan is likewise developing tactical nukes to stop India’s much larger military. Iran seeks nuclear weapons not only to offset Israel’s but to deter and, in the last resort, fend off an American attempt to perform “regime change” in Tehran the way we did in Baghdad. The US Air Force and Navy concept of “AirSea Battle” in the Western Pacific could entail strikes on the Chinese mainland that might provoke a nuclear response.