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America give 4B in free arms to Egypt, 5-6B to Israel and 2B to Jordan. They wouldnt buy PAtriots if they were not free as they have their own Missile programs.

They wouldn't buy Patriots, you say?

So why did Egypt pay $1.3B for the Patriot missiles they purchased?
Source: http://www.nti.org/learn/count...

Or why did Israel take part in a purchase order with Kuwait, Taiwan, and Spain to purchase $12.5B in Patriot missiles?
Source: https://sputniknews.com/milita...

In fact, for a system you say that no one would buy, there seem to be an awful lot of countries lining up to pay for it...
- UAE - $3.3B
- Qatar - $2.4B
- Saudi Arabia - $1.75B
- Greece - $1.1B
- Japan - $1B

There were more countries and more links, but I'll stop there, since I think I've made my point.

If the A-10 is so great I'm confused as to why they cannot upgrade the hardware like they've continually done with the F15, F18, etc. etc. to evolve its capabilities retire the Harrier and deploy Apaches in their place.

Because blocked by politics. In any case, the A-10 has been upgraded. IMHO the next upgrade should be to turn it into a drone. Keep the titanium bathtub to protect critical systems, lose the windows and add anti-MANPADS hardware.

No, that's just the argument against the stealth technologies being used - the technology that allowed the Serbs to detect and track the F-117 was effectively available a decade and a half ago, and was apparently a modification of a technology introduced in the '70's, so basically everyone has details on the basics now and can probably do exactly what the Serbs did. The given RCS of that plane, by the way, was 0.003 square meters.

Other parts of the argument include data that show the new jet has slower, slower acceleration to max speed, and is less maneuverable than the planes it is replacing; the only point at which it seems to beat any of those planes, looking at the tables, is that it can carry about 2500 lbs more payload than its Navy equivalents.

As for VTOL capability, only the B-model has that capacity, as mentioned by other responses; however, as mentioned in the Medium article (found in the cited Slashdot article), that ability is responsible for the lesser flying capacities of the remaining chassis, so the lessened flying range then DOES ensure that the new jet requires forward bases, except for the Marines, who wanted VTOL so they could dogfight when not supported by other military branches (see Medium article, again).

Finally: the review cites 2 other studies not authored by French and run by organizations independent of French, the RAND study mentioned in the Medium review and a Pentagon study which showed the F-35 getting badly outdone by an F-16. This review is more of a summary or abstract of key points; and it references documents which you can read to see how and why French came up with those points. So, yes, the defensetech article may be a little shallow; but to call it slanted when it's calling attention to the (substantial) studies of two defense think-tanks and the Pentagon, all of which call the F-35 a steaming pile *and* use different methodologies (Rand: simulations, French: comparative, Pentagon: test pilot analysis) is the sort of reasoning that calls for creationists to get equal time in a science classroom - we shouldn't have to go to Lockheed PR to see why three massive studies like this are wrong.

Indeed a quick google turns up a longer article (here: http://www.defenseindustrydail...) that actually says some nice things about the F-35, although those are almost entirely sourced by an article from Lockheed, and those that aren't are based on the fact that the old platforms are basically old, and have old parts (older electronics, older integrated weapons systems, &c.). However, that was never the point of the main article being reviewed - the point of that article was that Yet Another Study done by someone other than Lockheed is calling the F-35 dead on arrival.

A brief promo video about a dead weight going off the bow.
Personally, I'd have hoped a sciency-site like /. would discuss a little more about the technical details or comparison between it and the steam alternative.

Anyway, more substance at http://www.defenseindustrydail...

> there are numerous photos of T-72BMs in the Ukraine and the Russian military is the only military in the world to have access to and operate these:

Actually Ukraine had a number of T-72s left from the Soviet era. Here's one behind the Ukranian president:
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bte...

Also it has been reported that Hungary has covertly sold 58 T-72s to Ukraine:
http://truthinukraine.wordpres...
http://www.defenseindustrydail...

While attempting its first overseas deployment to the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, on 11 February 2007, six F-22s of 27th Fighter Squadron flying from Hickam AFB, Hawaii, experienced multiple system failures while crossing the International Date Line (or 180th meridian of longitude) caused by software errors.[230][231][232] The fighters were able to return to Hawaii by following tanker aircraft.

From wikipedia. The references are:
230 "F-22 Squadron Shot Down by the International Date Line." Defense Industry Daily, 1 March 2007. Retrieved: 31 August 2011.
231 "This Week at War". CNN, 24 February 2007.
232 Johnson, Maj. Dani. "Raptors arrive at Kadena." US Air Force, 19 February 2007. Retrieved: 9 May 2010.

- Surely this is an argument based on Economics, not on Maths? The side that can implement : "the best kill-ratio per dollar" will surely "win". Frex, if one side implements Laser Missile Killer Guns, with low cost per gun, per "shot", per man-hour $, then it can just keep on shooting down whatever appears in the skies, oceans, wherever. One doesn't need a very big "bullet", or "mortar", to bring down a giant missile. And they don't have to be very accurate "bullets" or "mortars". One can launch a veritable "wall of metal" at any air missile (like the Phalanx Gun does) see: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/a-laser-phalanx-03783/ Similarly underwater. What do others think ?

If they can't convert an AR-15 to fire full-auto, how are they gonna make an entire M-16?

They won't be making them, they'll be buying them from underground gunsmiths.

Is there any country in the world that actually has underground gunsmiths? In particular I'm looking for countries that have enforced gun control because you're arguing enforcing stricter gun control in the US would create a market for black-market firearms.

If the answer is nobody does that's very good evidence for my side.

They wanna restrict weapons like the AR-15 because they have been used in a lot of very bad shootings recently. But AFAIK nobody's even proposed an Australia-style buy-back.

Three to five is not a lot. Several have been proposed, but I do not believe that any have gotten out of legislative committees yet.

Whose done the proposing?

I've seen press releases announcing a couple pols want to ban new sales, but banning new sales is much different then proposing the government spend Billion$ buying back existing weapons. They didn't do a mandatory buyback of actual machine guns.

I'm sure that before the dust has settled somebody's gonna file a bill before committee that does exactly that. But it hasn't happened yet, and when it does the pro-rural bias in the House GOP and the entire Senate will mean it won;t come up for a committee vote.

Not as easy as a Soviet weapon.

In any industrialized nation, like ours, the difference is negligible. Khyber pass manufacturing technology favors the AK, that's not much of an issue here.

The USSR designed everything to be easy to produce because their doctrine required large numbers of troops, and their economy couldn't support spending $1,000 on a rifle.

The US isn't spending $1,000 per rifle. At least not for the main battle rifle. Spec-ops types and sniper rifles notwithstanding.

You might be surprised about that. I was guessing it was $800-$900ish from what little I know of civilian weapons prices, but according to this:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Colt-M4-Data-Rights-The-Individual-Carbine-Competition-06942/
Colt's latest bid was $1,221. This is a significant increase on it's '99 bid of $521, and indicates either a) Colt understands supply/demand really well, b) M-4 cost more to make then Colt thought, or c) a and b. I suspect Colt's accountants have really really good evidence for b), but I don't believe them.

Last I heard the Russians were paying their supplier $150 or so. The Taliban seem to be getting them $400, and in many places in Africa the price is closer to $100.

>It would make the US troops seem more human

>That is a good point, but it's the only thing better about using animals.

I disagree. I believe in most situations it's best to make US soldiers seem, to the extent possible, like technodemons summoned from the cauldrons of American science wizards.

The less known and the more presumed about a US soldier's abilities the easier it will be to fight. Give them night vision and guns that can shoot around corners. Give them air conditioned self supporting strength enhancing armor. Give them networks that let every soldier know where every other soldier in his squad is. Give them flying death robots and laser guns. Emulate every desired superpower you can from ESP to precognizance to golems and X-ray vision. Make every US soldier a nightmare for his enemies, inflating his capabilities beyond any enemy simulation and in the end we'll save money by not having to actually use these abilities.

This is nothing more than political maneouvering by the ruling government.

It's been done before, and will continue to be done. Especially because a General Election is coming up. If you read that link I posted, it was reported that the Malaysian prime minister said "Whatever we do, we must put people first,". If that were truly the case, why wasn't that position taken in the first place before the law was passed?

Basically:
1. Pass draconian law
2. Wait for public outcry
3. Repeal draconian law
4. Look like a hero
5. Profit!

 
That regime that controls Malaysia for 55 years can do that, time and time again, simply because the average IQ of the Malaysians - especially that of the majority Malays - is below 75
 
If you follow the following links, you will understand how easy it is to manipulate the majority Muslim Malays -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#Malaysian_institutional_racism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_head_protests

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_attacks_against_places_of_worship_in_Malaysia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altantuyaa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt5qR98-jE8

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Scorpenes-Sting-Liberation-Publishes-Expose-re-Malaysias-Bribery-Murder-Scandal-05347/

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/20091224.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBIgmdMNE7Q

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lalang
 

From that Wired article is a link to another article written by the guy who co-designed the F-16 and A-10 http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/The-F-35s-Air-to-Air-Capability-Controversy-05089/

Interesting article, what first caught my eye was $300B, ouch. I remember back in the 20th century when F35 was called CALF, Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter.

Not really. The Germans were flying the $110M (Euro 90M) Eurofigher against the $150M F-22. The Eurofighter is a contemporary of the F-22, only a couple of years older, not something from a previous design generation. The other guy is not going to have some huge numerical advantage.

Who do you think we're supposed to be fighting? Europe?
The F-35 and F-22 would be up against the previous generation of jets which are much much cheaper.
Quantity has a quality all its own, especially when the fancy stealth jets run out of missiles.

But we should also have modern incarnations of a dedicated fighter and a dedicated close air support aircraft, as we did in the past with the F-16s and A-10s. For those unfamiliar with the origin of these legendary aircraft, the Air Force did not want either one. They were both designed by rouge design teams that did not believe in the concept of multi-mission aircraft, and after demonstrating amazing performance in their respective roles, they were forced upon the Air Force by a cost conscious Congress.

From that Wired article is a link to another article written by the guy who co-designed the F-16 and A-10
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/The-F-35s-Air-to-Air-Capability-Controversy-05089/
He takes a long shit all over the F-35. It's going to be the compromise that nobody wants, but everybody is stuck with.

Maybe they should just strip down the F-22 fleet and make them unmanned. I bet they could do that for ~$100 million per plane.

But skynet activates once they cross the international date line.

1. 1) Cost. A human pilot represents a multi-million dollar engineering challenge, from life support system (such as O2 flow) to aircraft survivability to ergonomics.
2. 2) Capability. As others here have noted, modern fighter aircraft's maneuverability have long since been hamstrung by the physiological limitations of the pilot. A human pilot also represents a waste of space and weight that could be used for fuel, sensors and weapons. The lack of a cockpit also implies smaller aircraft with a thinner profile increasing "stealthiness".
3. 3) Reduced Political Profile. The Navy has just grounded their Firescout UAVs following two crashes. But that grounding doesn't make big news, because no one died when the UAVs went down and the program has a relatively modest budget, at least compared to the F-22 and F-35.

And yet the military still doesn't have a clue - the Navy just released their proposal for a F-18 replacement that includes a "optional manned" variant. In fact, this dictates a design that meets manned requirements first, with "optional unmanned" variant to follow, in much the same way that the F-35B STOVL dictated the design (and timeline and costs) of the JSF program.

UAVs (as well as Unmanned Surface Vehicles) can and should be used to make the US military safer, more cost-effective and more capable.

Planes can get into serious trouble when the date handling routines are FUBARed.

Maj. Gen. Don Sheppard (ret.): ”...At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems. They were—they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers – they tried to reset their systems, couldn’t get them reset. The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes. F-22 Squadron Shot Down by the International Date Line

Y2K might have been exaggerated some, but at least that problem was real; Apocalyptic Global Warming, not so much.

Quoting Defense Industry Daily article The F-35’s Air-to-Air Capability Controversy:

The core problem in Pacific Vision 2008 was that even an invulnerable American fighter force ran out of missiles before it ran out of targets, at any number below 50% of missile firings resulting in kills. Whereupon the remaining Chinese fighters would destroy the American tankers and AWACS aircraft, guaranteeing that the USAF’s F-22As would run out of fuel and crash before they could return to Guam.

To reiterate: RAND’s core conclusion is not about specific fighter performance. It is about the theoretical limits of better performance under adverse basing and logistics conditions. RAND’s Project Air Force argues, persuasively, that based on history and current trends, numbers still matter – and so does the “Lanchester square.” That’s the theory under which the combat performance of an outnumbered combatant must be the square of the outnumbering ratio (outnumbered 3:1 must be 9x better, etc.) just to stay even.

Or, as the oft-repeated Cold War era saying goes, “quantity has a quality all its own.”

Additional problem with F-35 is that it has limited missile carrying capacity, range, and stealth (stealth requirements were downgraded from very low observable, to low observable).

Canada is currently in the process of adding new ships to its navy via the 'Single Class Surface Combatant Project', and is modernizing its fleet of Halifax class frigates. Because America's International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a pain in the ass and frequently abused for political purposes, one of the big mandates at least for the Halifax frigate modernization is to try to reduce the dependence on U.S. (weapons) systems as much as possible; opting for systems from Canada, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Israel. IIRC I believe this started with issues around exporting and/or updating torpedoes (or at least that is what I remember being the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of naval weapons systems). It is unclear if this will continue with the new combat ships; there has been no clear indication published (pdf) in the news one way or another. Now if a close ally of the United States is forced to look elsewhere to avoid a lot of issues raised by the abuse of ITAR rules by American politicians and companies, then it is likely a very smart decision of India to avoid buying from the U.S.

But I don't know why they didn't go with the Typhoon. It looks marginally better. The wing load is higher, the thrust, speed, and climb is better, and it super cruises faster. These kinds of things are what allows a plane to return home at the end of the day when the shit hits the fan. Mind you, the Americans did do a bit of a study in the 80s I believe, where they had a bunch of top guns in F-5s go after standard operational F-14s and F-15s and pretty much proved that a bunch of small manoeuvrable fighters were a credible and significant threat to the bigger less manoeuvrable modern planes. Not sure where they went with that after. Maybe the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about took issue with the results of that study.

This isn't quite true any more. There are a number of system now in use that use sound and muzzle flash characteristics to pinpoint and identify the direction and gun the shot came from.

I believe those systems fall into the "wait for the bang" category mentioned, which, of course, is less than an ideal combat situation.

We need tech that can spot snipers and control large sections of urban landscape where hostiles and non-combatants co-mingle and sometimes even co-habitate as well. The only way to spot them right now is either to wait for the bang (and we sure love those bangs), or drive around in a semi-truck with some backscatter x-ray equipment stuffed in the back that's busy giving the operators and innocent passerbys on the street cancer looking for hidden weapons.

This isn't quite true any more. There are a number of system now in use that use sound and muzzle flash characteristics to pinpoint and identify the direction and gun the shot came from.

Quick question: where are the lines drawn between NASA's and NOAA's responsibilities?

NASA has much, much more satellite experience than NOAA so the responsibilities are often shared. On the other hand attempting to share "ownership" (as opposed to a single owner with well defined, shared responsibilities) led to a situation where a "White House Office of Science and Technology report concluded that NPOESS’ management structure was unsalvageable" (Warning: the provided link may have nothing to do with Aquarius...and may be entirely inaccurate...read with caution): http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/major-shifts-flow-from-npoess-polar-satellite-program-crisis-01557/

So now: "NASA would manage the civilian Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) afternoon orbit satellites, on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) behalf."

In other words, NASA does the engineering, NOAA does the science.

The Chinese Stealth Fighter looks like a clone of the Northrop YF-23 prototype which went head to head (and lost) against the F-22.

Yes, it was indeed a rather extreme test, which explains why the difference in numbers is so big. Thing is, it doesn't go away in other conditions, it just isn't quite as pronounced.

When it comes to "typical operating environment", you can't do better than ask the grunts in the field:

"I know it fires very well and accurate [when] clean. But sometimes it needs to fire dirty well too."

“The M4 is overall an excellent weapon, however the flaw of its sensitivity to dirt and powder residue needs to be corrected. True to fact, cleaning will help. Daily assigned tasks, and nonregular hours in tactical situations do not always warrant the necessary time required for effective cleaning."

“Dusty, desert conditions do require vigilance in weapons maintenance However, it is imperative to remember that at the time of the attack, the 507th had spent more than two days on the move, with little rest and time to conduct vehicle repair and recovery operations.”

The official Army position is:

"M16s and M4s “functioned reliably” in the combat zone as long as “soldiers conducted daily operator maintenance and applied a light coat of lubricant."

which is pretty much confirming their point. It is a high-maintenance weapon, which is a major issue for main infantry rifle.

Well, you could always go with the upgrade - MOP (GBU-57A/B)

Imagine a team of robots -- some rolling on wheels, some walking on two legs...

People are obsessed with the idea of robots that look like we do. And in time, technology will get there. But it isn't necessarily the most efficient / practical / useful way to do it.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/darpas-robot-dog-project-03457/

It was real, but hyped. None of us seriously expected 747s to invert on crossing the International Date Line, as some more fevered commentators speculated, nor did we expect nuclear power stations to destabilize.

The interesting thing is that the international date line really does cause severe code problems. For instance, a squadron of F-22 Raptors was taken out by the date line.

The 747 has the significant advantage of being a relatively old plane, thus most of its systems were date immune. Also, a 747 won't fly inverted, or at least I don't know anyone that has tried to fly a 747 inverted. Nuclear power stations are another example of old equipment designed largely without date information in the critical systems.

Get them a couple of these to travel around in, the pilot might be named "Virgil", a secret base on an island, maybe someone named Penelope to head it all up.

That's a go!

What the ill-informed such as yourself call "big guns - like assault rifles" are military-looking guns that have been altered so that they fire one bullet at a time. To make them or import them here, they must not be alterable to fully automatic fire.

hahahahahahaha

You're kidding, right? All single-barrel guns only shoot one bullet at a time silly!

In all seriousness though, "not alterable" doesn't mean what you think it means. Go to a few gun shows and you will see that they sell kits to "fix" your old pre-1994-assult-weapons-ban gun... It doesn't mean it is legal for you to modify it, but you know damn well people do it. The ban also expired in 2004 which means that in addition to the pre-1994 guns that fire "exactly the same ammo at exactly the same rate of fire" as military versions, you can also now get others that are fully automatic, but not quite as quick (still fixable with that nice gun show kit though).

I do agree about one thing though, those aren't big guns. This is a big gun.

"DARPA's goals for Vulture are not trivial: 5 years on station with a 450kg/ 1,000lb payload, 5kW of onboard power, and sufficient loiter speed to stay on station for 99% of the time against winds encountered at 60,000-90,000 feet."

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/DARPAs-Vulture-What-Goes-Up-Neednt-Come-Down-04852/

Well, the US won't sell to just anybody. In fact even some of their closest allies can't even get the F22 (Israel/Australia), which may be the best Air Sup fighter in the world, but won't be avail in sufficient numbers to make a real difference.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/US-State-Dept-Throws-A-Wrench-Into-Exports-Allied-Shipbuilding-05321/

Here's a case where the US may lose business to an ally because of politics.

This is why the French were so successful for so long, they didn't care who they sold to.

In fact with the restrictions that the US demands now, it becomes much easier to buy elsewhere, and there is great incentive to produce weapons/platforms capable of taking on the second tier US stuff which they are exporting.

I work for Siemens, with Winergy being a subsidiary of us. They build the gear multiplier that sits behind the blades and drives the generator. It alone weighs in at 32,000 lbs or around there. This is a 1.5 Megawatt box too. The 3.5s that they're getting ready to start building are even heavier. Heh.

This blimp should do the trick. Lifting capacity of one to two million pounds.

How can people make stuff up, like this? I mean, really, HOW?

Supposing that they go with BSD. It is ALREADY standards compliant, and secure. The government need only decide which programs are necessary for their uses, and MAYBE have them tailored and tweaked for thier purposes. Nothing more than what is necessary for any MS system.

Every single step required to put that BSD system to work for the government, would be required for an "equivalent" MS system. Or, Solaris, or Linux, or whatever. You seem to suggest that using MS systems eliminates some of the tedious work? I hardly think so.

Training is the single expense that will probably be higher with an open source system - but that is a ONE TIME expense, which is more than offset by the money saved (ie, not sent to Redmond)

More and more governments are switching to open source. Those that insist on proprietary continue to be embarassed. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-10129373-42.html http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Royal-Navy-Catches-a-Virus-from-Russia-With-Love-05256/

It ain't cheap, and I doubt you could even buy one if you had the cash, but for state of the art, do a little research into the HMD for the JSF (helmet mounted display for the Joint Strike Fighter / F-35). From the Rockwell Collins website:
"Vision Systems International (VSI), a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and Elbit Systems Ltd. of Israel, is developing the Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) for the JSF. VSI's HMD offers a compact, versatile, lightweight and extremely rugged display with low power consumption. The JSF HMD is a binocular off-the-visor display providing the pilot with a large field-of-view video/calligraphic image to both eyes."

http://www.vsi-hmcs.com/f35.htm

From what I've read, it's simply amazing. The pilot will be able to look in ANY direction (including straight thru his body or the bottom or rear of the cockpit) to see augmented reality - with data fused from multiple sensors including infrared and radar, overlaid on the real world.

http://uscockpits.com/Jet%20Fighters/F-35_Cockpit_(dusk_with_virtual_HMD).jpg

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f-35-hmds-pulls-the-gs-04088/

By the way, "calligraphic" is worth noting. A normal video image simply cannot create very bright and precise light points, because it's a raster image. But a calligraphic display effectively overcomes this limitation, by using a separate CRT gun to hit the same phosphors with much more power in a non-raster format. So the display is a combined raster and beam system, providing some ability to provide very precise details at much higher brightness, while also allowing normal full-color display.

RAID: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/484m-for-rapid-aerostat-deployment-system-updated-0700/
JLENS: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/jlens-ramps-up-hard-raytheon-wins-13b-contract-01500/

RAID: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/484m-for-rapid-aerostat-deployment-system-updated-0700/
JLENS: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/jlens-ramps-up-hard-raytheon-wins-13b-contract-01500/

I'm not sure what type of anti-ship missile you're referring to, but aircraft carriers have computer-controlled mini-guns mounted to defend against air-to-surface missiles. I would assume the same could work for these battleships.

Seth

1) Depends on orbital altitude over the theatre of operations. Low (enough) latency links can be accomplished with sats if you're willing to spend money on a satellite constellation of sufficient density to allow for full coverage of the area with low altitude sats. Considerably lower latency than a Hawaiian quake player would experience on a west coast server is possible.

Hmm. Like Iridium? =)

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/us-military-pays-804m-for-iridium-services-02148/

Being 10 years behind does not guarantee that its free of bugs if the technology has never been used in a similar scenario. How many 10 year old Pentium PC's have had to cross the date line and keep running?

It's visual alright (IR): http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/ABM_Target_Viewed_From_SM-3_Seeker_lg.jpg

you mean like:

Space Station
Space Shuttle

or

Las Vegas

or

Lincoln Financial Field

and... yeah, it is cool that the good old USA can muster up a few of these bad boys:

F-22

So I guess we're just totally broke?

Physically, they look very similar.

Mitsubishi fighter: http://inventorspot.com/files/images/P-DN-061116-02E.img_assist_custom.jpg/

F22: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_F-22_10-Oc_Over_Mountains_lg.jpg/

This reminds me of news reports about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's meant to replace the F-16 and also be available for export to allied nations starting with the UK. Unfortunately for the potential buyers, the US government wasn't offering to share all the technical details and source code that our allies would need to fully operate and maintain the aircraft. With a quick Google search I just found this article from last year saying the US and UK came to an agreement, don't know what's happened since then. I vaguely remember the Royal Air Force and Navy threatened to cancel their orders and just buy Eurofighter Typhoons instead.

nd how the F-35 uses two separate engines; a fan with doors for upward thrust, and an engine with a swivel nozzle for forward and upward thrust.

No. The front lift fan in the F-35B is shaft driven off the one engine seen here.
8 engines in Mollers abomination introduces more points of failure.

And the M200 saucer, rather than being 'abandoned' is the article reference, and is supposedly going to be manufactured and sold.
According to the article, and the good Dr. M, anyway

Yes, of course because all series hybrid vehicles are similar. (omg)

And by the way the US Army is not the first with that idea:
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/sep/
http://www.defense-update.com/products/s/sep.htm
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/hybriddrive-se p-vehicles-receive-votes-of-confidence-from-sweden -bae-02446/ The Swedish SEP ran for the British FRES program:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europ e/fres.htm
Unfortunately, recently it was excluded due to (perceived?) lower maturity of the technology than the competitions offers.

did your friend work on this? :)

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/03/f22-sq uadron-shot-down-by-the-international-date-line/in dex.php

What happens when it crosses the International Dateline?

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/09/snipin g-at-us-forces-beginning-to-boomerang/index.php

That's why you deploy them in swarms :)

see Build Your Own HERF Gun
and
HERF Gun: Make it in your basement

Supposedly the High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) burst will disrupt all the electronic components in an engine. My understanding is that the Coast Guard is already using these to stop fleeing motor boats (sorry no link) and the air force is researching a HERF weapon to knock all the electronics in a area USAF Detachment 8 Continues US Research Into EMP-Microwave Weapons

Defense Industry Daily has a trio of articles that seem relevant to this discussion. One covers the British CVF future carrier design, background, and relevant contracts. The second covers the related French PA2 carrier project, which will now be a CVF design collaboration. The third covers, not DD(X), but the USA's CVN-21 carriers that will replace the Nimitz Class beginning around 2013 - AND how the manpower savings work out. When you see that, some of the concerns expressed here can be put to bed (but some remain valid). All come with useful diagrams, photos, etc.

• Design & Preparations Continue for Britain's New CVF Future Carrier (updated)
  
• France Steaming Ahead on PA2/CVF Carrier Project
  
• Design & Preparations Continue for the USA's New CVN-21 Super-Carrier (updated). What makes it different from the Nimitz Class?
  
• Costing the CVN-21: A DID Primer. Explains the CVN-21's real per-ship costs, the projected sources of $5 billion in lifetime operational savings, and where the key risks/ sensitivities are.

The US conversion of 4 Ohio Class SSBN (nuclear missile subs) to Special Forces and steath strike missions gives the US Navy a platform with the same potential relevance and situation-affecting punch as a carrier, albeit for different kinds of missions. Aircraft carriers remain exremely valuable in many, many war scenarios, however - and more than a few peacetime ones as well. For instance, the US carriers' ability to distill very large quantities of fresh water from the sea (it's good to have a nuclear plant on board) was very helpful in the tsunami's aftermath. For versatility and usefulness over a wide range of scenarios, there are still no real substitutes for aircraft carriers. People predict their demise - but then, they've been doing that to the tank for almost 40 years now, and Iraq showed that there is still no substitute for a tank. Same for the carriers. Personally, gotta say that I'm not so hugely positive about the DD(X), myself. Here's a DID article covering DD(X), with a bunch of links that you may find informative.