Admittedly, while the plane would have had much better performance with the alternative engine that got canceled, it is by no means a sluggard.

And this is coming from a project that some were calling a "Trillion Dollar Turkey"? Yeah, I can undestand the teething problems on THIS system!

The real question is, which engine would have employed more people in some Congressman's state or district. Too many important decisions of highly technical matters have been made by people who are, typically of a decidedly, non-technical bent.

The longer both this and the ISIS situation goes on, the more and more it looks like it's going to eng up being a very bloody mess.

So many ineuendos, so little time...

Once this starts being deployed to fighter aircraft and UCAVs, I would not be suprised to see Bombers, AWACS type planes, Refuelers, and even Air Force One, geing equiped with several of these systems each, for full arial coverage.

I'm NOT speculating as I have been following the development of the Solid State Laser system for years now. I am using quoted power delivery and capibilities, as well as size requirements.

Ok, couple of things. First, this Laser is only a 10 kilowatt laser, easily withing thepower generation capibilities of most jet powered fighter planes. Second, you're thinking of the "Chirping" discharge technique where hours to weeks of charge is built up in capaciter banks to discharge terawatt scale shots. …

Remember the movie "Real Genius" where they had a laser system that could be fired from an orbital Space Plane and vaporize the bad guys? Well, no spaceplane, but a drone? An as the human body is mostly water, suddenly coverting that much water to high temperature steam? POP! I'm not saying that THIS laser could…

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

I don't know, Burst Angels seems pretty close to this as well.

Yeah, where's the tank crossing traffic or the low flying fighter jet?

Now if they did that with a B-52 or a B-1... No... just... no...

Hey, if they were doing that with Strikers, HEMMITTs, or Hummvees, I'd be interested

Now that would be ki8nda cool! buy an old, demilled aircraft Carrier, convert it slightly into a floating, mobile SF convention center, (Hanger Decks would make for GREAT event spaces) maybe add some themed structures on the flight deck, (Pad the deck and set up high fences and have airsoft and paintball tournies…

To be honest, I never could quite figure out why we went away from PT boat style craft in the first place. They were effective in WWII in the Pacific, similar craft worked well in both Korea and Vietnam, but we seemed to have forgotten that sometimes in war, you just got to get upclose and personal with the enemy.

Uh... erm... Words fail me.... you SICK lityle MONKEYS!!!

This, unfortunately, is another one of those fricken "teething" problems that new weapon systems have. Don't forget, for a while even after it was deployed into teh Airforce, the F-16 was known as "The Lawn Dart" because a particular inverted arial maneuver would freak out it's flight computers and cause it to dive…

Looks like the DAGRs are about a 2.75 inch size with pop up fins.

I just want to know... Was it a blue huff or a red huff? There is a difference...