Josh

Not over a long enough time period, certainly. Plus if the US was willing to put that level of effort in, it would be odd for it to be unwilling to actually get into a shooting war over the issue.

Taiwan's independence will be determined by the US/PRC power dynamic. If the US is ever unable or unwilling to prevent the PRC from militarily isolating the island, then the government there will likely capitulate. I don't think that is strong possibility in the next decade.

This was necessitated by the STOVL variant's fan placement. I doubt the F-35 would have that shaping were the USMC dropped from the program.

In general I'd agree, given the vulnerability of airbases to PGMs. The Su-57 and NGAD seem to lean heavily in this direction. But depends on the mission. The F-35 had severe requirement limitations due needing to be an embarked aircraft and STOVL capable. I'm not sure what this airframe is envisioned as being used as, but it seems to fill a niche closer to F-35/F-31. I'd be a little surprised if this project went anywhere, given that it seems to be an independent effort without government support at this time. Sans a major buyer, which I don't see in the cards, it doesn't seem to me this gets developed.

double nose gear is interesting. Isn't that more typical of embarked aircraft?

The mistake the US made in Afghanistan was staying there after the Taliban was toppled. The operation should have been treated as an attempt at permanent replacement and more as a punitive raid. No amount of money or effort was going to stabilize that country. The mistake the US made in Iraq was being there in the first place.

Interestingly the PRC seems to be going for a 'dense pack' strategy with its ICBM silos. Hopefully this move will kill any objections to US ICBM development, not that I thought there was ever any real chance that the program didn't go through.

I'm guessing that under the full power loads that the electrical arc literally vaporizes/ablates the surface of the rail. I suspect some breakthroughs in material science and power storage would be needed to make railguns practical.

Aren't the Brits buying a navalized version of RQ-9? An there is always the possibility of exporting MQ-4C, though I believe it's more than the Germans need and they were already burned by an attempted RQ-4 purchase.

I believe that the US should always back Europe. If they don't feel the same way, after the last four years no one could blame them. Trump will continue to articulate to our allies and our enemies how inconstant US policy can be for decades. A lot of faith was lost.

Was this sarcasm? You do realize basically all of Europe is to the left of the democrats, right? Like, BoJo maybe the closest thing to a Republican and he would never dust the NHS. Not sure what you mean.

I don't see how inventing an ideology in and of itself would generate stability. To the extent that Russia has an ideology now, it appears to place national independence over global cooperation and integration.

I can't speak to Moscow or London's motivations, but Russia wins the lie factory race. One could certainly ask what London had to gain from spoofing AIS, given that it apparently had every intention of actually sailing across Ukrainian waters anyway. I think Russia simply manufactured something that they didn't realize Britain was ready and able to supply.

Media hysterics are probably much more a symptom of the West than Russia. That said, your government is still responsible for its actions and statements, and the clear intent of Russia was to make a big deal of this, whether they faked the AIS or not. I would suggest that since both ships were on web cams when the AIS was faked, and that it seems heavily unlikely that Russia doesn't have a single agent with a cell phone in Odessa, that the fact Russia didn't explicitly say the AIS readings were false is probably because they were the ones who fed the false readings, or at least it worked well enough for their purposes that they felt no need to contradict it.

AIS 'spoofing' barely would count as a hack; you input basically any data you want into the system. It was designed to be easy to implement at the lowest level, not for secure, accurate data. You can tell it absolutely bullshit and it will accept the value on faith; it has no means to cross check the input. The Russians have a more proven track record of screwing with navigation in the region, but I suspect it would be difficult to prove who was responisble.