https://aviationweek.com/defense/aircraf...aft-design

Quote:Skunk Works Unveils Stealthy Collaborative Combat Aircraft Design
Brian Everstine September 21, 2025

Skunk Works rendering of Vectis collaborative combat aircraft.

Credit: Skunk Works

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works is taking work it did to compete for the U.S. Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter and applying it to a new stealthy, survivable Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) design for both U.S. and international customers.
The new Vectis uncrewed combat aircraft will fly in two years, with the goal of providing air-to-air, air-to-surface and surveillance missions alongside crewed aircraft.
O.J. Sanchez, vice president and general manager of Skunk Works, told reporters the Vectis design takes work from the sixth-generation prototype that the company built and flew, along with the RQ-170 low-observable uncrewed aircraft vehicle (UAS) and “other systems in the classified spaces.”
“Skunk Works is charting a critical path with this Vectis program to unlock new integrated capabilities at an ultracompetitive speed and price point,” Sanchez says. “Vectis provides best-in-class survivability at the CCA price point.”

Vectis comes from extensive operational analysis within Skunk Works, where the company modeled the system flying with Lockheed’s F-22s and F-35s. As the U.S. Air Force is determining requirements for the next increment of its CCA program, specifically how survivable and capable the aircraft should be, Skunk Works has decided to proceed with a reusable design that appears to be on the high end of the spectrum. Though Skunk Works did not provide a cost estimate, it is likely to be more expensive than other designs that focus more on being attritable.
“Should the Air Force find they need a highly survivable platform with the flexibility that Vectis enables for Increment II, I think it’ll be a great candidate,” Sanchez says.
The aircraft is large for the CCA class. Sanchez says it is smaller than the company’s F-16 but larger than the comparatively low-cost Common Multi-Mission Truck—an air vehicle designed to be launched from the company’s Rapid Dragon palletized system off the back of a cargo aircraft.
Sanchez would not identify the engine that will be used in Vectis, just that it is “sized appropriately to be able to fly alongside and work with” crewed aircraft. The company’s operational analysis shows that the ability for the aircraft to be supersonic is not necessary, he says.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say supersonic is what we see is needed in this space,” he says.
While the company is pitching the design potentially for the Air Force’s CCA program and timing the announcement with the beginning of the Air and Space Force’s convention, Sanchez says it is also potentially applicable for the U.S. Navy’s similar program and international partners. The latter point appears to pit Vectis against the similar Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat.
Sanchez says Vectis is “aligned with” the U.S. Air Force’s government-reference architecture that is used to bring on independent mission systems for CCAs. The company is designing it to be flexible for different missions, he says.
“I would see Vectis’ flexibility that’s being built in, along with its survivability, being very attractive to multiple mission problem sets, and then the agility and the way we’re doing flexible payload design can be tailored toward specific countries or programs as they need,” he says.
The stealthy, survivable design that is capable of being a daily flyer appears to be a shift in the Skunk Works’ approach to CCAs. Last year, Sanchez’s predecessor John Clark told Aviation Week that the group’s operational analysis (OA) showed CCAs largely becoming expensive targets—surviving just long enough to do their designated role and then at best becoming decoys. Sanchez says that analysis was done for the specific CCA Increment I competition at the time. Since then, OA has evolved with different designs and tactics in mind.
“Operational analysis is robust,” he says. “It’s not a singular point in time. There are design trades that we’ve made in this and mission applications where we clearly see the opportunity for a reusable, highly survivable and flexible platform like Vectis.”

Hi all. 

I think we all like to save money and I think it's fun to read what other's do to try to save more money.
So I will go first, just a few I can think of at the top of my head:

* I've been using a toilet seat bidet (roughly $40 on Amazon) for years now. It save a ton of money as you dont need to buy toilet paper (or baby wipes if you were using those for yourself ) . You can use soap and water or just water and is actually clean  , in comparison to a dry piece of shredding paper. 
* I use one time shopping bags for garbage 
* I eat food even when far expired past their expiration date. I will eat dry foods that are more then a year out of date np
   Same with dairy , even if it's a few weeks past it's date, it's often still fine.
* I bring my own coffee or drinks if I'm out all day or a few hours. I will skip lunch before I waste money on lunch out on the run/go when I'm busy. 
* I always cook at home, I rarely get a take-out and never delivery. I will go out for lunch 1x a month as a treat, but that's it.
* I always compare shop  , online as well, and stock up when items are on sale or bogo.

I do more , but it's a start. Most of these are boring ,that most know, but well. Come with better ideas then.


Toilet seat bidet in case people are wondering

The comments are interesting 
amazing how after time some of the biggest conspiracy theories are actually true... 

Footage filmed by aviator Jacques Marie Charles Trolley de Prévaux over the killing fields of the Western Front in Ypres ,  Belgium following the Armistice in early 1919 , the 5 minute film remained unseen by the public until 2010 and has now been upscaled to 4k , colourised and sound added.

Quote:Following the Armistice, in early 1919, Trolley de Prévaux and Le Saint undertook a pivotal flight over the devastated Western Front, from the Belgian coastline to the French citadel city of Verdun. They meticulously recorded the war-torn landscape for posterity. This footage, a testament to the horrific destruction of the First World War and it serves as a grim warning of where the world is possibly heading today. This footage would remain unseen by the public for nearly a century until a 2010 BBC documentary presented by Fergal Keane called The First World War From Above introduced is to the Resistance hero Trolley de Prévaux. His daughter Aude Yung-de Prévaux who was a baby when her parents were taken by the Gestapo, had never seen her fathers image until this film was shown to her.

How silent footage is HD colorized and brought to Life

I take early fragments of silent 16fps footage and restore them to life by a combination of manual frame by frame colorization as well as the use of deep exemplar-based video colorization techniques. The footage is upscaled and the frames interpolated to a higher frame rate ( in most cases 60 frames per second.) Finally I produce a soundtrack which helps build a new immersive experience for the viewer.
Together, these processes revive old fragments of footage,  offering audiences a more
vivid and engaging glimpse of lives long since lived in the distant past

I have liked this company since the first time I heard about some of their developments... Making rockets and military hardware that actually works without years of remakes and cost overruns @ 20% initial less cost earns a salute from me !

So typical. The goverment is the biggest terrorist organization , and yet it's ignored. 
Instead January 6th 'terrorists' , and travellers wanting to visit family in another state are the terrorists right? Can't even fly anymore without being treated like a criminal.   It's infuriating! 




Oh but the goverment spraying innocent, unknowing citizens with chemical warfare products , and experimenting on them, that's absolutely fine! 

Please spread the video. More people need to be made aware of these experiments.

And then the left dare to call us Nazis, even though the goverment is 100% performing Nazi experiments on innocent people. 

And then there's Agent Orange.  Wonder where they tested this.  Oh , and I remember about some experiment on a subway  a while back, also by our dear goverment?  Too lazy /late to look it up now, but other's may know what I'm talking about.

I'm not big into porn, internet or not, so I don't really care if they ban online porn. I can easily live without it. However, this bill is right out of the communist playbook (think China or North Korea). 

You will not only be prevented from accessing it here in Michigan, but you won't be allowed to make it yourself, not even write pornographic stories or create a soundtrack that sounds sexual (no heavy breathing or moaning). No one in Michigan, including visitors, will be able to get trans material or make it themselves, and apparently, you won't be able to talk about it either. Do you use a VPN? Then you will be arrested for that alone, regardless of what you were doing online.

To think, some Michigan Republican has been working on this for a long time now, and with all the overreach, it has gone into communist territory now.

Quote:House Bill 4938, called the "Anticorruption of Public Morals Act," would prohibit the distribution of "real, animated, digitally generated, written, or auditory" depictions of sexual acts. The bill breaks down the types of acts covered, including intercourse and masturbation.

The bill also includes a section that takes aim at transgender individuals by prohibiting material "that includes a disconnection between biology and gender by an individual of 1 biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex."

The bill would require internet service providers in Michigan to use filters to prevent people from seeing the prohibited material. 

If the bill were to become law, violators could be looking at prison time or hefty fines. Distributing the prohibited material or making it available online would carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and/or a $100,000 fine. If more than 100 pieces of prohibited material are involved, that penalty jumps to 25 years in prison and/or a fine up to $125,000.

Additionally, an internet service provider or commercial entity could face fines for knowingly allowing people to access sexually explicit material online. 

The bill's sponsors are also pushing for violators of the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act to register as sex offenders. 

Quote:WTF?! An increasing number of states and even countries are introducing age-verification systems to prevent minors from accessing adult websites. For adults unwilling to hand over personal details such as facial scans, VPNs have offered a workaround. But six Michigan Republican representatives have introduced a bill that would completely ban not only porn for everyone in the state but also VPNs. It also proposes placing porn distributors on the sex offenders registry and banning depictions of transgender people.
 
Rep. Josh Schriver of Oxford, the lead sponsor of House Bill 4938, named the Anti-corruption of Public Morals Act, wrote that its "measures defend children, safeguard our communities, and put families first."

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We Praise Him- God

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Hi all.
I thought I'd share this video/channel here. As she needs any exposure she can get. 
This is Dr Elisabeth Potter . She's surgeon who's constantly forced to take phone calls with insurance agents , right before a life saving surgery etc.  She exposing the corruption and lies and actively advocating for her patients.

I tried sharing a link to a video , but I keep getting errors. So here's her channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@DrElisabethPotterMD/shorts

Please support her channel by subscribing etc.

So Percy has been trundling around an ancient riverbed in Jezero Crater for a while looking for evidence of Martians and although hints have been found Martians there are non , until they happened upon a rock last year fancifully named “Cheyava Falls” which shows signs of potential biosignatures , the spotty bits between the rocky bits.


A sample of the potential Martians was taken and packaged ready to be collected .... who knows when , good idea NASA bad implementation.

Quote:A sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken from a rock named “Cheyava Falls” last year, the sample, called “Sapphire Canyon,” contains potential biosignatures, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before a conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life.  

“This finding by Perseverance, launched under President Trump in his first term, is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “NASA’s commitment to conducting Gold Standard Science will continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars’ rocky soil.”

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-s...last-year/