Comment Re:One hundred *billion* dollars? (Score 2) 103
Large hybrid titling ducted rotor quadcopters with electric drives and inboard turbine generators. Don't they already make model aircraft that look much like that and perform pretty well. Just need to up scale it. Now if they want to save money, which really doesn't seem to be the objective. They need to separate out the airframe from everything else. Don't design a military aircraft, design an agile high speed civilian aircraft capable of carrying the final design load, of personnel, munitions and armour. The advantage you have something to directly sell into civilian market to save money. The body shape can then vary according to demand. That research of course has no impact on the remaining research which covers target acquisition and elimination. Survivability is quite simply tied to how much spare mass the design can carry, the more spare mass, the more you can convert that into armour.