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Did it even get to mockup stage?

No definitive evidence has ever surfaced (info on the plane is extremely scarce) but it is believed to have reached the mockup stage and a prototype may have been under construction.

The long extension into the dry lakebed looks like it hasn’t been used for quite some time. It’s showing serious signs of disrepair and is X’ed out, meaning it is no longer operational. No idea what the circular tracks are for. Don’t appear to be tracks of any sort, and there’s nothing significant at the termination points either.

I wonder if they jacked up the engine power to make up for the added drag caused by the decision to stop using the nose and tail covers for the D-21? They had problems getting them to separate in-flight so they stopped using them, likely causing the drag of the drone to increase during carriage.

I’ve had various versions of the Microsoft Zune for a few years now and have no complaints whatsoever with it.

I’ve been to the Udvar-Hazy center. It’s the annex to the Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum, and has a bunch of great stuff. There’s the X-35B, an SR-71A, loads of satellites, the Enola Gay, a Concorde, a Horten flying wing, and even an AGM-76 (air to ground AIM-47 variant).

The B-70 would have had intercontinental range. If the two aircraft were the same size it would’ve had far greater range than the T-4 anyway thanks to compression lift. The wingtips didn’t fold down because they thought it looked good!

And you have the cheek to rate your utterly baseless fantasies about SK and Japan magically being able to double the size of LHPs and turn them into carriers ‘pretty easily’?

There’s a difference. SK and Japan could take an LHP and make a carrier pretty quick and easy if they wanted the F-35B, a STOVL platform not requiring a lot of the effort that goes into making a serious carrier. Look at what England did during the Falklands with Harriers on container ships. Same basic idea, large flat area for VTOL capable fighter jet. Making an actual fast jet carrier along the lines of Kuznetsov or Nimitz is a far different proposition for a lot of reasons, many of them having to do with the non-STOVL airwing.

Could China build two carriers by 2015? With the right shipyard space it’s certainly possible. It’s also possible that they have an issue or find a design problem while working and have one or none complete by 2015. This is something they haven’t done before. There is no ligical reason to reject the latter posibility outright, because like I said, they haven’t done this before. Sure, with Russian help and with the Varyag to pore over (the two Kievs are not likely to be much help) they could certainly do it. They aren’t stupid enough to claim that they want two by 2015 when they know there’s no chance in hell that they can pull it off, there’s no reason to make that absurd of a claim in that context. So if they say they want two by 2015, they have likely looked at it and think they can do it. But completely discounting the possibility that they might encounter some issues or have to correct a problem delaying the second vessel is just ignorant.

They can do it. But stating that because they can unequivocally means that they definitely will is not very bright and is indicative of a degree of ignorance relating to the development and production of large scale military hardware.