I've heard of LADAR technology. It uses lasers instead of radiation. Do these things exist or are they the stuff of Dale Brown's books only?

'When I first saw the F-4 Phantom, I thought it was so ugly, I wondered if it had been delivered upside down' - That was the opinion of one of the top commanders in the USAF (his name escapes me at the moment).
How time changes things. These days people are nostalgic about the Phantom grace and powerful looks. It's not even as if the F4 did well in it's first few actions in 'Nam either (admittedly that was cause the early Sparrows and Sidewinders were unreliable but still..).
I guess what all this means is it sometimes takes time for military aircraft to become accepted and appreciated. Look at the Harrier, it's not exactly 'beauty with wings' is it? It was in service for years before it got it's combat debut in the Falklands. And everyone thought it was going to get its arse kicked then. Now we all think it's cool and we're wondering how they can replace it!
Eventually people will start to like its looks I think and it will probably be impressive in a number of operational ways.
With regard to it's diminutive size not allowing for a large engine, I would think it's quite likely to be able to 'supercruise' at mach 1 and 2 without afterburners. That would give it both high speed and a large operational radius.
I still think it's an ugly b*stard personally, but I may well get to like it for other reasons.

Does anyone remember an old feature shown in the Discovery channel years ago about silencing technology? It uses the mirror image of the wave length generated by the sound source. The result is that both sound waves negate each other, resulting to a significant reduction in the noise level.

Besides, aircraft fly faster than sound nowadays, thus aerial 'sonars' would have not much effectivity. By the time the sound detectors hear them, a JDAM would be over the target.

Re: Black projects, perhaps the current projects are stealth UCAVs, hypersonic cruise missiles, and the like.

Re: LADAR, I would find its use not much effective as RADAR. The reason is the weather. You have bad weather, the laser won't be able to give an accurate reading of any object. That's one reason why JDAMs are quite effective over their laser guided cousins. GPS guided JDAMs can be used regardless of the weather. When it's raining or cloudy, LGBs are not that effective.

Currently, some tanks have laser defenses, such as the Shtora and Arena which can detect laser emissions, thus warning the crew that they're being lazed. Such defense systems could be placed on aircraft.

There is a 1/72 resin of it on ebay right now.

Ugly? You want ugly? Try the BAE Lightning, an exhaust that looks like an over/under shotgun, hard points for missiles ON TOP of the wings, big, goofy inlet...

I like the looks of the BAE Lightining and this one but then again I like the subaru tribeca too