Ummm, no they didn't. The DoD REQUESTED that the funding be removed. Don't you read your own articles?

I watched that video, the machine looks kinda useful… but how many rounds can it hold? (Not that it matters now)

I wonder if this request came from the same guy that approved the NYC fly by of Air Force one.

Defence != Defense

Where'd the Duke Nukum Page go!?!?!?

On one hand I'm disappointed that this technology is now unavailable. On the other hand I'm relieved that something like this will not be available for nefarious purposes(?)

I have mixed feelings on this one. I am no pacifist, but that thing looks a little... too potent for my liking. The chance of accidental innocent deaths is high, and eliminating the chance of these accidents is almost impossible which would render the MKV useless. That said, the ability to take out a room full of hostiles without putting friendly soldiers in danger is nice. I guess this decision is for the best.

Just don't expect to sneak up on anyone with it.

Obama didn't need to kill this and he didn't cancel the F22, the jets ordered before he became president are still being built. Geez. Oh yeah, Military budget is higher too that goes more to support the guys on the ground.

The MKV (if you look at the video) while is neat how it moves like a drone in Star Wars.... is not usable. Its a waste of money. The computer is doing a great job hovering with retro rockets.... but that device drinks fuel and way to noisy to be USABLE. 20 seconds. A normal prop drone with a guided bomb will do much better. Now when ANTI-GRAV is working and something from New Hope can be built that is near silent - WATCH OUT!

John Conner must have come back from the future and warned Obama.

this technology doesn't look so smart to me because why is it like digital instead of analog; i mean why are the jets either on or off and not have like a dimmer thingy. and look how it actually thrusts downwards sometimes; that's totally inefficient.

Reminds me of the roller mines from half life2

Uhh...maybe some education on the MKV is in place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Kill_Vehicle

It's not a drone, but a warhead of an intercept missle. The video demonstrated its extreme ability to maneuver. Which is kind of useful when you are trying to hit a speck of dust at 1000+ miles away.

Obama at work.

They realized you have to get Skynet online BEFORE you build the autonomous killing machines.

I believe this is for missile defense, not for firing at a ground target. Looks more like a counter to MRV technology.

Unfortunately the author and most readers are a bit confused regarding the MKV. It is (or was) not a killer drone, unmanned fighter, or any other precursor to a future military android. Rather, MKV was to be a follow-on effort to the currently deployed missile defense system. Just like the currently deployed interceptors (like Patriot and the Ground-based missiles in Alaska) MKV was designed to be launched aboard a missile booster and maneuver to intercept an enemy incoming warhead. The video shows what looks to be a hovering mechanical drone - but really is a fairly standard test used for propulsion/steering. The "hover test" seen in the video was just to verify that the MKV could indeed operate it's steering motors as it would in outerspace as it flew in a trajectory to intercept an enemy nuclear warhead. It is a neat looking video, but the sounds you hear are simply rocket motors, not any sort of amunition or explosive.

stuipid obama i would love to see allah raiders killed with that

LOL I'm sorry but that thing is scary looking. Even if it didn't fire rounds at an enemy, just the sight and sound of that thing would freak people out. All those little rockets blasting repeatedly off that thing to keep it in air is nuts.

I wasn't expecting to see a video of something so crude frankly. That looked like a home built experiment more than it did a secrete government project. LOL!

Looks like John Connor managed to travel to the past once again and somehow postpone judgment day... Phew.

Retro-rockets? How about just a blimp?

Secret? it's been public sense Regan.

Star Wars what?

This is just random.

Hey genius... Pentagon = controlled by administration. They do as they're told, they're the puppet of the government, not the other way around. Not that hard to figure out who is behind the budget cuts here, or who cut out future Raptor orders. Or who cut the public safety officers' death benefits program, for that matter.

But its OK to nationalize the banks and pour hundreds of billions of dollars down the toilet, only to watch in wonder as unemployment rises, despite all that hot we-must-vote-without-reading-this-bill action.

I love MKV's! I watch most of my anime that way.

LOL You beat me to it, I posted without even reading your post.

It looks pretty cheap if you ask me!!!!

most technologies we're using right now came from military projects , why stop now ? to be honest , i not really happy with obama right now . he cut back fund for NASA and now cutting back military project ? i guess whatever it takes to pull the economy back up without legalizing drug which im strongly against .in the defense of the MKV , i think about the v-22 osprey . at the time it was developed , people thought it was a dangerous machine . it was a dangerous machine alright , but it takes blood and sweat to do amazing things .

lol, my post got removed. I said nothing offensive. Just wasnt very Obama friendly. I guess you guys support that tyrant. In a world where Islamic radicals seek to kill Americans simply for being American, cutting military funding is not a smart idea.

So much about this president is wrong. Killing the MKV project while other countries seek to create nuclear weapons makes me wonder what his true goal is. I dont trust him.

Btw, I'm not a Bush fan. But I believe Bush wanted to protect this country..no matter what.

While a lot of military technology is important, I would note that if the budget is to be balanced, military spending is going to HAVE to be cut. Everyone talking about the budget likes to speak about capping/trimming/eliminating "non-Defense discretionary spending," which covers a huge range of government programs, the court system, the government's own operations... But the fact is, the deficeits are reaching a level where they're soon going to EXCEED the combined value of all that spending. In other words, the US government could outright shut its doors on everything but the military, close down the Capitol and the White House, along with the courts, and the money saved would STILL not balance the budget. That's because the Defense budget is roughly half of all Federal non-mandatory spending. That's right, the DoD gets about as money as every other department of the US government combined.

Granted, the MKV would have a use... But it's also a question of WHEN it'd have a use. Whose longer-range ballistic missiles is it going to intercept? As someone with a pretty extensive background in WMDs, this is a rather interesting and important question.

North Korea's? Their nuclear weapons projects have yielded relative duds, that like all early A-bombs, are too massive to load on a missile. Plus, the range on their missiles is still too poor to reach anything other than South Korea and Japan, which are too close for the MKV to really reach anyway, ESPECIALLY South Korea.

Iran's? Iran doesn't have anything beyond short-range ballistic missiles. Their best range is that they could strike Israel. So chances are the MKV would be useless for defending Israel, too. Plus, of course, Iran still doesn't have a nuclear bomb yet, and it'd be years before they could make one small enough to fit their missiles.

Russia's? Well, if you cut through their claims, it turns out that they only a single Typhoon-class submarine in actual shape to go to sea and launch missiles, and it's been too busy with its silos full of dummy test drones for a new type of missile that won't see production for a long while. That leaves them with a number of dated Delta-class submarines, (again with only a tiny number in any shape to do anything) and perhaps a couple hundred functional land-based ICBMs... And we know Russia's infamous history of their rockets exploding on the launch pad.

China's? Well, last I checked, China had all of 10 longer-range ICBMs capable of striking... Alaska or SoCal, so no loss. Oh, they're also kept disassembled off of their launch pads, not in convenient silos that keep them ready to fire at a moment's notice. If they were assembling them with nukes, we'd have hours upon hours of time, plenty enough to run a sortie off of a nearby carrier to destroy the missiles before they could even be launched.

So, excepting the above, that leaves us with, uh, the UK and France? And I honestly don't expect the USA to go to war with either anytime soon. I mean, on one side you've got the UK, a very close ally... And on the other side, you've got France. FRANCE!

Yes, Robert Gates has announced that he's going to try to request a lot less money for the Defense Department this time around, potentially in hopes of curbing their ballooning budget; another casualty is that he's calling to cut off F-22 production after "only" around 200 or so, rather than the some 750+ that some wanted. Of course, this will likely meet opposition from some members of Congress, who like having all those millions of federal dollars going to plane manufacturers in their districts. So we'll see what happens.