>X-9 Ghost Automatic Fighter
>
>The Northrop Aerotech X-9 Ghost was a proof-of-concept test vehicle
>for a fully AI-controlled aerospace superiority fighter. At the time,
>in the early 23rd century, many military theorists believed that the
>performance limits of human-piloted aerospacecraft had been reached
>and that the future of space combat lay in fully automated weapons.
>The idea of fully autonomous aerospacecraft was nothing new - GENOM
>had been using Boomer fighters for decades - but it was believed that
>an AI sophisticated enough to function usefully in combat would be too
>large and costly to use in mass-produced starfighters.
>

The UFverse's version of "The Ultimate Computer" episode on ST:TOS. This would make a GREAT Golden Age story IMO...I'd especially love to see the clashes between Daystrom and Gryph as the scientist tries to trash-talk the pilot about having to go on the dole once his wonderful X-9 goes into full production.

>XV-74 Synthetic Super Battle Trooper
>
>Originally developed in the 2280s by the New Japan Strategic Self
>Defense Force, the XV-74 was devised by maverick technologist Gendou
>Ikari (a classmate and fraternity brother of the late Katsuhito
>Stingray) as an urban defense weapon. Code named Evangelion by
>the NJSSDF, the XV-74 was an attempt to use GENOM's semi-biological
>Boomer technology to produce daikaiju-class combatants more
>quickly and economically than they could be constructed using standard
>Destroid technology. When the money ran out with the prototype
>half-completed, Ikari turned to the WDF, hoping to interest its
>commanders enough that they would fund completion of EVA-00.

And so Gendou Ikari and his Evangelions finally make their appearance in the UFverse (not counting, of course, their cameo in Knights of the Tenth World 2/3). I presume, of course, that he's the father of the UFverse's Shinji Ikari. I also wonder very much if he tried to go on with his version of Project EVA as an anti-GENOM operation after Sonset, and if so, who his lucky (spoken sarcastically) pilots were. (I do not see UF-Rei letting herself get roped into dunking herself in the LCL, and even if that looked like it was going to happen, HK-47 wouldn't allow it, so it all makes me wonder how she met UF-Shinji. Probably after he got kicked out by his Eva-obsessed father and started wandering the spaceways; Rei might have first encountered Shinji brooding over his antique datacrystal player in a concourse at a spaceport somewhere, trying to bum a ride to wherever.)

-Joe-