Seto Kaiba

Hey now, a little honesty in Robotech's advertising was a refreshing change of pace for the brand. Yep... but, admittedly, this was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an attempt to distance Robotech from Macross. This was a simple, straightforward, minimum-effort cash grab so that Harmony Gold can continue to say that they're using the Macross trademarks. (Which, like all trademarks, are on a "use it or lose it" basis.)

From everything I've heard from friends and family members of mine in the armed forces, I would have said more along the lines of "PMCs tend to look for trigger-happy gung-ho morons convinced they're living in their own personal action movie"... which admittedly fits Xaos alarmingly well. I've yet to meet the soldier who speaks well of the private contractors, which kind of made Major Valan easy to sympathize with when he was dealing with Xaos's intransigence. At this point, kindly direct your attention to Exhibit A: "727th Independent Squadron VF-X Ravens" from Macross VF-X2... which are exactly that in the most stringently literal sense. Hávamál's formal designation is the 815th Independent Squadron VF-X Hávamál. Hávamál and the Ravens are the exact same type of New UN Spacy Special Forces unit, with the same command structure. The only dangling question is we've never seen what Hávamál's main ship looks like, but it's probable it's another Saratoga II-type like the 727th's CV-565 Saratoga II "Mother Raven". Edit: Maybe it's the "Father Odin"?

The obnoxious thing is that it's not "PMCs are better than the military"... twice now it's been a very contrived situation where a war breaks out while the latest fighter the military plans to adopt is still being tested in combat conditions by the technically-expendable PMC pilots prior to the start of the new fighter's mass production. In both cases, nobody from the military thinks to repo the damned things or it's somehow impossible to advance the production schedule enough to get the new VF in the military's hands quickly. Essentially, it's not "PMCs are better than the military" so much as it is "PMCs are temporarily better equipped than the military thanks to equipment on loan from the military for testing". In Macross 30 and Macross E we see a more typical picture, where the SMS is actually outclassed by the NUNS forces who actually DO have the latest gear, and Xaos is making do with the same old gear the NUNS is using but in less quantity.

Enough so that he absolutely deserves an honorable mention on the TVTropes page for "Nice job breaking it, hero!". By refusing to follow orders and deliberately trying to sabotage his mission to drop the dimensional warhead his fighter was carrying on the ruins outside Darwent, he caused a terrifying amount of death, destruction, suffering, and hatred. I mean, c'mon... Hayate may be a bit of a flake, but his father Wright absolutely has a lock on the prize for worst judgement of any character in Macross. There was literally no way that the moron was going to do anything but cause a complete, unqualified disaster... the only question was what the death toll for his staggering idiocy was going to be once he decided to break orders. Wright's plan to delay the operation to bomb the uninhabited ruins by flying off course to the target via a deliberately circuitous route that greatly increased his risk of detection to ensure that he'd end up detected by the Aerial Knights and intercepted put him over a major metropolis while carrying a live weapon of mass destruction. Even if he got his way and was recalled by command before they could intercept him, there's no way having a strategic bomber hovering over a major city could get taken as anything but a statement of their intent to bomb civilians. If he got intercepted and was taken down non-destructively, he's just been busted carrying an armed dimensional warhead over one of Windermere's major cities... effectively handing a highly dangerous WMD to a hostile and somewhat xenophobic government and making the war worse. If he got shot down over Carlyle without setting the warhead off, the crash and the explosion of the various conventional munitions aboard is still going to hurt or kill many innocent civilians because the prat was flying over a major city. Then, of course, there's what happened... he got intercepted and the warhead was deployed before he could be downed, wiping a city full of innocent civilians off the map, exacerbating the war to the point that the only viable option was for the New UN Government to withdraw, and causing the Windermereans to hate humans even more than they already did, leading to them declaring a war against the New UN Government years later. It's small wonder one of the few things that Windermere and the New UN Spacy can agree on is that Wright Immelmann was an arse. If he'd just done his job, the whole plot of the series would never have happened and millions of people would have been spared. Not to mention it'd facilitate the massive coverup necessary to pass the recently-made clone off as an ordinary girl. CF units are usually the last ones to come out, so we're getting there slowly but surely... Captain Larazzabal probably won't have to wait more than another year. It's not even necessarily "I'm doing what's right"... it's "screw the rules, I'm doing what I want to" in most cases. Xaos makes a lot of terribly short-sighted decisions throughout the series, seemingly for no reason other than to "stick it to the man", most of which come back to bite them in the arse, and the New UN Spacy's attempts to deal with the situation (and their foreknowledge of the threat) was played as something ominous even though everything they do in the series is perfectly reasonable and they achieve more concrete gains over Windermere in two episodes than Xaos does in twenty-six. Unlike SMS, who may have been dismissive of the NUNS but worked in open cooperation with them to deal with a major threat, Xaos seems to be determined to rebel against authority for no reason... and staffs its PMC accordingly with people who seem to arbitrarily resent authority like Hayate and Arad and people the military wouldn't take like Ernest and Messer. Macross 7 even handled the conflict with the military better... despite Basara's way being right, he at least grudgingly acknowledged that violence was necessary to an extent. He didn't want to be the one dispensing said violence, but he stopped grumbling about it and tried instead to minimize the amount of violence that would be necessary. You don't see that cooperation in Delta, the Xaos forces screw up and blame the NUNS over and over again, and then only achieve success by exploiting the NUNS's independent activities against Windermere. I'd give an awful lot for the next series to do away with this PMC garbage and get back to having the main character actually belong to the military. It was a great deal easier to respect Hikaru's life choices and conflicted nature because he at least showed enough commitment to follow orders and such. All of these mildly military PMCs are more focused on trying to be awesome than having any real conviction.

The ancient Protoculture have done worse things with DNA than genetic memory... by all indications, the Star Singer is essentially a bio-android. Presumably to keep the dimensional warhead from falling into Windermerean hands in the event Wright was shot down without his aircraft being completely destroyed. The target wasn't Darwent itself - though they may not have told Wright that - the goal was to destroy the Sigur Valens and ruins to render the ruins across the cluster harmless so that they couldn't be weaponized the way Windermere eventually weaponized them.

Yup... though by that point the only one whose body had a prior owner was Ivano Gunther AKA Gepernich. 's a sensor antenna of an unspecified type. The inspiration for it was probably the F-14's TARPS reconnaissance camera unit.

The original Japanese voice cast did a MUCH better job... but hey, that dub was made in the bad old days when the industry was still getting a feel for accurate dubbing, and simultaneous releases were practically unheard-of. We've come a long way. The subtitle quality on Macross Delta is consistently pretty excellent, and hopefully that will continue with future Macross Blu-ray releases. (There was a panel about that at SDCon, though unfortunately I was preoccupied and missed most of it. The gist I got from the last ten minutes or so is that they've got a foot in the door now, so convincing The Powers That Be to include subs on future official releases will be at least marginally easier.) Started strong, failed to seal the deal in the second half... pretty much the standard take on the series. That's why it draws a lot less vitriol than other controversial Macross titles... and we can at least rest reasonably assured it will be a "lessons learned" situation in the next series. ... there's some quality irony there for those who were paying attention. You're making frequent, unprompted complaints about how upset you are over the the frequent, unprompted complaints about the Macross Delta series. Yes, there's a difference, but not much of one. The former is "I didn't like the show because of the following reasons" and the latter is "of the things I didn't like about the show, this is not one of them". Both are contextually appropriate, the former is a discussion of the show on its own merits or lack thereof, and the discussion of merchandising for the show would naturally lead to whether or not the group intends to buy the item and their motivations for deciding one way or the other. (Besides, if a person who doesn't like the show feels that the quality of the merchandise is strong enough to merit their attention, backhanded praise, and purchase... that's more a statement to the effect of "this is the part of the show that works for me".) You are literally saying "unless I feel your complaint is contextually appropriate, it shouldn't be posted". Now seriously, stop trying to derail the thread with this.

Less than you'd think, really... Freyja was only experiencing that accelerated aging because she was burning up her rune singing fold songs at full blast to combat the Song of the Wind and Var syndrome. Now that the conflict's over, she's not going to continue deteriorating the way Heinz was, since that was caused by over-using his runes to cause and control Var syndrome. With the Star Shrine destroyed, there really isn't a lot more the ruins can do besides maybe open fold gates to connect the worlds of the Brisingr cluster. It'd solve Windermere IV's issues with its interstellar commerce, but too little too late since they've alienated literally everybody. You can't exactly send gift baskets to an entire globular cluster saying "Sorry for the mind control and all of the oppressive xenophobic totalitarianism"... and even if they could, after all that who's going to trust a fruit basket from Windermere? Lady M's identity will never be revealed because she hasn't got one. No, really. According to the interview they did in Newtype about a year ago, they never decided on an identity for her as that mysterious nature is key to the character. She wouldn't be an existing character anyway, there's nobody in the existing setting who could fit the few things said about her. Mikumo's origin is explained in-series, she's a cloned human who was modified with the genetic information found in the ruins on Windermere IV. Who she's a clone of (if anyone) is the only thing that's left unexplained. I privately suspect Mikumo Guynemer of Walkure is a clone of the another, much older Mikumo Guynemer alias Lady M. The final few episodes of Macross Delta pretty comprehensively declawed Windermere IV and the Kingdom of the Wind's Aerial Knights. Thanks to his own overwhelming naivete, King Heinz is an invalid confined to bed because all that abuse of his runes on the Song of the Wind has him quite permanently at death's door and unable to continue capitalizing on weaponized Var syndrome. A good number of the Aerial Knights and half their aces are dead including their commander (Roid) and top ace (Keith). The Star Shrine was damaged and they lost control of Mikumo. To put the metaphorical cherry on it, the corporation that was providing all of their technical assistance and military hardware bailed on them so their supply chain is effectively cut off too. Edit: ... and the Aerial Knights aren't likely to renew the war on their own either, considering two of the three remaining aces are Walkure fans and the third is a closeted Walkure fan. Why the New UN Spacy bombed Carlyle on Windermere was explained in the series (Hayate's dad did it by accident, he wasn't following orders), and Roid's little psychotic break is also explained in the series (he's got issues with his species' very limited lifespan and a misplaced belief in manifest destiny). We're denied the closure of Windermere realizing its misdeeds and burying the hatchet the way so many other Macross antagonists have done, but beyond that the story's pretty much settled. Now that is a fair point. If nothing else, they need to keep the merchandising going so that Bandai and company can capitalize on the license they paid good money for. As a Macross II fan, all I can say to this is "butch up, buttercup". What little flak Macross Delta gets is peanuts compared to what Macross II and Macross 7 fans have been putting up with for decades. The whole point of discussing a series is to share opinions of it, and people are under no obligation to censor their opinions just because you don't agree with them. (Provided that they're expressing their discontent in a civil fashion.)

Y'know what, I'm now going to bet that the Windermerean dialog is all rendered in Pokemon-speak, with them saying nothing but "wind" and "rune".

The square root of bugger-all. It'd just mean someone else would be suing them for their criminal enterprise besides Harmony Gold USA. They never had a legitimate license to those designs and they never will.

At this juncture, I would like to congratulate Titan Comics on managing to produce something so awful that it actually makes me look back fondly at Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. I'd like to, but frankly as far as I'm concerned that should be punishable with a hard-labor-for-life sentence.

In stock at CDJapan, about $21.95 US. Just search for "Macross II" in the ALL CD category and it should be results 3 and 4 (marked as priced-down reissues).

Tip of the iceberg, old chum... the more you contemplate Mikumo, the wronger Xaos and Lady M get. On top of recklessly altering1 a human clone2 with genetic code obtained from Protoculture ruins either with or without foreknowledge of what those genetic codes were for3 and then throwing that clone into the career of a fanservice-heavy idol singer despite equipping her with only minimal social awareness and education4 where she could be captured by a known hostile power5 and mind-controlled6 to operate an ancient Protoculture system that could potentially enslave the entire galaxy and cause billions of deaths7 while also actively interfering in the New UN Forces' ability to counter said threat at every opportunity8 is so irresponsible and dangerous it really ought to result in the death penalty several times over. Definitely not Minmay, but I think Lady M had better go into hiding before she ends up in the dock for war crimes. 1. Safe bet that's illegal. 2. Considering the New UN Government had suspended human cloning decades earlier for health reasons, this is probably illegal. 3. Dangerously irresponsible either way. 4. Once you know she's only 3 years old with minimal education and socialization created and owned by Xaos, this starts to feel like they're cutting a dash between exploitation of a minor, slavery, and human trafficking. Safe bet they also forged identity documents for Mikumo to make her appear to be a legitimate normal citizen. 5. They KNEW Windermere IV had the key to the Star Shrine long before they made Mikumo, which makes creating Mikumo and stationing her in the Brisingr globular cluster akin to setting up a storage facility for h-bombs in the Korean DMZ. 6. They studied the same shrines that Roid did on Windermere IV, so they KNEW what could happen. 7. They risked the lives and freedom of EVERY SENTIENT BEING IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY with this ill-advised idiot move. 8. How many thousands of people died on Ragna alone because Lady M delayed the evacuation of Barette City and forced the NUNS to detonate a reaction warhead to prevent the ruins from falling into Windermere's hands?

No such luck, I'm afraid... it would've even made more sense if they'd pulled a Super Hornet and called it, say, the VF-17E/F or some such designation along those lines. I actually like it a bit better than the regular VF-17. (Unfortunately the speculated real-world designation for the F-117 is already taken, it was believed the Nighthawk would be F-19 initially.) To be frank, that the VF-27 is still officially considered YF-27 by the New UN Government in 2059 is one of those tidbits that starts with "technically [...]". All the artbooks, magazine articles, model kits, toys, etc. call it the VF-27 anyway, and so do the titles which are set after Macross Frontier, like Mei Leeron's VF-27 in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy or the VF-27 owned by the head of Zelgar Heavy Industries in Macross E. (It's possible that General Galaxy, via Macross Galaxy, was forced to come clean with the spec after the VF-27's existence became public knowledge, and probably suffered some kind of sanctions or penalty for concealing it like that.)

Sort of... but not quite in the same way. The "VF-171" designation is presumably a furthering of the in-joke reference to its inspiration, the F-117A Nighthawk, which also had an aberrant/non-systemic designation that was itself an in-joke. (The 117 was a generic radio call used for aircraft that the 4477th test squadron were flying - typically captured enemy aircraft - that they didn't want to publicly identify.) It may also be a reference to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which is actually a different aircraft entirely from the F/A-18 and was intentionally set down as F/A-18E/F to sneak the acquisitions past congress who, it was felt, wouldn't pony up for a new aircraft so it was sent down for approvals as though it were an upgrade to the existing F/A-18... which is also a non-systemic designation. It hasn't happened often, but the Macross universe has at least been consistent about treating new aircraft derived from existing aircraft directly with wild number jumps like that. The jumbo-ized VF-1 Valkyrie got designated VF-3000 despite technically being a contemporary of the VF-4. Galaxy Fleet did it backwards, though... their fighter was a production aircraft, but because they never disclosed the existence of the production spec to the New UN Government it's officially considered to still be a YF even though it's mass-produced. But can you do it with reverb? It's more effective with reverb. Not necessarily meaningless, mind you... your logistical support just needs to worry about refueling once every other fortnight, not once after every hour-long sortie. (Available data for the VF-1 Valkyrie in atmosphere puts its continuous operating time at 29 days 4 hours on a full fuel load, and somewhere between 6 1/2 and 10 minutes in space at full thrust.) Still, given the sizes concerned here (and now that I'm home and can compare like to like, I've got two models in the same scale to look at) it seems a safe bet that you could fit the entire engine nacelle + conformal tank from the VF-1 into the nacelle of the Sv-51 and have room left over.

There are a few structures on the Sv-51 that look like verniers, but not the traditional thrust vectoring ring-type Stonewell/Bellcom loves so much... Maybe so, but we're dealing with such a large airframe that it's unlikely that would be enough to offset the gains from no longer needing to carry a few thousand gallons of jet fuel. The efficiency of thermonuclear reaction turbines is such that a VF can get by for weeks on less fuel than a single modern fighter's drop tank contains. You could handily fit a VF-1 in the space occupied by the Sv-51's engine nacelles alone, and that argues strongly for it having the greater capacity. (From assorted sources incl. Master File, the VF-1's fuel consumption rate in atmosphere is just a hair over 1.007L/hr. IIRC, in the Master File books the verniers are sharing at least some of their fuel demand with the main tanks.) Granted, but the Sv-51 (and Sv-52?) has a lot more wing area to play with and as a result larger control surfaces, as well as a multi-axis thrust-vectoring nozzle instead of a two-dimensional one, which should offset the difference nicely. The movable wing, which could be coupled with a wingtip roll-control thruster like the VF-1's, would potentially offer greater precision of control than what the VF-1 can bring to the party. There's nothing stopping them from putting conformal tanks on a Sv-51 or Sv-52, the wing tanks are a matter of expediency for the submarine launch environment since the fighters had to be stored nose-up with the wings folded. (The conformal tanks on the VF-1 had an ulterior motive... expanding the coolant stores for the thermonuclear reactor in space operations.) Not really the New UN Spacy's doing in this case, like I've indicated before the YF-30's designation was a deliberate attempt by the SMS Uroboros office to "game the system" and avoid disclosing the existence and capabilities of the fold dimensional resonance system. By classifying it as a late development prototype (YF) for that was stil being evaluated, they were able to avoid having to disclose the specifications of all of its equipment to the New UN Government. If they'd classified it as an experimental fighter (a VF-X), the Experimental classification would have resulted in drawing government and military scrutiny to a project that Mr. Bilra went to almost comical extremes to keep secret. After deliberately establishing an overfunded, undermanned SMS presence on one of the galaxy's most remote and inaccessible worlds in a bid to keep the project as secret as possible within the confines of galactic law. Filing for a VF-X designation after doing all that would've rather defeated the point, being tantamount to advertising that they were working on something unique and special that would practically demand military or government oversight. This is an era of megacorporations that often skirt the law or believe themselves to be above it... and remember, this was not only Richard Bilra's personal passion, it was something with enormous potential to expand his company's control of interstellar shipping into a virtual monopoly. "Reality ensues" in that the New UN Forces are no better at keeping secrets than modern militaries are... which is to say they're absolutely bloody terrible at it.

Considering the compressed format, unlikely but not completely out of the question... it'd be a neater conclusion to the story if the Kingdom of the Wind's forces got their comeuppance instead of engaging in a brief bout of fratricide and then going home.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely we'll see the VF-24 anytime soon since it is rather uber and used principally by the federal New UN Forces, who seem to be rather averse to poking their oars into these small regional conflicts... The VF-31 would be the only 5th Generation VF in the New UN Forces inventory that doesn't have a direct connection to the YF-24 in its development... in the sense that if you drew a geneological "family tree" of VFs it would be the only one separated from the YF-24 by more than one step since the VF-31 is a heavily modified and economized YF-30. Instead of being directly derivative of the YF-24, it's a derivative of a derivative of the YF-24. Essentially, instead of YF-24 -> Prototype -> Final as in the case of the VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30, it'd be: YF-24 & YF-29 -> YF-30 -> YF-31 -> VF-31. Well, we have... but in Master File. SMS Uroboros was using the YF designation as a way to game the law requiring them to disclose the specifications for the fold dimensional resonance system. Under the YF classification, it was considered to still be a prototype under active development, which exempted them from having to disclose the complete specs (presumably because a prototype would be expected to still have its specs changing reasonably often). Since Richard Bilra was using the Uroboros branch as his own private lab to test all manner of ways to break through fold faults, which would be an enormous boon to his business if he could find one that he can exploit on a large scale, he naturally wanted to keep it somewhat secret and thus gamed the system to avoid disclosing the new technologies SMS had developed for as long as possible.

... I suppose so, yes. I thought my pets were badly behaved... All we know of the Earth/Federal New UN Forces' 5th Generation fighter - presumed to be designated VF-24 - is that the YF-24 program was successfully revived by Shinsei Industry in 2055 as the YF-24 Evolution and that the final prototype was approved for adoption and mass production by the New UN Forces in 2057. Once the Federal New UN Forces decided on adopting the YF-24 Evolution as their next main fighter, a redacted version of the specifications were shared via the Galaxy Network to the various New UN Government members and swiftly became the basis for all other 5th Generation VFs including the VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30.1 Indications are that it is uber as all get-out, and that the only emigrant-produced fighter able to rival it for performance is the YF-29[A] Durandal.2 The prototype is known to have beat a mixed unit of 12 VF-19s and VF-22s supported by 6 air-to-air specification QF-4000s singlehandedly in testing. 1. The VF-31 Kairos and Sv-262 Draken III are the only 5th Generation designs not known to be directly descended from the YF-24 Evolution spec. It's unknown what the Sv-262's relation to the other 5th Gen designs is, and the VF-31 is indirectly descended from the YF-24 given that it's an economized YF-30, which directly descended from the YF-24 and YF-29. 2. The YF-29B Percival doesn't count, because it's an improved YF-29 produced for the federal New UN Spacy Special Forces unit Havamal and as a result counts as a federal forces VF.

I remember the Macross Chronicle coverage of the Octos destroid says that manufacturing was resumed under UN Government control, but I do recall a few mentions of the Sv-51 being allegedly used during the First Space War. Magdalena Zielonaska in Macross the Ride claims that her Sv-52γ Oryol was (pre-modification) a Sv-51 which her grandfather had flown in the First Space War. There was also that Variable Fighter Experimental Requirements Review column in Character Model magazine back a little bit after Macross Zero had ended (Spring 2004 issue, IIRC) which was a featurette about the UN Government using captured/surrendered Sv-51s for competitive benchmarking purposes. Probably thinking of the above-mentioned VFERR article in Character Model then? There are a few factoids that would let us make educated guesses. We know there are fuel lines throughout the wings, so it's fairly logical there would be tanks there too, joined by flexible pipe segments to accommodate the bending of the wing. Assuming the Sv-51 was designed to be retrofitted for space use with thermonuclear engines, there are likely larger tanks inside the engine nacelles, since thermonuclear engines use fuel as coolant as well during space operations. To draw on Master File, as long as the Sv-51 has more than 5,400L of internal fuel capacity, it's officially one-up on the VF-1, and given its size that doesn't seem unreasonable at all given that we're talking an aircraft that is substantially larger and noted to be roomy enough that it can easily be retrofitted with equipment designed for the VF-17.

Simply, with the exception of the VF-0 and Sv-51 that needed to be larger for practical development reasons, the early VFs were developed around the assumption of having to fight alien infantry who were projected to be ~10m tall based on examination of the SDF-1 Macross's interior spaces. It only became apparent that the alien forces also used mecha once the first battle of the First Space War broke out and humanity encountered the Regult for the first time. By that point, the 1st Generation and early 2nd Generation designs were set and well into development, so the assumption didn't start getting properly corrected until the 3rd Generation. Dian Cecht, or rather Dian Cécht, is an Irish/Celtic deity from pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland. He's a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the god of healing. Not sure why they would name a defense contractor for a god of healing, unless the specialization in combat robots is a reference to one of Dian Cécht's most famous feats, providing King Nuada with an artificial arm of silver that could function as a normal arm.

Yeah, that's the one detail about the Sv-52 that is presented consistently across all sources... that the Sv-52 was supposed to be an upgrade to the Sv-51 that included thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. It's not even clear if any Sv-52s were actually built, due to the Alliance folding shortly after the Sv-51s were first put into practical combat service. Macross the Ride kind of comes across in two minds about it, asserting that some units may have survived the First Space War in underground bunkers in Eastern Europe but then contradicting it by saying that Magdalena Zielonaska's Sv-52 is actually a heavily modified Sv-51. Other sources suggest the Sv-52 was never completed before the Alliance disbanded. Master File took both views with a middle-of-the-road approach to the question, asserting that the Alliance did begin construction of the first lot of Sv-52s but had to stop because they were unable to secure key components including the all-important thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and the incomplete airframes were retrofitted back to Sv-51 specification using available hardware. I disagree. Presuming the Sv-52 is using a mostly unmodified Sv-51 airframe, the sheer amount of space in the substantially larger airframe of the Sv-52 should enable it to carry a substantial amount of fuel. The Sv-51's problem is that, for the internal volume it has, it wasn't enough to provide a long operating time when the fighter's engines were burning jet fuel. Likewise, the VF-1's issues with a limited onboard fuel capacity stemmed from its size being deliberately constrained to a battroid mode that was approximately the size of a Zentradi. The Sv-51 is so much larger than a VF-1 that it should have no problems accommodating enough internal fuel to match or exceed the capacity of a VF-1 Super Valkyrie using just its internal tanks. After all, we're talking about a plane that is quite literally twice the size of the VF-1. Y'never know... there are some books that have shown the VF-1 using FAST packs in atmosphere... and a few games as well. The amount of thrust to get airborne is there, but it'd handle like a cow in a supermarket trolley. Probably little different from the ones the Sv-51 had... just equipped with thermonuclear reaction turbine engines or rockets rather than conventional turbines. The Sv-51's got more underwing pylon stations, so it shouldn't need as much modular armament mounted in boosters. They're related in a VERY indirect, roundabout fashion... but one that contains absolutely no spoilers. The account we've had of the connection indicates that the team that developed the Sv-154 and Sv-262 was founded by one of the Sv-51's lead developers (Alexei Kurakin) who wasn't really all that invested in the Anti-Unification Alliance's goals and had defected back to the UN Government once the Alliance officially folded. He was taken on by Stonewell/Bellcom and subsequently attached to the VF-X-4 program during its space trials on the moon. He and his Stonewell/Bellcom team survived the First Space War's end by being on the moon, and he later became one of the co-founders of General Galaxy. During his stint as one of the heads of GG's development staff, he used his authority to create a special development team called the SV Works that was focused on VF vs VF combat as a core design concept (SV standing for Slayer Valkyrie or Slayer of Valkyries). After he died, the SV Works team didn't fold, and was later sold off to the Epsilon Foundation subsidiary Dian Cecht, who was providing things like ships and fighters to a number of governments and organizations including Windermere IV's government. So, basically, the only real connection to the Sv-51 is the design team that produced the Sv-154 and Sv-262 was founded by one of the developers of the Sv-51. Anti-government sentiment has basically nothing to do with it, since the SV Works team was founded by a developer who defected to the UN Government and who did most of his work for the UN Government. Windermere IV's Kingdom of the Wind purchased the Sv-154 Svard while it was still very much a member of the New UN Government. It kept the Sv- designation because the design is not one that was adopted by the New UN Forces in any capacity. Windermere IV's local NUNS garrison used the VF-171 and VF-22, and the Aerial Knights were sort of a stand-alone formation retained out of tradition and a sense of national pride, and operated in concert with the New UN Forces before the war of secession in 2060.

It does appear to be a distinct class of ship, and the one frame of reference for it that keeps cropping up is that its height is roughly equal to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (~830m). That would make it somewhere in the vicinity of 1/2 of a Macross's size.

In a word, "you said it". With the largest (command type) Zentradi being around 13m tall, an 18m+ tall battroid isn't going to fit gracefully (or at all) into a stolen uniform the way the ~13m tall VF-1 battroid did.

It's hard to say, since there is no official or useful information available about the actual Sv-52... to the extent that we can't say with any certainty that one was even built in the official chronology. Macross the Ride's Sv-52 is not an actual Sv-52, it's an imitation of one that is (at least according to its owner) an extensively modified and modernized Sv-51 that belonged to her grandfather. The Variable Fighter Master File coverage alleges that the Sv-52 was never completed, and that the partially complete Sv-5ss got diverted into immediate service after being retrofitted for conventional turbofan jet engines as the Sv-51Ω. I would expect that the fact that the battroid is over 18m tall would've been a significantly more serious problem with attempting to mug a Zentradi soldier for his clothes and disguise the battroid with them.