Briareos9

With the given question at this point and time, Abrams. While the Leopard is a good tank it's a medium tank, not a MBT. The Russian tanks are also and designed around a doctrine that emphasizes heavy artillery killing things.

Does anyone other then the US have an operational, deployed (not tech demons and most certainly not sketches) fighter with internal carriage? Does it help with stealth, yes but that's not even half the story. All underwing stores add drag and mess with the handling of the aircraft, which is part of why those big war loads are never actually used. A clean bird has a big advantage over one that isn't in handling characteristics.

It's a Go Nagai title. Do you really need to know more then that?

No Zentradi, huh? Politician 1: Hey do we really need to pay 5x as much for it turn into a mech? Politician 2: I want that money for my social programs. [if the rule of thumb is twice as much with half the payload merely to have VTOL capability, five times the cost for the entire thing to transform isn't unreasonable especially with development, initial, and O&M costs all tallied up.] The VFs become Fs, the designs would actually begin following an efficient use of resources and they'd be better in the long run for it.

I'd hate to be the Zentreadi facing a Micronian Engineering division making full use of artillery, traps, and everyone's favorite: explosives. They can have their big steel coffins.

Multi-mission capability, which is a known staple of the Destroyer class? A "battleship" like the Thuverl Salan isn't that much bigger at 2000 meters vs 1500 meters long relatively speaking. They probably could have just dubbed the things cruisers if they wanted, like certain destroyers in the US Navy. Of course, as they don't really work independtly of the fleet they're closer to the destroyer role. It class is like the DD(X)/DDG-1000 Zumwalt, what's the problem?

I'd be more concerned about where they're getting the materials to produce warheads/ammo and fuel/proppelant for the same. Especially given the considerable number of sorties before resupply. Given all the space that was empty and devoted to storing junk, you'd think the Macross would be suffering from the Ent-B "Tuesday problem." (Tractor beam: It'll be installed on Tuesday; Photon Torpedoes: Tuesday; Medical crew: You guessed it, Tuesday)

Because the F-15 is a AF jet, and they're de facto Navy so they're using the world dominator F-14 which was designed to counter a threat that never existed and neutralized the Backfire swarms? The F-14 is still not exactly matched in its design role. Kawamori doesn't exactly have a crystal ball, does he now?

Guld was Kawamori's whipping boy in M+. Something he felt guilty enough about to at least try to be halfway fair to when he made the movie, by extending the combat scene. Take away Guld and the plot contrivances, and what's Isamu? A prideful, reckless, and irresponsible fighter jock, that has no problem sleeping around. Not to mention an anarchist in spirit that STOLE EXPERIMENTAL MILITARY HARDWARE, breached the defenses of the capital and local planet's security system, caused ridiculous levels of property damage, and all to go after a fighter he never had a chance in hell of taking out anyway. Admit it, if it had actually been gunning for Isamu seriously he'd have been gone in the first few straffing runs, lucky for him Apple was effectively behind the stick and had other plans. What would happen if we took away the extra baggage of rapist, etc., that got tagged on and had Guld be more of a character, who happens to be on the design staff as well? Isamu needed Guld there to not look like pond scum. So naturally Kawamori goes overboard in making Guld look bad, be evil for no good reason, and generally working as a contrast to make the true slimeball look good. That's how I see it. Of course, he didn't just rig the characters, he rigged the hardware. Look at the tech sheets, notice something very important missing from the YF-21's capabilities? That's right, no tactical/strategic payloads just minimissiles. Not that the YF-19 is really that much better without violating conservation of volume. As a matter of fact, a lot of things stretch SoD with that plane. In some ways I suspect he didn't like the fact 5th gen planes, beat out gen 4 and 4.5. So in a lot of respects this was his rant against them, and advancing technology. A rant that ends up being a lot less coherent then the competition. You have to go out on a limb to even make the computer's actions make sense. The given rationale is worse then Batman Beyond's fear gas that somehow doesn't make it's victim cower in fear but act more like zombies when used widescale. Of course, he made the mistake of having maneuverability being about equal to the YF-19, and the YF-21 once it dropped mecha parts being able to keep up with the X-9. Active stealth technology already exists to a certain degree and is a complementary technology to the RAM and LO construction components. It is however just part of a whole. So seems as how it's already top of the game, and he actually had the UN Spacy airforce willing to shut down Project Super Nova in favor of a nontransformable aircraft he kind of shot himself in the foot for those who actually work with visuals. The YF-21 was clearly superior, without contrivances, and they could have slashed production costs and greatly increased capacity by dropping the entire mecha component of the design. Something that given it can eject the mecha parts in a tactical situation, isn't that big a deal for that design. I agree with DeathHammer, on his suggestion of making it better. Have maybe 4 to 5 companies putting forward planes of various types and optimizations for the competition, with a character driven story, and you could probably make a downright decent short series out of it. Not that I believe they could or would do so.

I seem to remeber the initial cost was around 7 mil, this site indicates in 98 dollars it's 9.8 mil. A Western 4/5th gen supersonic jet fly away cost is high enough you can practically buy half a squadron of A-10s for the price of one jet. Throw in the distributed R&D and tooling costs, and you're pretty much full squadron for the price of one pointy nose. All the fancy electronics are what drives costs mainly. Price is and never will be comparable plane to plane.There is however one not so minor problem, Fairchild folded out of existence a while ago. That leaves things in a akward position to actually start new production line, and the USAF has never been that fond of the bastard child that is the A-10. As far as I'm concerned anyone claiming a supersonic jet can simply replace the Warthog and by entension Spectre/Spooky gunships, effectively because CAS and the Mark 1 eyeball are no longer needed is pushing it.

Not wanting to read through 20 pages to check if someone else already pointed it out, but you do realize the A-10 is not being replaced by the F-35 but upgraded and redesignated A-10C, right? The snub nose isn't leaving service for a long time yet.

In reality (translation: if it didn't have high grade character shielding) that depends on several factors. From a design standpoint: -Due to smaller crewmen it can at least theoretically carry more fighters. Of course, I've never seen the numbers on the equivalent Zentradi ship. -When the main gun actually works it can be quite devestating to the aging unshielded Zentradi vessels. Of course this requires them to be forced by character shields to group close together in an airless void with more then enough room to spread out and still cover each other. -The secondary batteries, when they work, are about the same as the main gun with a full salvo. The problem is they're only used once. Whether this is indicitive of them being drooling idiots or not is up to you. -The Daedalus maneuver is just flat out stupid, without character shielding making up for its deficiencies. Even in series Kamjin showed the fools part of why using Age of the Galley naval tactics was a bad idea. No enemy ship should ever be allowed that close to your vessel. -It's barrier systems give it enhanced survivability. Although mere battle pods showed that ability to take her out of action if they would have just pressed the attack. -Pre-rebuild the Macross has no fold drives, which makes it vulnerable with proper tactics to a ship that does. Due to the secondary batteries basically being off-line a task force on Zentradi vessels of equivalent tonnage/volume would have been able to take it apart if used intelligently. The Zentradi never were particularly intelligent though.

Anyone who has watched Macross Plus should remember this scene. The YF-21 prototype cuts out in mid fight with drones, and goes into freefall, but Guld couldn't reach the controls. The things is he's in freefall, thus he's falling at basically the same rate gravities pulling, so you'd think if anything he'd be effectively weightless. So is there a good reason Guld couldn't reach the controls?

There are two reason to quote JB0. Either you're wanting to comment on something someone said, that would otherwise be unclear. That doesn't apply here as your post is literally right after mine. The second is to respond to some particular thing the person said. You responded to a comment about marketing claims verse actual use by the military in combat in relation to use of the lasers out of fighter mode, with commentary about gunpods and the ability of the secondary armament to compensate. The fact you didn't recant that, clearly means such was your intention. Strawman fallacy: Not to mention basically blowing up because someone dared to question you even in a neutral tone devoid of meaningful accusation, is not professional. Or to use your phrasing it's "looking for a way to take offense." *sigh*

You're quoting me, but you're talking along a very different vector and in so doing basically conducting a strawman.

Take the YF-21: -Strip out all the transformation equipment, ie redesign it into a pure fixed wing fighter. -Mount the most powerful engines I can get away with now that they don't have to deal with being linearly squashed in transformation, and I have extra internal space. -See about upgrading the guns now that I don't need to accomodate the transformation gear, and thus have more space for them. -Use extra empty space to compensate for needed extra fuel, and to expand missile bays. -Add the option of external hardpoint pylons for missions where stealth is a minor issue in relation to payload. -Fix the BDI system, Guld was obviously honking mad when he was beating the **** out of Isamu over Earth and it didn't cut out or malfunction. It even stayed fully functional when he was literally coming apart so that technology can't be so fundamentally flawed it can't be deployed as an option for those who can take advantage of it. Then proceed to utterly dominate Project Supernova. For those who say, "we have to have a tranformable fighter" I point to the fact the Ghost was a fixed wing nontransformable vehicle, and they were more then happy to ditch the AVFs for that. Note also the YF-21 is already setup for STOVL without needing the transformation equipment. Read the thing about the slits in Gerwalk mode if you don't want to take my word on it. Plus without the transformation gear it'll be sturdier and have a lighter dry weight.

Wait... using machine guns for crowd dispersal? Getting totalitarian squash the plebian vibes, are we? Well if they're not actually used in actual combat out of fighter mode, then whether they can is more of a simple intellectual exercise. As in, it's in the sales brochure, with all the other claims generated by the hard work of the marketing division to try to make their product look good. It's usually best not to take the effective marketing brochure too seriously with RL hardware, and the same would appear to apply here.

Well... to maintain peace keeping ratios I'm going to need over 60 million troops with supporting personnel, armor, etc. ignoring any lost on the way in. That's if they actually surrender "peacefully." To hold a planet that doesn't want to be held will require significantly more people on the ground. As you're attacking from space, nukes and anything radioactive or particularly fancy is rather pointless. Dropping a large enough rock will do just fine, and be probably be easier to clean up after. Biological agents can be used to kill a decent amount of people, but in order to actually use them you'd already have to have a presence on the ground. Not to mention they can back fire on you all to easily, and promote levels of collatoral damage which may be unacceptiable. Chemical agents ditto, although it's harder to affect a wider area. Dropping BC agents from a re-entry vehicle seems of questionable value as there is almost no way they can't catch on and counter or minimize the effects. If possible it's probably best to insert appropriately sized asteroids to hit key military targets. This would be conducted while aerospace fighters enter their airspace clearing the way for the deployment of ground forces to seize control. One of the big questions has to be though, why bother? You can obtain the resources you need from asteroids and stuff you don't have to fight for, you can build robots and industrial machinary to do the work of slaves, and with the proper setup you can grow stuff in space. Unless you can actually seize a planet intact enough to take advantage of perhaps its industrial base, what is the point? To do that you either are going to have to invest considerable resources to nail the planet down, or be exceedingly clever with what amounts to political maneuvering.

Actually, the Ghost was pushing itself so hard at the end, in the movie at least, you see its exterior and the YF-21's are taking damage from just the maneuvers. Not enough for structural collapse, but they were pulling maneuvers which we're ripping the planes apart. So clearly the safety systems were off on both planes, they were operating purely in the region of what they were capable of, not what was safe to do. Considering just how utterly the YF-21 was mocking swarms of their new missiles in the safe limits there wasn't exactly anything he could use to hit it without having to match the squirmy thing maneuver for maneuver. In Macross Plus the BCS/BDI only really screwed up once, ignoring crashing the VF-11 due to sensitivity, and that scene had much weirdness to it. It just happening to have a friendly correspond with where a target he was aiming at, which may have been a big factor. Guld did seem to be quite clearly angry whe he was kicking Isamu's butt on Earth, did he not?

Well running the data from the Compendium UN Spacy General Fighter: A standard VF-11 is getting 6.33G thrust-to-mass Varuata General Fighter: Elgerzone standard is getting: 8.4G thrust to mass Elgerzone Commander: 8.33G thrust to mass Varuata Attack Craft: Panzerzorene: 7.10G thrust to mass Varuata Fighter-bomber: Saubergeran: 9.29G thrust to mass (ignoring Heavy battloid thrusters?) Take into account they also have new weapons, a relatively well set up diversified fleet, whose main failing is just a lack of a decent air/space superiority fighter to complement their more attack oriented craft and I can see why they had an advantage. Really the only thing wrong with their setup I can see from the stats, is no real good air/space superiority fighters, with a over-emphasis on heavier fighters that can do the air/space superiority role. Some equivalent of either the X-9 (they've had the basic tech since the original with the QF-3000E Ghost so it's not like it's new), or lighter VF like the VF-11 or VF-9 could have easily fit in that role. Still they basically can out accelerate the VF-11 while being designed to carry significantly more. It's like Dyson said, the VF-11 is an antique. Makes you wonder why they took so long to start going for a new fighter. Do I even want to know why the Varuata didn't just steamroll a colony fleet, given they have the barrier systems, reaction missiles, decent ships, and serious attack craft?

You were the one who asked why can't the VF-22 have this or that which Egan has noted from the creators is not possible and then continued it. And then you go on to tell "VF-19 advocates" to shut-up about things that were removed (however, FSWs were not removed so that's wrong). Of course, you keep jumping from YF to VF so I can't tell what you're talking about since you wanted this to be a VF to VF comparison. But if you don't think it's whining/fanboy-ism, then it's not. This is quite funny, spinster. No he said the engine pod space was different and my commentary was in response to when he brought it up, seems as how it has to do things like bend in the middle . You will note the order of posts. After his response it was more noting the consequences of a lot of the other modifications. He wasn't clearly saying one way or the other on the verniers even afterwards, either. What he did say related to the contract and resultant optimization, not physical limitations. I said it from the start, this is only making you look worse azrael, which is why I advised you cease and desist.

Okay, mister Loo I take it back, I just wish we didn't have so many misunderstandings in my discussion. I'm glad that's all they amounted to, sorry for the other, but I felt it was getting a little to unlikely in the screw ups like the 21 to 19 business. I've made what points I wanted to make already though. Really except for finishing up response comments I was done when you did the "dd" thing. What whining? That whining. Then there's all that business of if only the VF-22 had this or that from the VF-19, blah blah blah, whatever that was... Uh-huh, short: how dare he note it did that major engine jump and comment on it. Oh gee it's him going fan-boy all over the VF-22? Then noting that they both had HMM-6Js and the VF-19 went to HMM-7s. I called it, you didn't need to do it again. Then I point out if we're going to cut down on that speculation on what might of been the other which doesn't have to do with the mainline fighter under discussion anyway should go. Uh-huh, whining, riiiight. Please just tell me you weren't paying good attention and messed up so we can get on with our lives. I did the OP and with what question, azrael? Come on read it. You really think I was going fan boy on the VF-22, or just trying to point some things out?

Rushing, but: F-117 VF-17 The faceting generation you're talking about is all flat angles, on the VF-17 the flat angles don't seem to have anything to do with the stealth, look at it's nose. The B-2 stealth generation allows it to be more smooth like the VF-17's nose in fact is. No dice.

Wooo there partner. Calm down. Just because you think the VF-22 got short changed (which it didn't) doesn't mean you should go around, whining and bitching about it all throughout this thread. Egan is just relaying what has been said by the creators who wrote those specs. He's not advocating things, he's just telling us what the creators have said to him. Can't resist trying a sniping ad hominem can you? Whining, bitching? Where? I point out same boost would actually make it top the VF-19S in thrust to mass and we get this kind of slander? Fine I messed up on the manufacturers. I wasn't the only one to screw up though: If you actually look at the VF-17 you'll note it's no more faceted then a B-2. In relation to modifications on the YF-21 to VF-22, where I said messing with the arms wasn't indicated. Another distortion in response to a comment about FAST packs not interfering the internal weapon bays, to which I commented if they did it'd be a fatal flawed as that's the only place it carries other missiles.I could go on here. I went after you for indicating the VF-19 was a better bomb truck, and basically got dragged into this. Do both of you just enjoy warping other people's words to try to make you look good? In my experience that only makes you look worse, azrael I'd suggest you discontinue using such tactics. I'm not exactly impressed with Mr. Loo's sense of professionalism here, which made me doubt it was him as opposed to someone else just using the screen name. You can't change the visual material to fit what you want it to be, bud. The VF-19 advocates have carried on about the how great their canards and FSWs made them in comparison previous discussions, at worst this amounts to payback although not in intention. As per usual the ventral fins, tail stabilizers, and 3-D vectoring which were the major components we saw in use for maneuvering just get ignored. How many times could you spot those variable camber wings in use, and how many maneuvers, like the massed missile dodge, did we see where the wings were basically just locked? Plus ignoring the VF-22 strong points like survivability and redundancy, so you can pump it up on the VF-19. Plus let's not forget Guld was a company test pilot, Lieutenant Isamu was a blooded combat veteran flying ace. Little combat expierence difference there. Now if you were being honest with yourselves what you'd be doing was playing up the VF-19 series' lower mass, and extrapolating from there the desire for lighter with as powerful engines as possible that's sufficient for the role.

Oh yeah, in the movie edition version after Guld severs the limbs he starts firing at the Ghost with lasers. BUT... it's not possible because the laser weapons were housed in the arms of the YF-21 that had already been ejected from the body... He had one gunpod left, which fires the same thing, sort of. It's what he openned up with Isamu with. You'll note he only is firing from one side instead of both as usual. Unlike Isamu's shield which was clearly knocked away before the final missile swarm and apparently the gunpod given the view after of a clean bottom (where it was before), this isn't that big of a blooper. It sort of is as his leg storage bay covers weren't in evidence. Either his gun pod's firing blue tracers, with blue smoke, that seem to also function as the projectile of it's a energy gun. Personally I think it's a energy gun.