Nied

While we're on the subject of stealthy F-16 variants; has anyone ever seen this pic of an early Block 60 proposal that incorperates the wing from an F-22? Aparently it was abandoned as being too expensive to implement. Mighty cool though.

No LOAN nozzel this time? That would seem to fit with the low observable measures you've put into this one.

*smiles* Around 70-80% of the Australian population live in and around the 3 east coast state captials, so nuking Western Australia, apart from killing Perth, title holder for city furtherest away from any other city on Earth, doesn't do to harm Australia much as far as that image is concerned Cyc It's possible that that's where the Australian Grand Cannon (and it's surrounding military facilities) were being constructed.

The seat doesn't just stay in the nose it actually elevates up into the chest. Ditto with the YF/VF-19 the seat rotates and moves up into the chest of the mecha where there is more room.

Or at the very least a LOAN nozzel. Very cool.

That's why I put it in quotes in my first post there. I seriously doubt given how it shows up in two distinct shots that it really is an animation error. I would say it's a deliberate change just like Max's tail missiles (desinged by Ichiro Itano as Quel-Quallie killer), or the Orgus Valk.

Well in most VFs the the cockpit is actually moved deeper into the mecha (in the Valkyries case it's inside the chest), thus the cocpit is in a larger cavity than it's in while in fighter or GERWALK.

There are several pics of this "animation error" floating around on the net. The easiest to access is on the RObotech.com site in the YF-1R profile.

We see those in the last episode of M+. The landing light is mounted on the nose gear. Isamu uses it as a spot light to find Myung.

I had always figured they were some form of "headlights" similar to the high power lights on the shoulders of the VF-1.

But the very nature of drag is that the harder you push the harder it pushes back. If an aircraft tries to go faster it will just be hitting more air to slow it down, eventually there's no amount of thrust that could overcome the drag induced. That's why all aerospace research hasn't been just thrown into engine development, because like most things brute force doesn't take you very far.

Ah but a space shuttle is an aircraft designed to fly at high speeds within an atmosphere. It is shaped reletively aerodynamicaly and thus would imppose only a small amount of drag on the 747. A FAST pack is shaped like a very big box, it is in no way aerodynamic and thus would create an imense amount of drag.

There's also drag to consider. A Valkyrie with FAST packs attached would be about as aerodynamic as a barn door. Sure there would be added thrust from the boosters but as speed increases so does drag, and I doubt it would be long before the drag far outweighed the extra thrust of the FAST packs. I doubt a valk could get much past stall speed with FAST packs attached.

Actually modern anti tank weapons are quite effective at taking down even an M-1A2. Hell I fyou want to talk about anti-infantry weapons an M-1A2 has one .50cal machine gun, two 7.62mm machine guns and a pair of grenade launchers, it also has a turreted FLIR capable of looking anywhere the commander does, yet quite a few were still taken down by Iraqi forces using simple things like mortars and RPGs. While both the Tomohawk and the Spartan have a plethora of light weapons (though only the .50cals and the flamethrowers would be of much use the rest apears to be anti-armour weaponry), they have a limited field of fire. One might also wonder why the designers would mount anti-personel weaponry on the mecha in the first place if infantry were so minor a threat.

That's all fine theory, but where's your evidence? Obviously overtechnology provided enough of an advantage to warrant making a miniaturized LAW. And it's blatantly obivous that it allowed miniaturization of weapons on a scale unheard of before (micro missiles). I disagree with your premise. Destorids are much closer to a modern day tank than a VF (VFs are far too light for heavy assults). Micromissiles are already small enough to be carried by infantry all that's needed is a proper launcher. Kickback would be no more of an issue than it is with modern LAWs (that why they're open at both ends). Actually it only takes one. Most missiles are evaded which is why so many are launched (ups your hit propability). Of course in an urban or other enclosed environment even a VF would lose the maneuverability that allows it to avoid so many missiles.

Line art courtesy of the Robotech reference guide:

And in use:

Here it is again:

Here's my hand held micro missile launcher. Small enough to be carried as an emergency side arm in a VF too.

Actually Overtechnology has led to advances in the miniturization of weaponry. Just look at micro missiles. They pack more of a punch than modern missiles at a fraction of the size (and judging from how many most VFs can carry their wieght as well). Now just consider the type of infantry sized weapon you could create using that same technology (miniturization, an more powerful explosives). Hell it shouldn't be hard to turn the warheads found in any number of overtechnology powered weapons and put them in sachel form. those were not MP-5s this is an MP-5 This is what they had in Macross Plus I find it hard to beilieve that you couldn't apply overtechnology to infantry. I'd love to have a rifle made out of hypercarbons (light weight and strong), firing shells powered by an overtech charge (higher muzzle velocity), or even a hand held micro missile launcher (that's how you'd take down a VF).

THe Zentradi fleet was in a very high orbit, most likely geosynchronous. At that altitude even stuff shot directly at earth would just end up accelerating and entering a different orbit, rather than actually making planetfall. The explosions seen in Macross really don't look to be energetic enough to really change the trajectory of the debris enough to send many into the Earth. It would seem the main legacy of Space War one would be a very large cloud of debris, that while making navigation dificult, would probably pose little threat to the inhabitants below. If you want to talk reasons for an atmospheric cleanup, just think of how much radio active material there is in your average nuclear reactor, and then think of how most of the nuclear reactors in the world would have been turned into vapor by an orbital bombardment.

The same way infantry can take down a tank in modern days. Simply wait in a city with the proper weaponry and ambush ambush ambush. That's been the technique for taking out tanks since they were invented. I don't think putting them on legs would change much.

Remember that when you destroy a ship in orbit all you do is turn it from one larg object in orbit to many small objects in orbit. It's quite clear that the Zentradi ships were in quite a high orbit (possibly geosynchronous), so it would take quite a bit of energy to force any debris to hit the ground. As for crashed ships, those that we see seem to have made reletively soft landings (otherwise there would be huge craters surrounding them) so I doubt they kicked up much dust.

T he Israelis were the first to use a dorsal spine box for the avionics. It's since been incorperated into F-16s purchased by several other countries. The Confromal Fuel Tanks were developed entirely by Lockheed Martin in the US for the Block 60 F-16 proposal for the United Arab Emirates (that's the F-16 in your picture). They've since sold some to the Hellenic Air Force as well.

Hey, you got a better way to rebuild a species in a hurry? It makes perfect sense. And that DOES make sense? There were so many zentradi ships you couldn't see through the cloud. I'm suprised they weren't shooting EACH OTHER while bombarding the planet. The odds of any signifigant population of humans surviving were pretty slim. I know what the Compendium says... I don't think you're realizing how BIG the Earth actually is. The major population centers would surely be annihilated. But there's no reason for the Zentraedi to hit hardly anything in the middle of North Dakota or Siberia or North Korea, or the island of Maya, for example. Maybe the most major towns but outside of them? And sure we're talking about wiping out the majority of our population but EVERYTHING outside of the Grand Cannons? Nonsensical. If they were trying to exterminate, then biological weapons and/or the complete eradication of the surface is necessary (top kilometer), including oceans and all the uncounted little islands out there (Maya anyone?). But over FOUR million gigantic ships... Name four million cities, towns, villages plus collateral damage and humanity is near annihilated... The Grand Cannon did destroy a lot of them, but I doubt that it had took out more than 5% of all the nme ships. Bingo. They'd already SHOWN that a Zentradi fleet was capable of sterilizing a planet, reducing an Earth-type planet to something more along the lines of the moon. Sure some stuff lived, mainly in caves and the ocean, but most of the planet was reduced to a lunar landscape. Remember, what you see around the Grand Cannon after Hikaru rescues Misa is Middle-of-nowhere, Alaska. That used to be a nice thick blanket of snow before the attack, instead of a lunar landscape. And Alaska isn't very densely populated. It wouldn't have been a prime target(the Grand Cannon being undetected untill it fired). You're forgetting something. We do see a real statistic on how much of the surface got destroyed on Admiral Hayase's status screen in the Grand cannon. There are large areas that were in fact spared from destruction. As you can see much of the American breadbasket was spared (very good for reconstruction), as is much of eastern South America (most likely where Quamzim's found his gunboat), Eurasia has gotten pretty pasted though parts of Spain and Italy seem to have faired well, Central Africa seems OK, and almost half of Australia survived. Now given that this shot was taken right after the intial salvo, I don't think that much more damage was done. Remember right after this shot, they fire the Grand Cannon, and right after that the Macross and Vrlitwhai begin their counter attack, so most of the bombardment ships become otherwise occupied.