Seto Kaiba

So... who's up to watch Discovery finish stumbling into the unmarked shallow grave that's been open and waiting for it since season one? Kind of amazed it made it this far, considering Netflix tried to cancel it after seasons one and two and the season three course correction was one of the most poorly received story concepts in the franchise's history. It can't claim responsibility for all or even most of the red ink on Paramount's earnings calls since it came out, but it definitely put a huge dent in the franchise's bottom line.

It's always interesting to see what they come up with... though each in-universe historical account is blatantly tailored to give the subject matter Valkyrie a "hero moment" where it saves the day all on its own. The VF-0 Master File's account stands out mainly because it's told from the perspective of the guys who are jobbing to make the book's subject look awesome. Reading it, it's a secondhand description of a Romanian mercenary and SV-51 pilot experiencing an escalating series of "Oh cr*p" moments after the UN Forces seemingly illogical choice to use the normally short-ranged VF-0s in a long-distance raid turned out to be the first warning sign that the balance of power had irrevocably shifted in the UN Forces favor. Dakurd's story is definitely atypical... the Macross stories that depict the Anti-Unification Alliance remnants after the de facto end of the Unification Wars generally depict what's left of the Alliance forces as broken, bitter, and occasionally downright vengeful people. In a way, they're kind of the closest Macross has come to card carrying villains since they don't really have explored motives beyond "revenge" most of the time. In Macross Zero and in Master File, they're seemingly gambling on increasingly long odds in the hopes that ekeing out a win over the UN Forces will breathe fresh life into their cause no matter how costly or transitory it might prove to be. By the end of 2008 in Macross the First, the Alliance had lost the plot so thoroughly that the objective of their (suicide) attack on South Ataria island on Christmas was simply the mass death and destruction they could cause by blowing up South Ataria island with a thermonuclear reaction bomb. Compared to that, Dakurd is basically a punch-clock villain who's not really all that invested in the cause. He's a mercenary fighting because the Alliance are the only ones left who are hiring mercenaries, and he's stunned out of his complacency not by defeat but by a friendly enemy moment with the man whose fighter he'd just downed. It's actually surprising just how much survived the First Space War when you think about it. The Alliance's top VF engineer ended up working for Stonewell and Bellcom after giving up on the rebellion and he and parts of his design team would not only develop the VF-4, but go on to found General Galaxy. It's even implied that the remnants of the Alliance have something of a hand in the various revolts against the New UN Government that led to the Second Unification War.

Since I'm kinda bored waiting for my study to air out after the radon mitigation crew finished, I decided to revisit the subject of the SV-51's swansong from Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix. In hindsight, it's actually kind of weird that the book chose to randomly include Russian text in the titles of the two sections that talk about the SV-51 given that the SV-51 was only codeveloped by the Sukhoi Design Bureau and most of them (incl. the ones featured in this segment) weren't even built in Russia. They were manufactured in Romania, in Poland, and in eastern Germany. Master File's story of the SV-51's last stand starts where the Unification Wars officially ended... the de facto collapse of the Anti-Unification Alliance in 2007. Interestingly, it does not mention that the reason the Alliance collapsed in 2007 was because support for the Alliance evaporated in the wake of them destroying St. Petersburg with a thermonuclear reaction weapon. It just mentions that, by the end of 2007, the Anti-Unification Alliance had been reduced to a fragmented and increasingly unpopular resistance movement. It does mention that the Earth UN Government more or less declared an end to the Unification Wars on their own, and that guerilla conflicts continued in various places even after that declaration. The story is framed as an account from a former Romanian Air Force pilot-turned-mercenary who fought for the Anti-Unification Alliance in their final major offensive and later served in the Earth UN Forces during the First Space War named Kilis Dakurd. The account, referred to the Arad Papers, was recovered from the ruins of Alaska Base after the conclusion of the First Space War and details of the Arad Papers and the military operation they document (Operation Scoria) were later declassified and became reference in publication of the in-story Master File. Cpt. Dakurd belonged to a mercenary unit called Ansel, which possessed twelve Romanian-manufactured SV-51α's. They were specialists in infiltration attacks, reconnaissance-in-force, and air superiority operations that were mainly used to bully conventional fighter units of the UN Forces and mainly survived by shooting down surprised enemies before any heavyweight response could arrive. Operation Scoria was, well, not exactly the work of a tactical genius. Its objective was simple... launch a series of diversionary attacks around the world to draw the attention of the UN Forces and decapitate their chain of command by invading and capturing Alaska Base and the UN Forces Headquarters located there. The book's historical perspective makes this goal out to be... excessively optimistic. Not only was the Alliance probably underestimating Alaska Base's defenses, they were dramatically overestimating their own offensive power as well. The plan called for the Alliance to commit three of its six SV-51 units to the offensive, for a total of around 40 aircraft. However, according to Cpt. Dakurd's record, many of the aircraft slated to participate in the operation were nonfunctional, including four of his Ansel unit's twelve aircraft. The actual offensive only included about 20 SV-51s, supported by various Cold War-era garbage, and while they got the attention of the UN Forces their goal was figured out fairly quickly and a counteroffensive was launched to nip their plan in the bud. Lt. General Takashi Hayase approved a strategic plan for the counteroffensive composed by Col. Ichiro Yabuki, which involved deploying its own VF force to strike industrial areas supplying the Alliance and identified Alliance bases like Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy airport in Kamchatka. The force was composed of the new VF-0+ Phoenix Plus, a version of the VF-0 outfitted with the new FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine designed for the VF-1. On 12 October 2008, the UN Forces "Operation Yabuki" taskforce crossed into the Bering Sea and began the counterattack. At 0531 local time, the Alliance base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy reported a massed formation of indistinct radar returns in nearby airspace, indicative of active stealth-equipped aircraft and went immediately to alert status. Ansel's machines were to sortie and intercept the UN Forces advance. Cpt. Dakurd notes that he felt it odd that the VF-0, which like his own SV-51, was noted to have a very short operating range due to its limited internal fuel storage, was seemingly at the forefront of the operation. Visibility was poor, Dakurd's unit were stunned to hear that the vanguard unit of MiG-29s preceding them into the combat space while they were refueling were being shot down almost immediately after they engaged the VF-0 unit. The MiGs reported a follow-on force composed of 20 escorting fighters and 22 B-52 bombers. Dakurd's Ansel unit went into the engagement confident in their abilities and their belief that the SV-51 was at least slightly superior to the VF-0 in combat performance and expecting the engagement to be short as both sides would very quickly run out of fuel. Ansel's strategy was to exhaust the VF-0s and then pounce on them once their fuel supplies were low. This normally-sound judgement call would have a rather disastrous consequence. The VF-0s greeted the SV-51s of Ansel with medium-range missile strikes, though they were noted to be more of a deterrant than something expected to down any aircraft and were intercepted. Cpt. Dakurd noticed the VF-0s, which should already have been low on fuel, were also displaying abnormally powerful active stealth performance which was enough to compel Ansel to engage at short-range with infrared-guided micro-missiles. On the first pass, they noted that the VF-0s weren't equipped with Ghost boosters as an extended range option. Dakurd finally began to notice something was horribly wrong when he realized the VF-0s also lacked any kind of drop tanks and despite the long flight towards the Alliance base were still operating at near-ideal levels. Ansel's attempt to pincer the VF-0s from above and below fell apart as the VF-0 unit continued to climb at a speed thought impossible for a VF-0 without a Ghost booster, outpacing the SV-51s and evading incoming fire from the pursuing Alliance forces. The tally of impossible feats racked up by the VF-0 unit continued to rise as they evaded missiles with bursts of acceleration and tight turns or, more concerningly, intercepting missiles en masse using the coaxial laser cannons. As the dogfight continued, Dakurd's forces grew increasingly concerned that the VF-0 had improved considerably as they noticed its infrared profile was quite different and it seemingly had no issues operating even at the SV-51's atmospheric service limit. It was then that Dakurd's wingman was shot down, and he himself was forced to flee, jettisoning his boosters to reduce his aircraft's weight and improve acceleration. He had concluded, at that point, that the VF-0 had become an unknown monster aircraft... and he was now being chased by three of them. After returning to low altitude in a bid to rendzevous with friendly forces, Dakurd noticed large numbers of downed aircraft (that he would later learn were the remains of Ansel). With almost no fuel remaining, he engaged and shot down a VF-0 with his 12.7mm cannon and gunpod before he himself sustained several hits from a VF-0's gunpod. Rather than crash land ignobly, he decided to take at least one more enemy aircraft with him and promptly rammed the nearest VF-0. He lost his right wing in the collision and crashed in a nearby potato field. Relatively uninjured, Dakurd was pulled from the wreckage of his SV-51 by the very VF-0 pilot whose aircraft he had rammed... Major Albert Staker, one of the most veteran VF-0 pilots. Staker praised the stunned Dakurd's maneuver, though Dakurd couldn't bring himself to share Staker's cameraderie over their dogfight. He fled the area as a UN Forces rescue helicopter approached. With civilian assistance, Dakurd escaped south to Vladivostok by boat, where he met up with his surviving unit members. It was then, after comparing notes with the other survivors, that they realized the UN Forces had achieved a practical thermonuclear reaction engine and implemented it on the VF-0. It was a demoralizing realization, and without orders the SV-51 unit effectively disbanded The author speculates that Dakurd was so stunned by Staker's lack of animosity that it ultimately motivated his decision to travel to America and join the UN Forces some months later. In an oddly serendipitous twist, after joining the UN Forces and ironically being assigned to a VF-1 unit attached to Alaska Base, Cpt. Kilis Dakurd scored the last known UN Forces kill of an SV-51 in June 2009. While suppressing guerillas, Dakurd's unit discovered a dilapidated SV-51 operating as a radar control aircraft in the combat space. The aircraft was clearly in no shape for combat, as repair parts were no longer available. It ignored Dakurd's warnings and approached the VF-1 unit, at which point Dakurd shot it down with one of the UN Forces new AMM-1 Arrow missiles, making him one of the few pilots to have scored kills on both VF-0s and SV-51s. He described the engagement in somewhat mournful tones, indicating the SV-51 was "moving as though it were looking for a place to die". (A parenthetical note earlier in the article mentions that Kilis Dakurd would later be assigned to ARMD-04 Clemenceau... and would ultimately perish in the final battle against the Boddole Zer main fleet in 2010. His onetime foe Albert Staker survived the war, and passed away in 2019 at age 48.)

No idea, on account of there being no confirmed appearances by the regular army in Macross Frontier or Macross Delta. That said, given that the regular infantry we do see (affiliation unclear) do not use EX-Gear I'd assume "probably not". The only time we've seen a dedicated EX-Gear infantry unit was a New UN Spacy Special Forces unit outfitted to suppress the cyber-grunts from Macross Galaxy in the Macross Frontier movies. Those suits are presumably not practical for widespread adoption, given that they're said to be approximately twice the cost of the regular model issued to the Valkyrie pilots. I'm not sure that would even be an improvement over the EX-Gear's regular armament. Macross Chronicle has suggested that the EX-Gear rifle seen in Macross Frontier is a rapid-fire railgun.

Yeah, I don't thrill to the McFarlane ones either... shipping nightmare aside, the Joytoy ones are definitely more to my taste.

... I'm not sure any restaurant out there serves charcoal.

Whatever our opinions on the film are, it cannot be denied it was a godsend to pop culture... as a seemingly inexhaustible source of memes. (Or as General Grievous might've put it... "Another fine addition to my collection.") Same. Honestly, I think it's been at least two years since I've seen a Burger King.

Yes... it's a common enough phenomenon (esp. with Wikis) that it has a name. "Link surfing". 🤣

Something along those lines, yeah. The Anti-Unification Alliance forces that didn't throw in the towel when the separatists in Russia withdrew their support after the Alliance destroyed St. Petersburg with a reaction warhead seem to have been big fans of the trope Bolivian Army Ending. Macross Zero seems to depict the one halfway sane effort, a real Hail Mary effort to revive their cause by stealing the alien relic the UN Government had discovered and weaponize it against them. Macross the First's depiction of a Christmas 2008 attack on South Ataria island was a borderline suicide attack where Alliance forces served as a distraction for an attempt to destroy the island with a reaction bomb delivered by an unmanned SV-51. In Master File, there are not one but THREE suicidal attacks described... including attacks on Alaska Base and Victoria Base, two of the most heavily fortified positions on Earth. Master File's description of the SV-51's final engagement was a single badly-maintained SV-51 making a suicide run on an Alaska Base VF squadron and getting shot down with ease by a former SV-51 pilot who'd defected.

VFs have several ways to compensate for short runways, like using boundary layer control systems to cheat up their lift coefficients during takeoff. That said, the SV-51's unique fighter mode VTOL system was probably not as useful as the Alliance would've hoped given that the SV-51's rollout occurred after they'd already lost the war for all practical intents and purposes. Between the accounts in Macross the First and Variable Fighter Master File, there's a definite feeling (and in the latter case, at least one outright statement) that the fractured remnants of the Anti-Unification Alliance were basically throwing their lives away in increasingly futile attacks on the UN Forces simply because they couldn't admit defeat or let go of their animosity.

The SV-51 seems to have been unique in that regard. As others have noted, the only time we've seen a VF make the attempt is in Macross: Do You Remember Love? wherein Hikaru's VT-1 Ostrich uses its verniers to "hop" far enough to deploy the legs. A VF's high-thrust verniers do have quite a bit of power, so it's a plausible way to go about it in a pinch. It's just probably a pretty wasteful maneuver propellant-wise and was only really necessary because Hikaru's VT-1 was captured in Fighter mode and couldn't land properly.

Just the Sv-154 Svard... it was originally the LV-7 "Valorous Rapier" from Air Cavalry Chronicles. It was one of three Variable Fighter designs associated wtih Fanelia, which would go on to become the homeland of Escaflowne protagonist Van Fanel and the titular Guymelef. I recall one or two mentions of the possibility for an emigrant ship to be reused multiple times, sent back into space to continue exploring after depositing a colony on a habitable world. The Macross-class SDFNs were supposedly being reused this way, and we know of at least one in-series example of it happening: the SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global that was ultimately seconded to the 117th Research Fleet's expedition into Vajra space. That said, the norm from the animation is having the emigrant ship land on the newly discovered habitable planet and stay there as a sort of prefabricated city. Macross Galaxy's living conditions couldn't have been a complete secret, since the fleet did engage in commerce and technological codevelopment with other emigrant fleets and has hosted at least one major sporting event (the 2058 Vanquish League championships). Emigrant fleets seem to have quite a lot of latitude when it comes to deciding what kind of local government they're going to have, how they'll organize their armed forces, and so on. Macross Galaxy being a cyberpunk-style corporate state - a spacefaring company town - probably raised a few eyebrows in and of itself but also likely excused at least some of the fleet's unusual efficiency-first choices WRT living conditions like the lack of natural spaces and going all-in on synthetic foods instead of devoting resources to maintaining environment ships for things like farming and aquaculture in the eyes of visitors. Visitors to the fleet had at least limited awareness that implants could be used to manipulate a person's senses, but since they could only experience the fleet's cyberspace through AR glasses they probably didn't realize the true extent of the control that was possible. The news that the fleet had legalized implant technology was not a secret, but it doesn't seem to have been something that was headline news since it was an internal decision that only affected Macross Galaxy and there was no evidence (yet) that they were flouting the bans on cyborg soldiers and the like. Essentially, Macross Galaxy never had to get the rest of the New UN Government "off their backs" because everything that was going on fell within the realm of Macross Galaxy's internal affairs. Questionable, perhaps, but not worth intervening in another government's business. The first concrete evidence of actual wrongdoing didn't come out until 2058, when the Frontier fleet encountered an (illegal) cyborg soldier for the first time. That doesn't seem to have become widely known, so the rest of the New UN Government doesn't seem to have become properly aware of Macross Galaxy's unlawful activities until it became clear they were engaging in a war of aggression against the Vajra in violation of the New UN Government's laws. (Even then, consequences probably weren't coming because the fleet was reported destroyed by the Vajra... and in the movie version, they actually were.)

As attached as Macross is to the pineapple gag, they probably evolved from pineapples.

Dunno if that counts as a weird place... I mean, they're talking about the development of the N64 and its launch titles, and GameTek DID (try to) develop a Robotech game that was supposed to be a Nintendo 64 launch title. That was Robotech: Crystal Dreams. It was the usual 90's Robotech story... a small-time company with a very limited talent pool picked up the license, made overly ambitious plans, promptly failed, went bankrupt, and the next small-time company to pick up the license cancelled the project. GameTek got as far as a brief playable demo and a licensed comic book that cribbed a lot of art from DYRL? before they went under and the new licensee Ocean Software canned it just a few days after the demo debuted.

Nah, that one probably got handed off to some summer intern. That's part of it, yes. The YF-19 and YF-21's new generation of engine technology - thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines - offered a significant improvement over the previous generation(s) of engine technology in terms of thrust output, fuel/propellant efficiency, and power conversion efficiency. This and the increased internal storage offered by the larger airframes of both meant that FAST Packs were no longer strictly necessary to provide the VF with an adequate operating time in space. The minimalist design of the packs allowed additional armament to be mounted with almost no impact to the VF's passive stealth performance (and thus only a minimal burden on its active stealth system) and the smallest possible impact to the VF's maneuverability and acceleration performance. Sometimes... especially if you know the enemy will detect you anyway... it's just better to have MORE DAKKA. The previous paragraph describes what was essentially the tipping point in FAST Pack design. Once VFs had engines and internal fuel capacities sufficient to operate in space for a reasonable amount of time without bolt-on fuel tanks and/or using rocket boosters to take the burden of thrust production off the thermonuclear engines as much ass possible, those now-technically unnecessary fuel tanks and rocket boosters could be repurposed to offset the mass of a truly breathtaking amount of weaponry instead. Not really? General Galaxy's design process seems to be quite deliberate and well-considered. They're not just throwing random stuff at the walls to see what sticks. Their issue seems to be that their designers are much more willing to break with established convention and apply larger amounts of Zentradi overtechnology in their carefully workshopped designs. It hurts them as often as it helps them. Instead of "Improvise. Adapt. Overcome." the General Galaxy corporation seems to have: "Improvise. Adapt. Lose the main fighter contract to Shinsei anyway because we keep forgetting this is a lowest bidder process." The one time they actually beat Shinsei Industry for the main fighter contract was their most orthodox design ever. The Nightmare Plus isn't that old... as of Macross Delta, it's only about twenty years old. It's got another decade or more before it'll actually be phased out of frontline service. The VF-25 is set to come in sometime in the early 2060s, but it'll take YEARS to phase it in and phase the VF-171s out, and the Brisingr Alliance NUNS is set to formally adopt the VF-31 as its replacement sometime in 2069 or 2070, and it'll similarly take years to retrain pilots and retire the old VF-171s. The New UN Forces were still in the process of retiring their VF-11s in 2058, almost thirty years after they were introduced.

Eh... all things considered, probably not a great idea to try to combine them. Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines already have ridiculous amounts of thrust, so there's not really a huge NEED for the performance boost the Inertia Vector Control System had previously offered to the much less powerful (comparatively, but in absolute terms still bonkers over-the-top) thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines from the previous generation. That said, that's kind of where 6th Generation VFs are headed... except instead of multiple inertia control methods, it's a system that synergistically boosts the performance of the engines and inertia store converter, the Fold Wave System.

Past discussions did put a lot of focus on the Inertia Vector Control System's ability to protect the cockpit from g-forces based on remarks in Macross Chronicle's coverage of the Queadluun-Rhea/56 battle suit used by the New UN Forces and SMS... so that's an understandable point. (And admittedly the explanation of the Inertia Vector Control System itself is extremely vague in the few sources that cover it... Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II was the clearest and most complete one, and that came thirty years after the system was first introduced in Macross Perfect Memory.) Which is actually more sensible considering these craft are mainly used in space... since one's top speed in space is limited by only two factors: c and how long your fuel supplies can sustain acceleration. Divide's perpetual beef with itself is that it couldn't pick a side in the Second Unification War... half the planet declared for the pro-autonomy faction (Vindirance's side) and half declared for the pro-centralization faction (Latence's side). Years later, they apparently still haven't settled the matter. Either that, or they've decided their planetary "hat" is to be Space Northern Ireland. The two systems work fundamentally differently, as far as I can tell... so I'm not sure if they could operate together or if the VF could generate enough power to operate both at once.

The Inertia Vector Control System is a device that improves the maneuverability and propellant efficiency of a VF or Battle Suit by manipulating the magnitude of the acceleration forces acting on the airframe. It can't produce new forces on its own, but it can increase or decrease the magnitude of an existing force from something like the control surfaces, verniers, main engines, etc. allegedly without limit as long as there's adequate power available. Using it, a VF that might only be capable of 10G from a standing start could boost that 10G of acceleration to, say, 20G. Or it could allow for rapid deceleration by shrinking that acceleration vector to almost nothing or amplifying the braking force. One example given is that it can manipulate the forces produced by control surfaces and verniers to produce turns that don't decelerate the aircraft. Its ability to protect the aircraft from very high g-forces is incidental, since the change in the magnitude of acceleration vectors is applied uniformly across the airframe. The pilot will still experience any g-forces from the maneuvers unassisted by the system, but they will be insulated from the g-force additions and subtractions the system makes. The Inertia Store Converter is a device that has one job: it protects the pilot and the airframe from excessive g-forces that could cause injury or damage by taking g-forces over a set limit and temporarily storing those forces extradimensionally before returning them to the aircraft in a safe and controlled manner. It doesn't provide any performance boost itself, it just allows the pilot to use the aircraft to its maximum potential safely. So if you want to accelerate at the VF-25's maximum of 30.5G, the ISC will store a portion of that (up to 27.5G for 120 seconds). You'll only feel 3G or so while you're accelerating, but once you stop accelerating you'll feel the returning g-forces at low levels... so instead of 10 seconds at 30.5G, you'll get 10 seconds at 3G and then about 30 seconds of 2G as that energy is slowly restored to the aircraft in a controlled and safe manner. The Inertia Vector Control System's gravitational shenanigans can be achieved with (very high purity) fold carbon, so it can be mass produced at a low rate by the New UN Government. The Inertia Store Converter's more complex gravitational and dimensional shenanigans require fold quartz that the New UN Gov't cannot synthesize, so they are dependent on reserves of fold quartz from Vajra hives and Protoculture ruins. To put it in an American-friendly context, the central New UN Forces are kind of like the main armed forces and the individual emigrant government New UN Forces are like the various arms of the National Guard. Or in a European-friendly context, the central New UN Forces would be like the European Army that Germany wants to have which exists above the various national military forces the European Union's member nations have. Each New UN Gov't member state (be it a fleet or planet) has its own defense force that operates under the auspices of the New UN Forces... but then there's the New UN Forces maintained by the New UN Government itself... the supranational armed forces... that are leveraged when a New UN Government member state is REALLY threatened or when a threat exists that endangers the ENTIRE New UN Government. One of the most frequently depicted arms of the central New UN Forces are the VF-X Special Forces, their elite troubleshooters.

Sudden starts and stops are where g-forces peak to damaging levels a lot of the time... esp. with the pilot. Kind of like how Xaos Valkyrie Works's modification to the VF-31's ISC made it damage the airframe by changing the ISC's discharge mode from continuous to event-based when the load on the aircraft dropped below a set level. Suddenly throwing more g-forces onto the airframe like that was torquing it and causing damage. Yeah, unless the Earth/central NUNS shows up, we'll likely not see the VF-24. Kind of, yeah. Assuming the New UN Forces are dead-set on making something like a fold reheat system or fold wave system a core feature of 6th Generation VFs the way Macross Delta and the VF-31 and VF-31AX Master Files have indicated they are, they only really have a few options available to them. They either have to find the motherlode of fold quartz somewhere in the galaxy, find a way to synthesize fold quartz, or modify these fold resonance effect systems in some way or other that makes them work with high-grade synthetic fold carbon. (I'd assume it's probably going to continue to be the excuse for why 5th Gen VFs will be the standard for a while yet.)

On the subject of Filoni, whether he's a part of the problem or a part of the solution feels to me like it's entirely a matter or individual perspective. I think it really depends on how attached one is to the pre-Disney Expanded Universe and one's tolerance for fanservice... as his Disney-era work is heavy on both.

One problem among many with the "other series". Macross Chronicle notes that both the artificially cultivated Nature Regeneration Areas and the few small areas where the natural environment had escaped complete destruction at the Zentradi's hands were carefully monitored and managed under the Nature Regeneration Project. Quamzin was able to remain hidden as long as he did because his rebels were a tiny minority among the ~8 million Zentradi living on Earth, he sensibly moved around a fair bit to evade capture, there were no shortage of Zentradi derelicts to use as hideouts or pillage for equipment, and the critically understrength (New) UN Forces were spread very thin as they attempted to pick up the pieces on Earth and plan for future space emigration. If you exclude Zentradi volunteers, the New UN Forces were trying to police an entire star system with around 200-300 Valkyries, a few hundred Destroids, and just two carriers.

Nope... no announcements or notifications I can see. Looks like they also dropped a fair chunk of The Witch from Mercury's dub too. You mean the Gundam SEED Freedom movie? I dunno... I'm in kind of two minds about it. On the one hand, Destiny suffered because it was rushed out to capitalize on the unexpected success of Gundam SEED. On the other hand, IIRC the movie was meant to tie off the bloody stump of the Cosmic Era storyline after Destiny spun in. Whether they'll go for thematic and narrative consistency with the previous body of work or try to apply lessons learned is anyone's guess. In a way, the staff working on Gundam SEED Freedom are rather lucky. Gundam SEED Destiny lowered expectations, they've got years of increasing rose-tint on the glasses of the CE fanbase working in their favor, the story just has to be less incoherent than The Witch from Mercury's, and if they do screw up Urdr Hunt will be along shortly to distract the fans anyway.

As others have noted, we haven't got any hard info on the actual performance of the VF-24. It's an inference based on several statements about the YF-24 Evolution and YF-29 in official material: Ever since the Sharon Apple Incident in 2040, the New UN Government has placed significant restrictions on arms exports to emigrant governments intended to ensure that cutting-edge weapons don't end up in the hands of anti-government rebels and that the central New UN Forces will always have The Biggest Stick. The YF-24 Evolution that was approved for mass production as Earth's 5th Gen main fighter was a beast that was able to solo a squadron-strength mixed force of 4th Gen VFs and Ghosts in simulated air combat. The New UN Government's restrictions on arms exports led to the YF-24 Evolution spec shared to emigrant governments being redacted in various areas (to preserve the advantage of Earth's version), requiring emigrant governments to fill in the gaps with their own technology that would result in inferior performance. Descriptions of the YF-29 that describe it as having been developed in secret to surpass the YF-24. Especially that last one... even though it's a fairly safe assumption that the production version of the YF-24 Evolution (VF-24A) exceeds the performance of the VF-25 by a not-inconsiderable margin, the implication that the YF-29 is the lengths they had to go to in order to surpass the YF-24 Evolution makes it sound like the YF-24 Evolution (which is produced as the VF-24A) was one hell of an aircraft. Made worse, perhaps, by the confirmation that even as of 2068 the YF-29 is The Strongest Valkyrie and that the New UN Forces are allegedly trying to find a way to mass produce the YF-29 as a possible 6th Generation successor for the VF-24. Ah, you're probably remembering that from when I did a rundown of the VF-31AX Master File earlier in this thread. Master File is not official setting material, but in the case of the VF-31AX book it's also the ONLY source of info we have for the mecha in Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! so we're kinda stuck with it until we get something better. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus offers an explanation of the post-Frontier YF-29 as a backhanded way of explaining Maximilian Jenius's YF-29 in the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! movie. It builds on what was previously established in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy about New UN Forces attempts to replicate the YF-29, and establishes three different YF-29s: YF-29A: the Macross Frontier fleet's original YF-29 seen in Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye. Effectively a one-of-a-kind aircraft that cannot be reproduced due to its fold wave system incorporating ultra-high purity fold quartz from Vajra queens, boasting the highest performance of any YF-29. YF-29B: an improved version of the YF-29 produced in very limited quantities for the New UN Forces. It's a more complete aircraft than the initial prototype and has higher performance in some areas. Master File added the additional detail that its fold wave system is inferior to the YF-29A's because the highest purity fold quartz available by normal means is not able to match the output of the YF-29A's Vajra fold quartz. Max's YF-29 was one of these. YF-29C: a Master File original that has not appeared in animation. Said to be a New UN Forces experiment in making the YF-29 viable for mass production by substituting ultra-high purity synthetic fold carbon for fold quartz. It did technically work... but its fold wave system was only able to achieve 1% of the output of the YF-29A fold wave system. The whole topic, and especially the YF-29C, was something used as part of a larger discussion to illustrate the challenges the New UN Government and New UN Forces face in attempting to develop a 6th Generation main VF... as they've retroactively recharacterized the YF-29 (and possibly YF-30) as 6th Generation prototypes and explain the VF-31AX from the movie as a rushed and sloppy application of prototype 6th Gen VF parts to the battle-damaged VF-31 Siegfrieds. Improvements in fold carbon synthesis will allow for continued improvements in reactor temperatures, engine output, and beam weapons... but without the ability to synthesize fold quartz they're hit a wall in applying technologies like Inertia Store Converters and Fold Wave Systems. With fold quartz only being available from Protoculture ruins or old Vajra nests, the number of ISCs that can be made at a time is limited, and there's no way to guarantee a supply of fold quartz to manufacture fold wave systems. A production-ready 6th Generation VF is something of a pipe dream because of this roadblock.

Potentially. They don't actually state that it will... though if the books for the VF-31 are any indication, it could potentially also be making the structural fatigue issues worse not better.

All in all, they had a rough patch immediately following the First Space War but they've been doing pretty well for themselves thereafter despite Earth's environment having been wiped out. Humanity is phenomenally stubborn, and since abandoning Earth in the immediate aftermath of the First Space War wasn't in the cards they ultimately decided to not only put in the work to keep the planet nominally habitable but actually attempt to repair its ecosystem as completely as possible using their advanced (and advancing) technology. It'll take them thousands of years, but Earth is also the wealthiest and most industrially and militarily powerful planet in the galaxy so they aren't too bothered by the cost in terms of time and resources. They've got concealed hatches in various places... like that belly hatch in the assault module of the Queadol Magdomilla-class. The Quiltra Queleual-class has hatches at the rear that appear to be their main hangar. The hangar we see Vrlitwhai and the captured Cat's Eye recon plane in seems to be somewhere on the flank of the Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class. WRT the Zentradi's fear of the Protodeviln... I doubt it's anything like instinctive. In Macross 7, Exsedol is the ONLY Zentradi character who displays that intense fear reaction to the prospect of the Protodeviln. Milia doesn't. Veffidas doesn't. None of the half-Zentradi characters do. The reason he's the only one to have this reaction is probably that he's the only one who's really privy to knowledge of what the Protodeviln can do. Back when he was serving in the Zentradi forces, he was the Vrlitwhai branch fleet's records officer and the aide de camp to the fleet's commander. We know, from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, that he had access to records going back as far as the Stellar Republic dissolution conflict as he was the one to bring up the ancient directive that Zentradi were not to interfere with the worlds of the miclones. I doubt it, TBH. After all, Macross is a fundamentally optimistic story. Earth's environment may be in rough shape, but they're leveraging the most advanced technology in the galaxy to make the planet livable and restore its former beauty a little bit at a time. Quite a lot of people, including some of the galaxy's wealthiest and most powerful, still live there. Focusing on stories elsewhere is a way to keep the story fresh and avoid bogging down the way other franchises have by obsessing over the same handful of characters until the lot of them are old, gray, and broken... It's not the only one... My Fair Minmay makes mention of some decidedly not-kid-friendly after-hours entertainment options aboard the Macross during the war. We only get a detailed look at postwar Earth in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, so this is perhaps an understandable view... though there are multiple cities/towns/villages/etc. even just a few years after the First Space War, and it's likely those grew and spread out after the series ended. Macross City would naturally be the biggest, given that it's the oldest, the planetary capital, and the seat of the interstellar government and military. Well, I wouldn't put it in the past tense... Earth's environment was all but completely destroyed in the Zentradi's orbital bombardment. Humanity and the Zentradi defectors put a lot of effort into emergency measures to keep Earth capable of supporting life in the immediate aftermath of the war, but cleanup and nature restoration efforts are ongoing and will be likely be ongoing for millennia. It's getting better by degrees, but Earth's not gonna be entering any "best kept lawn" competitions anytime soon. There are areas that have been restored to something that vaguely approximates prewar conditions thanks to cloning, genetic engineering, seed banks, and so on... but they're carefully maintained and monitored nature preserves that are being slowly expanded through painstaking human effort. Most of Earth's surface is still a desert even when we see it in 2040, 2059, and 2068. It's only in that other series we don't talk about that Earth magically recovered in an incredibly short period... thanks to footage from other shows representing an Earth where no such event ever happened. Doesn't seem that he does... the Supervision Army were Sir Not Appearing in This Film every time they've been mentioned. Literally the only design we have for the Supervision Army is Miyatake's design for the original appearance of the SDF-1 Macross. There were draft designs done to connect the Zentradi designs to the Vajra's designs, to support the conceit that the Protoculture modeled many of their designs on Vajra biology, but nothing for the Supervision Army. (Come to that, the Varauta designs weren't initially made for Macross either. They were developed as antagonist mecha for the Air Cavalry Chronicles series concept before that project pivoted to the fantasy genre and became The Vision of Escaflowne. They were minimally reworked for use in Macross 7, but even kept the Zaibach Empire designations from the original series concept.)