Seto Kaiba

Yes, it was. One of the signature technological advancements of the 5th Generation Valkyries was the adoption of a new form of non-contact linear actuator that replaced many of the small and comparatively fragile electromechanical and electromagnetic rotary actuators in the transformation system. Reducing the number of moving parts and having them not actually be in physical contact with each other during the transformation made the transformation process faster and more reliable and made the Battroid itself more durable.

Probably Masahiro Chiba, Macross's go-to man for specs and technical writeups. No, that's Masahiro Chiba. He's been with the franchise from a very early point, to the extent that he's one of the few staffers to have an actual named character modeled on him in a Macross series. (Macross 7's Dr. Gadget M. Chiba.) No, but this is currently the ONLY source that has presented any kind of specs for the VF-31AX Kairos Plus. Almost certainly not. The main problem with these specs is that it doesn't at all align with what's said about the VF-31AX anywhere else. When they're introduced in Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!, the VF-31AX Kairos Plus is presented as an improved version of Xaos's custom VF-31 Siegfried that Delta Flight had been flying up to that point. Official publications haven't been clear or consistent about whether they were stock VF-31As that were retrofitted with new and salvaged parts from the Siegfrieds or Siegfrieds repaired with new and spare parts from the stock VF-31A, but the one thing they all agree on is that this new model is supposed to outperform the VF-31 Siegfried and the Sv-262 Draken III and rival the unmanned Sv-303 in mobility. In one interview, Kawamori claimed that its performance was not hugely different from that of the YF-29. Where we run into problems is that these stats - the ONLY stats we've seen for the VF-31AX thus far - don't support any of that. Well, except for the notion that the Kairos Plus is a stock VF-31A Kairos retrofitted with salvaged Siegfried parts. Based on these stats, its performance without the Fold Wave System active is no different from the stock VF-31A (and therefore a decent bit below the VF-31 Siegfried or Sv-262, never mind the Sv-303 that Worf'd both with comical ease). This becomes slightly more problematic in that the Master File for the VF-31 Siegfried established that Xaos's version of the Fold Wave System is a good deal less powerful than the YF-29's and cannot be activated at will the way the YF-29 Fold Wave System can because it's dependent on a powerful external bio-fold wave source (e.g. Freyja or Mikumo). By any objective standard, it looks like a downgrade instead of the upgrade the film presents it as. It's not a marketing buzzword, it's a classification system that was proposed by a historian looking at the evolution of jet fighter technology up to 1990 and subsequently adopted and finessed by various government agencies. You are correct that it's not based on raw performance... it's based on significant advances in technology and the corresponding shifts in design and strategic priorities. The same is true for the New UN Forces classifications of Variable Fighters into Generations. The ones that got the most attention are, of course, the ones that were introduced after the idea of dividing fighters up into generations became popularized in the 90's... the 4th Generation Advanced Variable Fighters (VF-19, VF-22, VF-171) in Macross Plus and Macross 7 and the 5th Generation in Macross Frontier and beyond. As in the real world, this tends to correspond to major development programs that defined the requirements for that generation's designs. ... we have notes on that. Extensive notes. The short version is that the 1st Generation are, of course, the initial designs for Variable Fighters like the VF-1 and VF-X-2, as well as proof-of-concept aircraft like the VF-0 and the Sv-51 and Sv-52. The 2nd Generation starts with the Earth UN Government's plans for the VF-1's successor with the competing VF-X-3 and VF-X-4 that were in early testing during the First Space War and a number of designs developed after the war ended with a focus on small, often specialized, Variable Fighters designed for good cost-performance in early emigrant fleets. The 3rd Generation is marked by Project Nova, the design competition between the VF-11 and VF-14 to select the VF-4 and VF-5000's successor, as well as efforts to diversify the Variable concept into the realms of dedicated Attackers and Bombers. Oh, it's more than that. Project Super Nova set down the requirements for a 4th Generation Variable Fighter as a high-performance stealth-focused Valkyrie able to infiltrate behind enemy lines to strike command centers/ships to fatally disorient enemy forces without the need for total destruction. This was especially important because the New UN Forces had begun to have to consider the use of Valkyries against Human threats on top of rogue Zentradi forces. The new technologies that defined that generation were the thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines that enabled VFs to have efficient SSTO capability and more surplus generator output for defense, the ARIEL airframe control AI, the 3rd Generation active stealth technology, independent fold capability via native support for fold boosters, and pin-point barrier systems for defense. More than that, 5th Generation VFs are defined by Project Evolution and the New UN Forces demand for a next-generation VF that could address the controllability issues of their failed 4th Generation designs (the VF-19 and VF-22) while also achieving performance able to rival or exceed the Vajra's in anticipation of further conflicts with them. The creation of Inertia Store Converter technology was a keystone technology of that generation, but its other hallmarks include the EX-Gear control suite, the Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engine, ARIEL II airframe control AI, linear actuator transformation system, integrated sensors, and new armor materials. For its part, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus is a 4th Generation Variable Fighter. It was developed as a replacement for the failed VF-19 and VF-22 as a less extreme design prioritizing ease of control and handling over red raw performance, but nevertheless included all of the same technological advancements used in those initial 4th Generation models. The Frontier fleet's VF-171EX and VF-171-IIIF could be considered 4.5th Generation designs. The 4th Generation VF-171 was improved with certain technologies developed for the 5th Generation VF-25 like the integrated radar system, EX-Gear cockpit, and its new ablative anti-beam coating formulation. The didn't adopt the ISC or other technologies like the ARIEL II avionics, Stage II engines, or linear actuators for transformation. That's where we run into problems/conflicts... since the official materials classified several fighters with those systems including the Siegfrieds as 5th Generation still. The YF-29 and YF-30 were also developed in parallel with the VF-25 and other 5th Generation VFs, and the VF-31 Siegfreid and VF-31AX Kairos Plus are modified 5th Generation VFs. No, we know that's not the case for several reasons. First, the production VF-31 Kairos explicitly does not have a Fold Wave System. The Fold Wave System is what produces the synergistic effect between fold waves and various key systems on the Valkyrie that provide that performance improvement and, on the YF-29, allow the craft to draw energy directly from higher dimensional space. Second, fold carbon can't be used in a Fold Wave System. The reason that a technology as amazingly useful as the Fold Wave System is so rare is because manufacturing one takes incredibly rare materials that can't be synthesized (yet). Specifically, it needs very large pieces of extremely high-purity fold quartz. Something that generally isn't found outside of the bodies of Vajra Queens or rarely in certain Protoculture ruins. Fold quartz could be described as a very high purity form of fold carbon that's beyond Humanity's current ability to manufacture, which creates much more powerful fold waves that transcend dimensional faults and time differentials. Fold carbon is an essential material in any overtechnology that manipulates gravity or higher dimensional spacetime, and is used in thermonuclear reactors, gravity control systems, fold navigation and communications systems, holographic projectors, and the like. Even the highest purity fold carbon is not up to the task of driving a Fold Wave System, so it wouldn't provide any performance improvement unless it was directly applied in place of a lower-purity fold carbon in a direct application (e.g. a reactor's Gravity and Inertia Control system). Third and lastly, the VF-31A Kairos is explicitly officially described as 5th Generation like the VF-24, VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30. Even the Siegfried custom version is described as being "5.5th Generation" rather than 6th, officially.

The Tempest was the joint British-Italian 6th Gen fighter program that merged with Japan's 6th Gen fighter program to form the Global Air Combat Programme earlier this year. Because the merger of those programs happened just a few months ago, they haven't announced an actual name for the new fighter they're codeveloping. Sort of. The 2nd Generation airframe control AI "ARIEL" is not a mere support system like the deep learning AI planned for the BAE Tempest... like the 1st Generation AI "ANGIRAS", it's the main flight control system and supervisory controller for all onboard systems. The Ghosts, for their part, are more or less able to fight and fly autonomously. BAE's plan is more like the Squire bits used by the Valkyrie II in Macross II... with the "mothership" exercising direct control over the unmanned units accompanying it.

Yup... owing, I suspect, to popular fiction entirely too many people erroneously believe that a nuclear reactor is a nuclear bomb in potentia just waiting for an excuse to go off like in the movie Aliens. The reality is so much more mundane. A fission reactor's a kettle heating on a pile of hot rocks and the thing you're most in danger of it if breaks down is a steam explosion that exposes those hot rocks to the outside world. A fusion reactor is like a diesel engine, requiring the injection of fuel into the reaction chamber and a compressive force to trigger the reaction... and if you shut off the fuel flow or decouple power to the system providing the fuel compression, the whole thing stops almost immediately.

It is based on a real-world aircraft... but not that one. The VF-31's development history is one long whole plot reference to Japan's effort to domestically develop and produce its own 5th Generation stealth fighter in the Mitsubishi ATD-X (later known as the X-2 Shinshin). Like Japan and the F-22, the Brisingr Alliance wasn't able to import the full spec VF-24 and opted to develop their own next-generation fighter as an economic self-stimulus and with an eye towards future export sales to allied governments. The prototype, then designated ATD-X, was being prepared for the first round of test flights at the time Macross Delta premiered in April 2016. The idea to present the VF-31AX as a 6th Generation fighter is probably inspired by what happened afterwards. When the ATD-X's test flights were done, Japan's government decided that they needed outside help after all, resulting in plans to pass on producing a 5th Generation fighter in favor of jumping into development of a 6th Generation one... launching the Mitsubishi F-X program.

More or less. Since it's Xaos, they're probably made from the same trial production (Block 0 or Block 1) VF-31As that the Siegfrieds were... just modified differently. Granted, I 100% agree that trying to put the VF-31AX in the same category as ridiculous super-prototypes like the YF-29 and YF-30 is pretty silly... but Master File does have its own internal (unofficial) logic about how it's classifying these. Their view seems to be that the Fold Wave System is a 6th Generation feature, and that the YF-29 was either always or retroactively classified as a 6th Generation design based on it. That should make the fighters retrofitted with it 5.5th Generation, but if you're not counting the .5 gens then it would technically get the bump to 6th. The YF-29 was an honest-to-goodness prototype that turned out to be Awesome But Impractical. The YF-30 was a technology demonstrator that was officially designated a prototype so its lead developer (SMS) could defer having to make legally-required disclosures regarding its new technologies for as long as possible. A prototype for a next-gen aircraft is still a next-gen aircraft by definition because generations are typically defined in terms of specific requirements and capabilities.

Look again, they actually don't. There's a section header that says "It has military implications", but all that's actually said in that section is that some of the technologies (ICF) used in this breakthrough came out of nuclear weapons research programs (not all of which were military in nature), that modern nuclear weapons use fusion, and that this proves America's a leader in the development of "weapons-relevant technology" because nuclear power research branched off of nuclear weapons research. Believe you me, altruism is NOT required for the idea of switching from nuclear fission to nuclear fusion to appeal. The amount of time, money, and logistical grief that goes into the procurement, safe handling, and disposal of nuclear fuel materials and maintenance of reactor systems is substantial even for civilian reactors. A fission reactor leaking uranium into the environment means a multi-billion dollar cleanup effort. A fuel spill in a fusion reactor means you air the room out while the cryogenic fuel sublimates and then patch the leak because it's just flammable gas and not glowing rocks of painful death.

Really, the most likely reason the US military would get excited about this discovery is the potential to reduce the number of things that could go wrong and the probability of running and screaming. Our aircraft carriers and submarines are powered by nuclear fission reactors. The highly-refined radioisotope fuel they use is extraordinarily dangerous and requires a lot of specialized and very expensive equipment to manufacture, to handle, to transport, to store, to install, and to dispose of safely when it's spent. Not to mention the massive potential for long-term environmental damage should the reactor be damaged. You'd better believe the military is downright giddy at the prospect of being able to switch to a far clear and safer technology that can offer similar or superior performance without a material safety datasheet the size of War and Peace and literal tons of highly specialized and costly safety gear.

Ah, I see it now. It's in the last sentence on that two-page spread with the Delta Flight VF-31s flying in formation. "Due to the uncertain factor of Walkure's support, the abilities of the 6th Generation VF were demonstrated for the first time, and many problems remained in the operation of the VF-31AX." There's no mention in there that I can find of the YF-29 or YF-30 being 6th Generation. The only mention of the YF-29 is a brief mention of the Dissimilar Air Combat Training exercise from Absolute Live!!!!!! where the newly completed VF-31AX units fielded by Delta Flight got REKT by a YF-29 and four Super Ghosts. That said, there is some other interesting information hiding in there. The mobility performance of the Sv-303 and VF-31AX is said to be about 60% that of the Super Ghosts, and on par with each other. It's also interesting to note that both the VF-31AX and Sv-303 are noted to be dependent on external bio-fold wave sources to activate their fold quartz-based performance enhancements, meaning the VF-31AX's Fold Wave System is an improved version of the Siegfried's not the complete system used in the YF-29. The reason that Delta Flight fared so much better in their second fight was because of the Armored Pack and performance boosts from Walkure's singing, which allowed the VF-31AX to overpower the Sv-303. Even then, it's said that Operation Jormungandr only succeeded because of the failure of the Siren Delta System. After a good night's sleep, I remembered something relevant from a partial translation I did of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried. That book, in its discussion of the VF-31 Siegfried's Fold Wave System, DID assert that the YF-29 is a 6th Generation VF. So the guys on that other site may have been extrapolating from that to get to the idea that the YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31AX are all 6th Generation. Now, it's worth remembering that these books aren't official setting material and that the official setting classifies these craft slightly differently. Like the VF-25, the VF-31 is said to be a 5th Generation VF. The YF-29 and YF-30 are often put into that category as well because they were developed in the same time period and from the same base design (YF-24 Evolution). An extra feature from the Macross Delta TV anime blu-rays describes the VF-31 Siegfried custom as a 5.5th Generation VF, though it never elaborates upon what a 6th Generation VF is like. I would assume, based on the classification of the Siegfried and the Kairos, that the Kairos Plus would actually be considered a 5th Generation or 5.5th Generation VF.

This is far from the first time someone in Hollywood has floated the idea of doing a Warhammer 40,000 adaptation. The idea usually never gets very far, typically because the WH40K franchise is considered too niche to have serious mainstream appeal and too edgy and too cliche to be taken seriously. Now that someone seems to actually be taking the idea of an actual WH40K adaptation seriously, I have a feeling the biggest roadblock they're going to run into is the setting itself... and how much of it is derivative of other properties which the creators of the game were parodying at the time. The risk of a faithful WH40K series losing its audience to darkness-induced audience apathy is very real. On the few prior occasions that there's been serious talk of developing a WH40K movie or series, it's always focused on adapting the franchise's most celebrated novels. Typically the talk about adaptations revolves around Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy (Xenos, Malleus, and Hereticus). The other series that usually comes up in those discussions in Gaunt's Ghosts, also by Dan Abnett, though far less frequently than Eisenhorn. Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain series has been bandied about a little bit too. I think what we're seeing here may actually be the fruition of an announcement made back in 2019. Producer Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, The Man in the High Castle) announced his intention to have his studio, Big Light Productions, work on a live-action adaptation of the Eisenhorn trilogy. Big Light Productions has a history of working with, and distributing its films through, Amazon including The Man in the High Castle and Leonardo. Now there are actual contract negotiations in progress, Spotnitz's studio has only one other project that current is in the works (a second season of Leonardo), and Henry Cavill's suddenly voicing interest in doing a WH40K series. It'd be a good starting point, since Eisenhorn set up a lot of the modern WH40K setting and is less involved in the massive pitched battles side of things and it has two sequel trilogies that could be adapted as well should the series take off. The Ravenor trilogy (Ravenor, Ravenor Returned, Ravenor Rogue) starring Eisenhorn's star pupil and the new (and rather more overtly lovecraftian) Bequin trilogy that's styled as the final third of a trilogy of trilogies that also features a final showdown between Eisenhorn and Ravenor.

If it's the same one used on the VF-31 Siegfried, then that'd be a "No". One of the few interesting and surprisingly well thought-out original details in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried was the explanation of how the economized version of the Fold Wave System used in the Siegfried custom differs from the full spec version of the technology used in the YF-29. The Siegfried's Fold Wave System uses less fold quartz at lower purity, so it's much less expensive to produce and they can make and maintain several of them. The downside is that the performance improvement is much less, and the FWS needs an external source of powerful fold waves (e.g. a powerful fold singer) to activate where the YF-29's FWS has no such activation restriction. It neatly explains why the Siegfried is only about on par with the VF-27 performance-wise and why Delta Flight can't simply spam the FWS to beat the Aerial Knights any time they want. The VF-31AX Kairos Plus from Absolute Live!!!!!! is noted to have been improved through the adoption of more fold quartz - not necessarily higher purity fold quartz, just more of the stuff - so the performance of the FWS may have improved somewhat. Whether it has overcome the restrictions on activation of the Fold Wave System, we'll probably find out in the finished manuscript.

For the record, Amazon.co.jp lists a street date of December 29th 2022 for this 128 page joke at our expense.

Well, now we know they're officially taking the piss. Amazon.co.jp's listing for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus has the stat block for the VF-31AX on one of the preview images. To call it "underwhelming" is excessively generous. If this weren't on an official listing on Amazon, I'd think I was being trolled. The specs are barely different from the stock Surya Aerospace VF-31A Kairos. The wingspan's a bit narrower (13.53m vs. 13.70m), it's a bit flatter but that might be a typo (3.58m vs. 3.85m), the weight is exactly the same at 8,250kg, the ISC rating is the same as the stock VF-31A's at 28.0G, and its engines have the same rated output as the VF-31A's at 1,645kN/ea. The ONLY noteworthy detail is that engine model changed. Instead of using the stock FF-3001A engines the VF-31 inherited from the VF-25, the detuned version of the YF-30's FF-3001/FC2 engine the Siegfried custom used, or even a fully tuned FF-3001/FC2 engine, they have a FF-3001/FC3 engine that has the same output as the stock FF-3001A engine the mass production type uses. This POS really is just a ****ing VF-31A a Fold Wave System and some cosmetic modifications. I feel so goddamn trolled right now. That's what I get for daring to have expectations of basic competence for a Macross Delta title.

To be honest, I've not seen that in any of the teased pages of the book thus far. From where did that come?

I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. The VF-25 Master File covered the YF-24 and VF-24A a little in passing because the YF-25 (and VF-25) are directly derived from the YF-24 Evolution specification. To get any more of it, I think we'd need a Master File for another direct derivative like the VF-27 or YF-29. The VF-31 Master File didn't really touch on the YF-24 because the VF-31 is several derivations removed from it. The VF-31 Siegfried that the Master File covered is an aftermarket customization of the trial production VF-31 Kairos, which was a production-intent version of the final YF-31, which was an economized derivative of the YF-30 Chronos. The YF-30 Chronos was developed from the YF-24 Evolution spec used in the VF-25, YF-26, and VF-27, with some elements of the YF-29 added in. It's a LOT farther removed, even though it's nominally the same generation of aircraft. The VF-31AX Kairos Plus is, depending on which source you ask, either a Siegfried repaired with Kairos parts or a Kairos upgraded using Siegfried parts, so it's arguably a parallel branch off the base VF-31. Yup, multiple copies here...

Coming Late December.* Kinda expecting this one to be a massive waste of paper, considering the first VF-31 book was pretty weak and largely copied from the VF-25 book while ignoring the actual VF-31 in favor of the one of a kind ace custom one. * If Softbank feels like it.

Like most things in Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! the situation is rather vague, underdeveloped, and poorly described both in-story and in supplemental publications. Heimdall could probably best be described as "from all over". Like Vindirance in the Second Unification War, Heimdall is a nominally anti-government paramilitary force which was established to root out and destroy a source of corruption in the New UN Government and New UN Forces with the covert (and occasionally overt) backing of interested parties in the government, the armed forces, and private enterprise. Of course, where Vindirance was set against a fascist organization's attempted coup d'état, Heimdall aims to remove the incredibly ill-defined "Lady M" from her alleged role as a shadowy oligarch[1] ruling the galaxy in secret. The core of the organization - its founder and his flagship - originally belonged to the New UN Spacy's 7th Fleet and were therefore probably central New UN Spacy soldiers. That said, a lot of their support seems to come from emigrant governments and a mega-conglomerate that does most of its business selling to emigrant governments out on in remote areas like the Brisingr globular cluster. That's the price of "going off the grid", I guess. Battle Astraea was upgraded with a lot of bleeding-edge and/or illegal technology after the ship "disappeared" and was written off as lost, but in the absence of official specs for any of the new designs in the movie it's very difficult to say. If I had to guess, I would say that the Sv-303 Vivasvat is probably not Earth-level tech. Yeah, it outclasses the Aerial Knights in their Sv-262s and Delta Flight in their custom VF-31s but those are both confirmed bush league outfits. It's like testing out your new .50 cal sniper rifle by taking potshots at a cardboard box. Heimdall absolutely rolls them and takes over the Brisingr cluster in something like an afternoon instead of the multiple months Windermere needed. Of course, the Sv-303 is definitely outclassed by the YF-29 but seems about on par with a halfhearted upgrade to the Siegfried... which was not exactly an exceptional fighter even by the standards of production Valkyries. Of course, there is also the valid counterargument that the film also explicitly establishes that the protagonists are actually rather mediocre pilots... which has some pretty strong implications given that even the previous film and Macross Delta TV anime demonstrated that the quality of pilots can even overcome generation gaps in technology. It's possible that the Sv-303 simply looks like an unstoppable force because the protagonists lack the talent, skill, and experience to bring out the most in their custom 5th Generation VFs [1] Or, given how badly this story meshes with the rest of the setting, possibly a kakistocrat... most of the alleged bans on advanced technology can be demonstrated not to exist in the rest of the setting.

Even in the OVA, it was clear from the outset that Jan Neumann was a prodigy... he's sixteen and has a PhD. As I've said in other topics, the DYRL? designs and conventions seem to have largely retroactively replaced the TV series versions for no apparent reason other than that Kawamori et. al. seem to like them more. The idea that there are a bunch of Zentradi who are such Earth-culture otaku they change their names is a bit funny in the abstract. Quite a lot, the last time I compiled a list it ran to at least three dozen places explicitly mentioned in-series and that was before Delta added something like two dozen more. Eh... other way 'round. That kit is one of at least thirteen that I'm aware of that are based on Master File original squadrons or color schemes and profiles Master File picked up from other, older works like Model Graphix and This is Animation Special: Macross Plus. That kit's from 2021. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur is from 2010. The what now? There've never been definite numbers posted for any of that, so that sounds like it was probably fan fiction. All we've had on that front is an approximate population of postwar Earth of 1 million humans and 8 million Zentradi c.2010, some approximate numbers for the populations of a few of the emigrant fleets seen onscreen (really only Megaroad-01, Macross 7, and Macross Frontier), and a statement that the Brisingr globular cluster is home to 8 billion people circa 2067. Fleet-wise, it's a similar situation. We have little notion of the strengths of planets like Earth or Eden, but we know there have been ~100 short-distance emigrant fleet launches and at least 59 long-distance ones based on the highest sequentially-numbered fleet to appear in a story thus far (Macross 29 in the stage play Macross the Musiculture). There should be more than that, but we don't know if the pace of launches slowed down, sped up, etc. in the 2040s. There's never been anywhere near enough information to even get close to a reasonable estimate of the total human population or the size of the New UN Forces. I'm particularly fond of how many nods it makes to obscure bits of trivia from previous decades. My favorites are terribly subtle ones in the VF-25 Master File. There's one image that shows a YF-29 with a white-and-green paintjob that is a nod to its inspiration, the SW-XA II Schneegans from Kawamori's VF-Experiment article in Model Graphix magazine. The other is Sheryl's version of the Minmay Guard, the Queen's Knights, who have MODEX numbers assigned that correspond to Sheryl and Alto's birthdays.

Yeah, I was a bit thrown by that too... though more because there was some timeline problem there. It seems that Andor did a bit more retconning of Cassian's background than it first appeared to. His homeworld being listed as Fest was retconned to being a cover story, but it looks like his birth year changed a bit too. The official website says that Cassian was 9 when he was taken off Kenari and that the flashbacks occur before the start of the Clone Wars. Rogue One material says Cassian was 26 when he died. With the Clone Wars starting 17 years before the series and 22 years before Rogue One, Cassian would have to be at least 31 for that timeline to work. If it was prior to the official outbreak of the Clone Wars, Maarva may have been mistaken about who the crew actually were. Maybe she assumed they were Republic because they were crewing a stolen Republic ship or something of that nature.

One of them (YF-19-4) is day-glo orange? The rest are fairly subdued, with various camo patterns, mattes with bright trim, black-and-whites, and a few canonical paintjobs like Emerald Force and Basara's VF-19 Kai.

I'm just skimming for now, but it's tipped as arguably the first official combat operation the VF-19 was used in. Long story short, in December 2041 a ferry carrying Zentradi workers from a resource asteroid in the Parkington system went missing. Four days later, the system's fourth planet Roger (yes that's the name of the planet) was attacked by a rogue Zentradi branch fleet that employed unusual tactics specifically targeting weak spots in the New UN Spacy's defenses. The prevailing theory for why being that the Zentradi workers who had gone missing had defected to the branch fleet attacking the system. The enemy fleet employed an extremely odd and unconventional strategem of dividing itself into three and rotating fresh forces onto and off of the front lines constantly. The defense fleet called for help from Earth as soon as the enemy were first sighted, and fearing another Spica incident the central NUNS dispatched forces immediately. The force dispatched included four VF-19As from the SVF-440 Dullahans fresh out of model conversion training aboard the Uraga-class carrier Grand Forks. Arriving 4 hours and 20 minutes after the battle started (nice?) the Grand Forks deployed the four VF-19s via fold boosters under active stealth concealment to fold into the midst of the three different enemy taskforces and destroy their command ships with reaction weapon strikes to sever the enemy's chain of command. Within nine minutes of deploying, the pilots from the Dullahans had identified the enemy command ships and the order was given to attack. Once the enemy command ships were downed, reinforcements folded into the battle area and a decisive fleet action resulted in the Zentradi branch fleet being decimated and eventually surrendering. The crews of the Zentradi ships that surrendered reported that they failed to detect the VF-19s attacking them until after the opening salvo (of reaction weapons) had been fired.

As with all of the Master File books, they're not official setting material and carry a disclaimer to that effect but they are written under Kawamori's supervision and with the involvement of Macross mechanical setting coordinator Masahiro Chiba. Every now and again, the official setting materials pillage a detail here or there from 'em.

It has one. It was released back in March of '19. For bonus points, it was the 11th book in the series... and while informative, was not quite up to the exceptionally high water mark set by the first five books, the Battroid Valkyrie book, or the VF-1S book. Backordered, but apparently still available, via CDJapan: https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEOBK-2323838 There are currently twelve Master File books for Variable Fighters: Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 "Stratospheric Wing" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur "Trail of the Holy Sword" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2 "Space Wing" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah "New Messiah" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix "Phoenix of the Beginning" Variable Fighter Master File: SDF-1 Macross VF-1 Air Corps Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II "Invisible Bird" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-4 Lightning III "The Start of the Revival" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried "The Dragon-Hunting Knight" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Battroid Valkyrie "Soaring Giant" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-11 Thunderbolt "Galactic Lightning" Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1S Roy Focker Special "Hero's Trail" Book 13, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus, is currently slated for a late December release after being delayed... I wanna say twice so far? It was originally positioned for a release alongside the home video release of Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! but got delayed to "early December" and then again to "late December". (I've got multiple copies on preorder, naturally... that's just how the Historica Project rolls.)

Since the sudden change in the weather has me feeling too cruddy to do the work I'd planned to, I decided to poke around a bit at the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur on the off-chance it might provide more information about Groombridge 1816 since it was also curiously specific about other planets e.g. Spica. No such luck, but I did turn up some fun details I thought I'd pass along. Master File's take on the backstory of Macross Plus is interesting, and a bit different from what the OVA would lead one to expect. It presents an order of events where the Macross Concern's Ghost X-9 was already almost complete when the Zentradi destroyed the surface of Spica III in the Alpha Virginis system in 2037. Project Super Nova was, according to this history, green-lit in large part because the New UN Forces top brass were highly skeptical of the Ghost X-9's ability to make the highly situational judgement calls needed to capitalize on enemy weaknesses in an offensive. The requirements for the Project Super Nova Valkyries were based on benchmarking the Ghost X-9's capabilities with a number of extra concessions to survivability and operational flexibility. The upper management at both Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy were aware of the Ghost X-9 program, but kept the dev teams in the dark about the true nature of the program because there was some concern (on both sides) that one project or the other was really just a stalking horse there to justify the other. (Also interesting is that Dr. Jan Neumann's biographical extract suggests someone re-founded both Purdue and MIT after the First Space War. Jan's definitely a kid genius, noted to be a graduate of Neo Purdue and MIT with degrees in quantum mechanics at age 10 before joining the Aeronautical Institute of Technology on Eden and then taking a position as a lead design engineer with Shinsei Industry at age 15. Another interesting mention is that Toran 825 AKA Dr. Algus Selzer was personally scouted for General Galaxy by Alexei Kurakin, who co-founded General Galaxy and founded the SV Works.) They also put a round number estimate to the number of VF-11s that were produced during its mass production run. THIRTY THOUSAND. That's enough to equip all seven emigrant fleets with New Macross-class ships and leave over 17,000 left.

And so, you understand my struggle... and why I'm shelving my pride and going to ask someone on the astronomy faculty at MSU or U-M.