Nied

Oh I don't. But doesn't and can't are two different things. Hell if push comes to shove we could borrow some ASRAAMs from the UK (since all versions of the JSF are cleared for the same stores). Considering how often the UK comes on military adventures with us they'd most likely have stockpiles nearby anyway.

Battleships were a proven weapon during the '20s and '30s. That didn't make them any more obsolete during WWII. As much as I like the internal gun on aircraft the data shows that it's going the way of the Dodo. There have been fewer and fewer gun kills over the years, and more and more BVR kills. The reason BVR combat failed in Vietnam was beceause the Rules of Engagement for that war required visual identification, meaning pilots had to close to visual ranges, at which point thier already unreliable Sparrows were useless. In this day and age of IFF transponders and AWACS the ROE can be relaxed, most aircraft can be positively identified while beyond visual range, and modern AMRAAMs are about a thousand times more reliable than the old Sparrow missiles used in Vietnam. BVR combat wasn't a failure in Vietnam it was just ahead of it's time.

I don't see how that's true. Sure in "first day of war" mode it will only have a pair of AMRAAMs (though that's only true for the USMC and Navy versions and I doubt the marines will be flying without external stroes very often), but it's not like it's stuck without external stores for the entire conflict. Most likely F-35s would spend the majority of thier combat missions lugging external stores, which include a pair of dedicated sidewinder rails, and a gunpod (except for the Air Force which has the gun built in). Given that the F-35 is supposed to be about as maneuverable as an F-16 (no slouch in the air-to-air department itself) I'd say it has pretty good chances in a dogfight.

That sounds like more of a software problem to me, especially considering how closely related the ASRAAM and AIM-9X are. The F-35 is supposed to have an IRST system, it shouldn't be too hard to write the code for the handoff after launch.

Actually the largest Load a F-22 can carry in its main bay is a pair of 1,000 lb JDAMS and two AMRAAMs. The F-35 can carry two 2,000 lb JDAMs and the same two AMRAAMs. While the F-22 has a larger bay, its dimensions just can't handle anything with a larger diameter than the 1,000 pounder.

Well that should teach me to post something without paying closer attention to how many pages there are in a discussion. A thought on that site Graham posted: If the F-35 can carry ASRAAMs in it's internal bays just fine, how hard would it be for it to carry a AIM-9X instead? The two are certainly about the same size. 1 AMRAAM and 1 Sidewinder wouldn't be much, but probably enough to hold off a bandit untill the F-22s could come to clean up.

Well, in "first day of war" mode F-35s carry a pair of AMRAAMs and a pair of JDAMS. Once the air defences have been knocked down though it would carry weapons externally on four underwing pylons, and a pair of sidewinder pylons on the wingtips. Given the nature of what they do I would be extremely surprised if the Marines ever sent their F-35s into a mission without external stores (most likely with one of the internal bays carrying the new 25mm gun they're desinging for it).

Indeed! I'll try to keep the high freq. "noise", but reduce the dirt "amplitude", a non easy task in Photoshop... (I make the textures in photoshop). Well, is the dirt a seperate texture, or a layer in a photoshop file? If it's the latter you can just fiddle with the opacity of it and tone it down that way. I don't know much at all texturing (or any aspect of 3-D modeling for that matter) but you may be able to do it for the former to.

Wow that's one dirty airplane! The weathering looks good but you might want to tone it down. I don't think any self respecting crew chief would let a junior officers plane out of a hangar that dirty, never mind the CAG bird.

Remember, the Macross was originally designed for a Zentradi sized crew(or at least mostly zentradi sized), since a great deal of their jobs could be replaced by a human sized crew on a one for one basis, there'd be a ton of left over space. More than enough to fit a small city.

I think Mike meant that it's vastly superior compared to any other fighter in or near service, not the YF-23.

Whew! I go away for a while and look what happens. I think the main thing that changed the speed agility equation was when an in service Soviet fighter tiped it's nose up and flew backwards at the Paris Air show. In hindsight it was just an air show stunt with little tactical value, but it sure had people sh*ting bricks at the time. So while the F-22 had some changes to the wing sweep (along with changes to all the other leading edges to maintain stealth) and the it's cockpit moved foreward; all the YF-23 needed was a new fuselage. IIRC a YF-22 with GE120s would beat a YF-23 with PW119s by a couple of mach points. I thought I read that in Bill Swaetman's book but I can't find it right now. The YF-23 was the faster aircraft though (at least according to Northrup's estimates), but the difference was quite small when using the 119. This doesn't make sense, nearly all the sources I have say that the F-22 only has RAM applied to it's leading edges and other critical areas, it seems strange that it would be covering the entire underside of the plane. From your description it sounds more like maintnence on the deeply buried engines of the F-117. The plane sits that low for a reason. Almost all of the access panels are at chest hight for ease of maintnence. There's no need for a specialised "pit" for loading or maintnence, weapons are loaded with the same standard loader that the Air force is curently using. Basic history of aviation: nothing spectacular ever comes of slow, steady progress. Be risky, take leaps and bounds. B-47, 747, F-4, F-14, SR-71, B-2----the really good stuff is always very different from what comes before, not just an improved version. Well the F-22 is hardly an incremental improvement. Maybe not as huge of a leap as the YF-23 (I'd argue it is, just in a different direction) but still quite huge.

It does have a superficial resemblance when it comes to it's external apearance, however it is quite different internally. It is generally accepted that Macross city resided in the center and leg sections of the Macross, whereas in the Megaroad it is very obviously housed in bow of the ship. Even if the military sections of the ship are off to the sides (a perfecctly good supposition I admit) why woud they go through the trouble of putting on such redundant features like a bridge and reverse thrusters? Why would they paint it a different hull color with different markings?

Well the apearance of a ship can vary quite a bit within a class. It could just be that one ARMD was built before the other and thus incorperated diferent technologies than the earlier one. As for the difference between the DYRL and TV ARMDs well, the Macross was refitted with new technology after the war, why not the ARMDs? I definetly find the idea that the features on the side of the Megaroad are just hangars designed to look like ARMDs patently ridiculous. Never mind the wasted effort for a purely cosmetic featrue on a military vessel, why would a pari of ARMD looking features on the Megaroad remind people of the Macross if up until a few months ago (from the point of view of Flashback) the Macross had spent most of its service life with a pari of naval vessels attached to it's sides? Wouldn't everyone have fond memories of of the TV series macross rather than the (still incomplete) refited one?

Why show the exhaust at all? In real life you wouldn't be able to see anything unless the engine is set to full throttle. Most of you shots show it cruising, so no exhaust effect at all might be more apropriate.

Make that a little bit bigger and you've got one hell of a great wallpaper! One question: Are the wings all white, and if so, are they supposed to be that way? The standard "Navy" scheme is gloss gull grey over white with upper surfaces (except flaps and sometimes wing leading edges) in grey. I'll see if I can scare up some good airial photos for you to use as backgrounds.

I figure that the Megaroad can't as big as a Nupetiet Vergnitz. Remember that it's made up of components of the original mile long SDF-2, there's a limit to how much you could scale it up and still say it's made from the incomplete SDF-2. I'd say the Megaroad is closer to the Thuverl Salan class cruiser (standard Zentradi ship) in length and displacement or maybe even a Quedol Magdolmillia (Quamzim and Laplamiz' ships).

Those both look good. I always thought that having the sun centered in the middle of the tail looked better (though I guess that's obvious since I chose it for my paintjob). One of the reasons I left the sharkmouth off is because it's a variable fighter. Who would want to pilot a mecha with a mouth on it's crotch?

Well most capital ships in Macross make thier landings in water (which makes sense since it negates the need for landing gear). IIRC the only time we see a capital ship landed on the ground is in the first episode of the tv series.

What kind of ship is that next to the ARMD, if that's the case? I'm not sure why but it reminds me of the Deadelus. Perhaps it's a naval vessel being toted along to establish a navy on whatever planet they end up colonizing.

Mikimoto seems to take a perverse joy in drawing Kawamori wierd (just look at my avatar).

I know I'm a little late in saying this, but that is some excellent looking stuff there MG. You're reaching desktop background levels here. Any chance we could see your model in the SUndowners color scheme I made? ::edit:: Just realized the thread I posted it on is gone. Here's the latest version (with inner fin detail to boot). PM me if you need a higher resolution version.

Edited to put all the content on the new page I accidentally made.

We see the VF-1 fold it's wings while carrying stores plenty of times, especially during the series. We don't see it much in DYRL because the vast majority of combat scenes take place out of the atmosphere. IIRC we do see the wings sweep during Max and Millia's dogfight. Looking at the underside of the Hasegawa model, it does look like only the two standard hardpoints are variable, but the three RMS hardpoints (the ones that seem to be used in the series) apear to be fixed.

The GPU-5 is a great idea, it's just too bad it never worked. Fewer barrels, lower cyclic rate, and a less stable mount than the GAU-8; bad combination. I heard that back when the Air Force was trying to replace the A-10 with GPU-5 equiped F-16s, they had some trouble. Aparently the guns rattled around so much that they were more like an anti-tank shotgun. Test squadrons ended up using it like a stand-off cluster bomb during missions in Deser Storm, before finally giving up and going back to regular cluster bombs.