AVF Upgrade Candidates

[Seto Kaiba]

14 minutes ago, GuardianGrey said:

My only main point of concern is that were are they getting the mass of particles for the beam/discharge from? For I haven't seen a tank with hydrogen in any diagrams near the units.
Are they possibly using solidified Protons (light particles) for discharge, or 'borrowing' the mass for from super-dimensional space (kind of like 'Argent Plasma' for the Plasma Rifles & BFG in Doom)?

The answer to your question depends on the type of beam weapon used.

Some sources (like Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2) describe beam weapons as diverting part of the plasma stream from the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines to power the beam weapon.  It's not unreasonable to assume they'd draw the matter for the beam out of the plasma stream.  (Esp. as electron particle beam weapons are common in Macross).

Dimensional beam weapons like the converging energy cannons used on the YF/VF-19 and YF-21/VF-22, or as gunpods on the VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31, are using fold effects to pull exotic matter called heavy quantum out of super dimension space.

 

 

20 minutes ago, GuardianGrey said:

Then, this has usually been wrote off for lower-powered beam/particle weapons, though with the level of juice being pumped out, Recoil in Space (non-atmospheric usage).

"Low-powered" is relative in Macross.  Outputs aren't listed for the guns on the VF-19 officially, but even the weakest laser weapons with official output ratings are 5,000kW.  The highest fighter-mounted beam weapon with an official output is 750,000kW.

 

 

26 minutes ago, GuardianGrey said:

The negative side on railguns; the weapon itself has to be very durable to handle the magnetic forces to launch the penetrator, with the added maintenance & weight of the coils to launch it (weight savings compared to a ballistic weapon might have been nullified).
Then, the coils need a constant electrical supply to charge the capacitors in order to make the fields for launching the round, taking (assumed somehow) from the output of engines/reactors (already a balancing act with other systems).
Even with Overtechnology can help with the durability, & if the foil quartz can amplify the reactors' output to mitigate that effect, it's a situation that the designers/engineers of had to look at.

Durability is a non-issue in Macross, where super-alloys and OTM composites offer hundreds of times the structural strength of armor-grade steel.

Also, there are no "coils" in a railgun.  You're thinking of a different technology called a Coilgun, or a Gauss gun, which works on a somewhat different set of principles.  Coilguns work by using sets of electromagnetic coils that are switched on and off in sequence around a magnetic projectile in order to accelerate the projectile suspended in the center of the magnetic field.  A railgun is much simpler and more effective, as the only parts are the projectile and a pair of conductive rails hooked up to a high voltage power source.  The projectile completes the circuit between the rails, and the Lorentz force produced by that high voltage propels the round down the rails.  The practical upshot is that while its rails may wear out, it's orders of magnitude simpler and therefore easier to maintain, and its rate of fire is limited only by the rate at which the ammo feed can slot new rounds into the barrel, whereas a coilgun is limited in its rate of fire by the switching speed of the electromagnetic coils and the saturation of the coil material.  The railgun also has the advantage of being able to calibrate the muzzle velocity as simply as adjusting the voltage at the negative rail.

The colossal amount of electrical power generated by thermonuclear reaction turbine engines should make a VF-mounted railgun childishly easy to implement, considering we know some Zentradi thermonuclear converters for mecha as low-powered as the Regult produce output voltages in the gigavolt range.  It's actually kind of astonishing it took as long as it did for VFs to start carrying railguns as built-in weapons.  The VF-19 and VF-22 had missiles that had built-in railguns for firing armor-piercing submunitions, and, of course, the SSL-9B Dragunov is initially used by the VF-171AS.

 

49 minutes ago, GuardianGrey said:

In the canonical Marcoss-verse though, only prior rail-guns I recall prior to this was with the SDF-1/SDFN-series & proposed SDF-2 (referred to as "rail-cannons" of 178 cm bore).
We never seen these cannons in action/animation, and it seems the technology was dropped from inclusion in other capital ship designs.
The other is in the Macross II Timeline, with the VF-2SS SAP (come with a "Medium" Railgun, option for a "Heavy"

Railguns and other examples of linear accelerators are not new by any means.

Electromagnetic catapults have been used on most UN Forces warships to launch aircraft, and were later replaced by a more direct approach that uses the same principles but no moving parts.  

Outside Macross II, where railguns had completely replaced conventional firearms on mecha, I know of quite a few applications of railguns on mecha:

• The original spec for the HWR-00 series Monster destroid called for a quartet of 50cm railguns, though the final design ended up with liquid-propellant cannons instead.  The Mk.IP Monster from Macross Zero had three railguns in each arm.
• The 4th Generation VFs had a type of missile that was essentially a single-use railgun firing a spray of armor-piercing projectiles.
• The VB-6 Konig Monster had four 32cm railguns as its main mount (and part of its propulsion system).
• The VF-171 had a designated marksman rifle that was a composite railgun (the SSL-9 Dragunov 55mm railgun)
• The YF-25 Prophecy's Paladin Pack came with a railgun lance.
• The Queadluun-Alma had a railgun as its gunpod.
• The VF-25G had the same designated marksman rifle as the VF-171 (SSL-9B Dragunov 55mm railgun)

 

1 hour ago, GuardianGrey said:

I was going through the Macross Mecha Manual, and noticed that the structure entry of the VF units (other than VF-0, -1 & -4) was only types of energy conversion armor.
This leads into either two thoughts; 1) that space metal alloy frames are used & not reported, or 2) to save logistics on material acquisitions, the whole structure is made of.
I'm of the opinion that it falls under the first, though other than the text difference between the VF-0 & VF-1, it seems that there has been no recorded improvements in the material for the internal frame structure. This might be due to something in the real world as well, as majority of a air-plane's structural integrity is in the outer shell of the craft itself.

There's still a frame under the armor material, but the official materials just don't bother to talk about it.

"Space metal" is a term that has generally been replaced by "hypercarbon", just as "Gundarium" replaced "Luna Titanium" in Gundam, and there have been some pretty significant strides in material strength.  (All told, the VF-17 is around eight times as strong as the VF-0.)

 

1 hour ago, GuardianGrey said:

On this, I can not really think on adding to, the last innovations was the General Galaxy's BDS & the EX-Gear from Shinsei Industries/L.A.I. Corporation that I really know of, other than improvements of the flight control (like AERIAL II/III flight support AI) systems.

They've made some pretty huge strides with avionics... ARIEL II and ARIEL III are a huge improvement over the original ANGIRAS system, and the 5th Generation enjoys the benefits of fully integrated controls and sensors.

 

1 hour ago, GuardianGrey said:

Recalling that this crystal is needed for the ISC, it (the TO21 variants) seem to be in full use of newer craft, though it seems the other systems needing it are not widely used (namely the Fold Wave system, Fold Wave projector system, Fold Quartz amplifier & Fold Dimensional Resonance System; or are some of these the same systems under different names?)

The harvesting and trade in fold quartz is strictly regulated by the New UN Government, to prevent the proliferation of dimensional warheads... and said restrictions were one of the things that pushed Windermere IV to secede from the New UN Government.  

The key technological advance of the 5th Generation VFs, the inertia store converter, requires fold quartz, so you could say fold quartz is now a de facto requirement for VFs from now on.  Systems like the Fold Wave System, Fold Dimensional Resonance System, fold wave projectors, etc. require pieces of fold quartz that are high purity and prohibitively large... and therefore prohibitively expensive because of their rarity.  On the YF-29, the fold wave system required 1,000 carat pieces of high-purity fold quartz to function.

The fold quartz amplifier and fold wave projector seem to be related technologies intended for two slightly different applications (one being to amplify an existing transmission, the other being to receive, interpret, and jam a fold wave transmission).  The fold wave system that the YF-29 and VF-31 use, the reheat system the Sv-262 uses, and the fold dimensional resonance system the YF-30 uses are different systems that use the same dimensional energy conversion principles.  The fold wave system is basically a power source used to tap into super dimension space for energy, the reheat system does the same but only for boosting engine output, and the fold dimensional resonance system is a more effective fold wave system that also enables the fighter to penetrate dimensional faults.

 

1 hour ago, GuardianGrey said:

Heck, the original VF-1 has now EX designation; though, other than a cockpit change, I don't think those J-series fighters are any more than glorified Plus (VF-1X) Units.

As I noted over in the Macross Delta Mecha and Technology thread a while back, the liner notes for the Macross Delta blu-rays do suggest the VF-1EX is essentially a detuned VF-1X+ with a remodeled cockpit and J-type monitor turret.

 

 

1 hour ago, GuardianGrey said:

the VF-0kai Zeke showed that it could be done (basically, it ended up mechanically being a cut-down YF-25 in the form of a VF-0), though it does not mean the idea would be really practical.

In truth, the best description of the VF-0 Custom "Zeak" and arguably Hakuna Aoba's VF-1X++ Custom as well is "as stable as a biscuit raft".

 

 

 

[BlackRose]

19 hours ago, GuardianGrey said:

Besides as total frame rework (like the difference between the McDonald Douglas F/A-18 A/B Hornet & the Boeing F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, & that is with only a 17 years difference between first flights of; or the Northrop F-5A to the HESA Saeqeh, which has 45 years between firsts); the VF-0kai Zeke showed that it could be done (basically, it ended up mechanically being a cut-down YF-25 in the form of a VF-0), though it does not mean the idea would be really practical.

The VF-0改 showed you could make a VF-0-shaped shell around a bunch of YF-25 parts, not that you could really upgrade a VF-0 into an AVF.

 

 

[Devil 505]

On 01/16/2017 at 10:43 PM, BlackRose said:

The VF-0改 showed you could make a VF-0-shaped shell around a bunch of YF-25 parts, not that you could really upgrade a VF-0 into an AVF.

 

 

The same goes for the SV-52γ Oryol, which is described as "a customized Valkyrie of unknown origin produced to imitate the SV-52."

Getting back to a previous discussion about heat exchangers and fusion engines in space, I've been looking up research into helium being used as a heat sink, and if I remember correctly, helium is a fusion product.

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Devil 505 said:

The same goes for the SV-52γ Oryol, which is described as "a customized Valkyrie of unknown origin produced to imitate the SV-52."

Getting back to a previous discussion about heat exchangers and fusion engines in space, I've been looking up research into helium being used as a heat sink, and if I remember correctly, helium is a fusion product.

It depends on the fuel fuels actually. Helium can be a byproduct of H-H fusion, or even D-D, D-T, D-He3 and He3-He3 are wonderfully aneutronic if you can get enough He3 fuel. That'd be easy enough with Macross tech... but not even necessary. The overtechnology of the Thermonuclear Reaction Engines (in any generation) is so advanced with its super dimension physics and heavy quantum... it can pretty much fuse anything. Hydrogen is cheap, so one could argue they use that a lot.. but it packs like crap, so I'd wager they use something easier to store. Otech materials probably make neutron radiation a non-issue, and the same is likely true for heat sinking materials.

Speculative unobtanium aside, helium is good, but for solids ceramics are good too. Various forms of lithium are supposedly good as well. Aerogel is great for absorbing heat too.. and is just plain cool.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

The same goes for the SV-52γ Oryol, which is described as "a customized Valkyrie of unknown origin produced to imitate the SV-52."

Getting back to a previous discussion about heat exchangers and fusion engines in space, I've been looking up research into helium being used as a heat sink, and if I remember correctly, helium is a fusion product.

There's a slight inconsistency in Macross the Ride's description of Magdalena Zielonaska's Sv-52 Oryol.  The technical writeup describes it as being a custom replica of the Sv-52 developed and built by persons unknown, but in the story itself Magdalena Zielonaska identifies her Sv-52 as a family heirloom that her grandfather flew in the First Space War (?!) and which she had modernized for use as an air racing plane with her family's substantial wealth.  (So, basically, like Hakuna Aoba's VF-0改 "Zeak", it was a Unification Wars-era airframe rebuilt from the ground up using materials and technology from more modern variable fighters... in this case, a VF-17 instead of a YF-25.)

 

 

1 hour ago, Master Dex said:

It depends on the fuel fuels actually. Helium can be a byproduct of H-H fusion, or even D-D, D-T, D-He3 and He3-He3 are wonderfully aneutronic if you can get enough He3 fuel. That'd be easy enough with Macross tech... but not even necessary. The overtechnology of the Thermonuclear Reaction Engines (in any generation) is so advanced with its super dimension physics and heavy quantum... it can pretty much fuse anything. Hydrogen is cheap, so one could argue they use that a lot.. but it packs like crap, so I'd wager they use something easier to store. Otech materials probably make neutron radiation a non-issue, and the same is likely true for heat sinking materials.

Speculative unobtanium aside, helium is good, but for solids ceramics are good too. Various forms of lithium are supposedly good as well. Aerogel is great for absorbing heat too.. and is just plain cool.

As far as fuel goes, the Variable Fighter Master File books identify the preferred fuel for thermonuclear reaction turbine engines was hydrogen slush.  Hydrogen may be particularly advantageous since hydrogen slush can be produced in industrial quantities using 1970s technology and the gravitational compression used in the reactor would enable the fusion process to go beyond a single stage reaction like a D-He3 reactor's operation and exploit the kind of chain reactions normally found in stellar nucleogenesis like the proton-proton chain reactions and CNO cycle.

Aerogel's more an insulator than a heat sink, though carbon nanomaterials are noted for having high Seebeck coefficients that lend themselves well to use in thermoelectric heat exchange.

[Master Dex]

Speaking of compression and hydrogen, though this is off topic a bit. There is news recently that we might have finally synthesized metallic hydrogen. It's not 100% confirmed yet and more tests will be run, but if true.. it's likely the breakthrough of the century. This is an advancement that likely got skipped in the Macross universe due to Overtechnology and easy to make fusion reactors. That said, the big problem with overtechnology is it is a clever mix of unobtanium and handwavium simply because we don't know what half the advancements actually are. We know hypercarbon is an advanced lightweight super strong material but we don't know what it is exactly (we can guess, but that is all we can do), just that it something we haven't developed but is physically possible (which is the definition of unobtanium btw). Bringing it back to metallic hydrogen, I wonder if any otech achievements utilizes that. It'd be a great fuel for RCS and vernier thrusters, since obviously it isn't needed for the main engines. It also has room temperature superconducting properties so perhaps it could be used in the power conversion systems as well, or other electrical uses (though carbon nanomaterials also are potentially good for this too).

All just speculation really, but it seems like something overtechnology could do, so it led me to wonder. It is entirely possible the technology leap provided made such a material unnecessary.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Master Dex said:

Speaking of compression and hydrogen, though this is off topic a bit. There is news recently that we might have finally synthesized metallic hydrogen. It's not 100% confirmed yet and more tests will be run, but if true.. it's likely the breakthrough of the century.

Unfortunately, the news media's bad habit of printing first and asking questions later (if at all) led to them missing the fact that this is only the latest in a decade-long series of unverified and disputed claims of having observed metallicity in hydrogen under laboratory conditions.  That could very well be the breakthrough of the century... for the previous century.  The first credible claim of having observed metallic hydrogen in laboratory conditions was made back in 1996 by the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

Mind you, metallic hydrogen only remains metallic as long as it's subjected to around five million atmospheres of pressure... once the pressure drops, it returns to being normal elemental hydrogen.  Achieving stability or metastability in metallic hydrogen such that it will remain metallic once the pressure is removed or reduced is still the realm of unverifiable scientific theory (AKA a Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).  If you can't get it metastable, it would be impossible to store it for any length of time and the logistics of keeping it metallic would render it a useless scientific curiosity.  All these grand declarations of how it'd redefine various fields of scientific endeavor are all based on the assumption we can make the stuff stay metallic at STP instead of sublimating back into hydrogen gas.

 

 

5 hours ago, Master Dex said:

This is an advancement that likely got skipped in the Macross universe due to Overtechnology and easy to make fusion reactors. That said, the big problem with overtechnology is it is a clever mix of unobtanium and handwavium simply because we don't know what half the advancements actually are. We know hypercarbon is an advanced lightweight super strong material but we don't know what it is exactly (we can guess, but that is all we can do), just that it something we haven't developed but is physically possible (which is the definition of unobtanium btw). Bringing it back to metallic hydrogen, I wonder if any otech achievements utilizes that. It'd be a great fuel for RCS and vernier thrusters, since obviously it isn't needed for the main engines. It also has room temperature superconducting properties so perhaps it could be used in the power conversion systems as well, or other electrical uses (though carbon nanomaterials also are potentially good for this too).

All just speculation really, but it seems like something overtechnology could do, so it led me to wonder. It is entirely possible the technology leap provided made such a material unnecessary.

When it comes to material sciences, we do actually have a decent bit of detail about what the advancements overtechnology conferred were and what some of the properties of overtechnology materials like hypercarbon are... e.g. thermal limits, structural strength, etc.  (There's the most bizzare entry in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 about the impact OTMat composites had on threaded fasteners...)

We also know they have things like room temperature superconductors, super-efficient thermoelectric materials, etc.

I doubt metallic hydrogen would be an attractive option for any application on a variable fighter.  The amount of energy necessary to produce the stuff (at ~4-5 million atmospheres of pressure) far exceeds the amount of energy you'd get out of it, and when elemental hydrogen works just as well in a thermonuclear reaction engine and has the added benefit of its cryogenic nature making it pull double duty as a coolant, the appeal of metallic hydrogen is somewhat limited... especially as the reactors are not particularly thirsty things, burning about 1L of hydrogen slush per hour per engine on the VF-1.  If you can run for almost a calendar month between refuelings on regular hydrogen, there isn't a lot of incentive to go to something more volatile and harder to produce.

 

EDIT: The licensed role-playing game for The-Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named identifies stabilized liquid metallic hydrogen as a fuel used by most of its mecha, which that franchise's creative director alleged was inspired by an issue of Popular Science and the franchise retconning many of its mecha to being powered by fusion.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Devil 505]

10 hours ago, Master Dex said:

Bringing it back to metallic hydrogen, I wonder if any otech achievements utilizes that. It'd be a great fuel for RCS and vernier thrusters, since obviously it isn't needed for the main engines.

Having brought up helium before, it should be noted that modern cold-gas RCS thrusters use helium, which I believe could be channeled from the plasma into the vernier thrusters.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

EDIT: The licensed role-playing game for The-Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named identifies stabilized liquid metallic hydrogen as a fuel used by most of its mecha, which that franchise's creative director alleged was inspired by an issue of Popular Science and the franchise retconning many of its mecha to being powered by fusion.

In the original Genesis Climber Mospeada, most of the mecha were powered by "hydrogen-cell turbines," which may also explain the retcon.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Devil 505

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

In the original Genesis Climber Mospeada, most of the mecha were powered by "hydrogen-cell turbines," which may also explain the retcon.

Not a bad guess, but that's not the origin of The-Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named's retcon.

A few days after the retcon first came to light, I had a good long chat with that franchise's creative director about the change.  He identified the origin of the retcon as being a line in their dub of Super Dimension Fortress Macross Ep.5, which referred to the engines of a VF-1 as "based on a reactor design".  The writers of the licensed RPG went with metallic hydrogen as a fuel because 1. they weren't aware of any Macross source that stated what fuel VFs use, 2. they wanted something exotic and sci-fi sounding, and 3. they saw some stuff about metallic hydrogen being toyed with as a possible fuel for NASA rockets and SSTO spaceplanes in one of that year's issues of Popular Science.  (The mecha in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA are powered by advanced hydrogen fuel cells.)

Metallic hydrogen's actual benefit to space travel is pretty minimal... more like nonexistant if there's no way to make it retain its metallic state without nearly 5 million atmospheres of compression.  Under that much pressure, damn near any gas would make pretty effective rocket just by releasing the pressure in a controlled fashion like a giant bottle rocket.  The only real benefit it offers is packing efficiency, since the same amount of mass is packed into approximately 1/10th the fluid volume of slush hydrogen and you still need a mass-equivalent volume of fuel oxidizer.

Variable fighters wouldn't have a lot of call for metallic hydrogen, since it's best applied to scenarios where you need to store a lot of fuel in a very small space.  By nature, the compact thermonuclear reactor at the heart of a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine is very fuel efficient thanks to the use of heavy quantum to provide continuous gravitational compression of the fuel.  The efficiency only improved with time, so thermonuclear reaction burst turbines and Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are even gentler on their fuel supplies despite an expanded airframe enabling them to carry more fuel internally... unless you're flying a Sv-262, where the transformation system screws you out of most of that.

[JB0]

On 1/27/2017 at 8:04 PM, Devil 505 said:

Getting back to a previous discussion about heat exchangers and fusion engines in space, I've been looking up research into helium being used as a heat sink, and if I remember correctly, helium is a fusion product.

Helium coming out of your reactor would be a very poor heatsink on account of it being already full of heat.

The heatsinking you were likely reading about was using supercooled liquid helium to strip away heat. A task at which it WOULD excel.

 

Several real-world rockets already do something similar, wrapping the fuel and oxidizer lines around the engine. The liquid hydrogen and oxygen  have to be preheated, so they take advantage of waste heat from the engine to do that instead of adding in a heater.It reduces complexity and engine temperature both in one shot. I see no reason a VF couldn't do something similar.

[Master Dex]

All of the above by Seto (and JB0 on his part) all correct. I didn't really bring up the metallic hydrogen to actually suggest it is being used. It was more or less a thought experiment. In my original post I actually go out of my way to point out how the reaction engine technology in Macross makes it entirely moot when it comes to main engines. Seems like Seto felt he had to double down on a point I wasn't even making, lol.

As for the real world tests now, I also mentioned how it is not confirmed and I've also been keeping up on how it might not even be true yet than they've created metallic hydrogen at all. The scientists themselves in the experiment said they don't know yet if it will prove metastable when the pressure is removed or just fall apart like Seto said. Perhaps Seto just likes to get ahead of talk and make sure people don't get overexcited, which is a good thing to do, but this isn't my first science rodeo either, heh. Thanks though, you did elaborate on the important points in any case.

The aerogel part was really just me wanting to mention it cause I think it is cool, I know it isn't a good heat transfer material.

JB0's description of running fuel around the engine is referring to a process in modern rocketry called regenerative cooling. Very common in liquid propellant rocketry these days (though simpler motors do still use ablative cooling too), and it is usually just the fuel (RP-1 or LH2). To start often it needs to be run into a pre-burner to power the turbopumps that move it around though (except in pressure or expander cycles, but you won't often find those on the commercial scale rockets in lieu of gas turbine or staged combustion). For VF engines, this type of regenerative cooling may happen with the hydrogen slush, though I feel the fuel doesn't need the pre-heating since it is going into a super-fusion reactor. Plus I expect some magnetic nozzle hi-jinks are occurring anyway to keep the extreme heat the reactors create from destroying the VF nozzles (as well as them being made of otech super-materials of course).

Edited January 30, 2017 by Master Dex

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Master Dex said:

Perhaps Seto just likes to get ahead of talk and make sure people don't get overexcited, which is a good thing to do, but this isn't my first science rodeo either, heh. Thanks though, you did elaborate on the important points in any case.

Bingo... let's just say I've been down this particular road about half a dozen times before and wanted to head that one off at the pass, both due to the press's bad habit of forgetting that important bit of context about stability when talking about the applications of metallic hydrogen and because they tend to overstate the benefits of the stuff as well.

 

8 hours ago, Master Dex said:

JB0's description of running fuel around the engine is referring to a process in modern rocketry called regenerative heating. Very common in liquid propellant rocketry these days (though simpler motors do still use ablative cooling too), and it is usually just the fuel (RP-1 or LH2). To start often it needs to be run into a pre-burner to power the turbopumps that move it around though (except in pressure or expander cycles, but you won't often find those on the commercial scale rockets in lieu of gas turbine or staged combustion). For VF engines, this type of regenerative cooling may happen with the hydrogen slush, though I feel the fuel doesn't need the pre-heating since it is going into a super-fusion reactor. Plus I expect some magnetic nozzle hi-jinks are occurring anyway to keep the extreme heat the reactors create from destroying the VF nozzles (as well as them being made of otech super-materials of course).

Based on Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2, it's not clear if the hydrogen slush in the internal tanks is used as a coolant as well as the fuel for the compact thermonuclear reactor in atmospheric service.  However, the book does suggest the fuel slush in the CTF-04 tanks was used both as fuel and as coolant for operations in space where radiative cooling isn't as effective.

Overtechnology materials are acknowledged to have incredible thermal resistance, though.  The hypercarbon composite armor of the VF-25 is noted to have a temperature resistance of 3,200 degrees C (that's about 5,800 degrees F).  Reentry heat normally clocks in at about 1,650 degrees C.

[Master Dex]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Bingo... let's just say I've been down this particular road about half a dozen times before and wanted to head that one off at the pass, both due to the press's bad habit of forgetting that important bit of context about stability when talking about the applications of metallic hydrogen and because they tend to overstate the benefits of the stuff as well.

 

Based on Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2, it's not clear if the hydrogen slush in the internal tanks is used as a coolant as well as the fuel for the compact thermonuclear reactor in atmospheric service.  However, the book does suggest the fuel slush in the CTF-04 tanks was used both as fuel and as coolant for operations in space where radiative cooling isn't as effective.

Overtechnology materials are acknowledged to have incredible thermal resistance, though.  The hypercarbon composite armor of the VF-25 is noted to have a temperature resistance of 3,200 degrees C (that's about 5,800 degrees F).  Reentry heat normally clocks in at about 1,650 degrees C.

I too get annoyed at the press oversimplifying things. By their metric we've found dozens of perfectly habitable Earth-like planets around other stars by now (when really we just keep finding potential candidates for such which we can't prove in the slightest to be habitable, only that they are roughly the same mass/size and at a good distance from their parent star).

 

For atmospheric I can believe it doesn't even need to get super hot, most of the reactor heat is going into the intake air anyway and back out the nozzle, plus as you suggest, the whole atmosphere is there to draw heat away outside the aircraft. In space, I'd bet money on it, as cooling is very important on spacecraft regardless of your super technology. Glad to see I was pretty much on the money that the materials are unobtanium-tough and can handle the temps regardless though.

[Devil 505]

1 hour ago, Master Dex said:

For atmospheric I can believe it doesn't even need to get super hot, most of the reactor heat is going into the intake air anyway and back out the nozzle, plus as you suggest, the whole atmosphere is there to draw heat away outside the aircraft. In space, I'd bet money on it, as cooling is very important on spacecraft regardless of your super technology. Glad to see I was pretty much on the money that the materials are unobtanium-tough and can handle the temps regardless though.

Even now, Reaction Engines, Ltd. came up with heat exchangers for their SABRE precooled air breathing rocket engine that rapidly cools the intake air to -150°C.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Overtechnology materials are acknowledged to have incredible thermal resistance, though.  The hypercarbon composite armor of the VF-25 is noted to have a temperature resistance of 3,200 degrees C (that's about 5,800 degrees F).  Reentry heat normally clocks in at about 1,650 degrees C.

The best materials I've seen so far in real life would be Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics, which would provide thermal protection up to over 2,000°C.  It's stated that said materials would allow sustained Mach 7 flight at sea level.

Edited January 30, 2017 by Devil 505

[Valkyrie Driver]

So I guess I'll throw in my two cents about the use of Metallic Hydrogen in Macross. As Seto said, it's only real benefit would be packing efficiency, so, I'd say if anything it would be the way to store VF fuel aboard ships, for refueling purposes. 

 

Anyhow I think we may have strayed way too far off topic here...l

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Anyhow I think we may have strayed way too far off topic here...l

We're certainly open to new lines of discussion... the Macross Delta stuff has been pretty thin on the ground, and will likely continue to be for a month or two yet (assuming SoftBank breaks the habit of a lifetime and pubishes the VF-31 Master File on time).

The only AVF-related topic I've been pursuing in the past few weeks while I wait for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried is the apparent proliferation of the VF-171EX in the 2060s.  For a moderately unstable limited-production VF developed and built in a single emigrant fleet as a hasty modernization to oppose the Vajra, the Nightmare Plus EX is surprisingly well-traveled.  The local New UN Forces, the elite NUNS Special Forces unit Havamal, and even the bandits on Uroboros manage to get their hands on them... complete with anti-Vajra weapons.  The Macross Delta gaiden manga Macross E also puts 'em in the hands of the Xaos branch office on Vivre/Pipure.  It seems like a Gen 4.5 has a lot of appeal in the poorer sectors of the galaxy.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Devil 505]

3 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Anyhow I think we may have strayed way too far off topic here...l

Agreed.

Attempting to get back on topic here, I always felt that the VF-22 could do with a Frontier-era modernization, but that was already covered with the VF-22HG in Macross the Ride.

My personal (if not controversial) opinion, the basic design of the YF-21/VF-22 is one of the most realistic designs for a space fighter in general, especially in terms of atmospheric entry and flight.  Super Packs notwithstanding, the internal and conformal loadout of the Omega 1/Sturmvogel II/Schwalbe Zwei allows for minimal drag for high-speed atmospheric flight, as well as stealth.  That's one of the reasons the F-106 Delta Dart is one of my favorite Cold War-era fighters.

On top of that, the wing design allows for a "waverider" effect which assists in high speed atmospheric flight and reentry as well.

That being said, the SV-262's canopy is the most practical, considering the weakness of "traditional" canopies.  NASA has been experimenting with "External Vision Systems" involving covered canopies and external canopies for future supersonic and hypersonic aircraft.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

Agreed.

Attempting to get back on topic here, I always felt that the VF-22 could do with a Frontier-era modernization, but that was already covered with the VF-22HG in Macross the Ride.

Well... to be honest, I'm not really certain that the VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei from Macross the Ride was a modernization at all.

After all, the only real upgrade is the flight control system was retrofitted to accept an implant-based BDI system.  It gained some weight and the engines were swapped for a newer variant of the FF-2450 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine that produces somewhat less thrust than the earlier variant used on the VF-22 and VF-22S, so it actually has an inferior thrust-to-weight ratio to the production model.  (It's honestly a little worrying that the Schwalbe Zwei's engines are the same variant used on the VF-9E Cutlass, the failed attempt to upgrade the VF-9 with AVF technology that was canceled because it developed a disquieting tendency to spontaneously explode in midair.  That right there should give any pilot second thoughts about flying it.)

If they kept the inertia vector control system, it's also an obnoxiously expensive aircraft to build and maintain.

 

 

10 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

My personal (if not controversial) opinion, the basic design of the YF-21/VF-22 is one of the most realistic designs for a space fighter in general, especially in terms of atmospheric entry and flight.  Super Packs notwithstanding, the internal and conformal loadout of the Omega 1/Sturmvogel II/Schwalbe Zwei allows for minimal drag for high-speed atmospheric flight, as well as stealth.  That's one of the reasons the F-106 Delta Dart is one of my favorite Cold War-era fighters.

On top of that, the wing design allows for a "waverider" effect which assists in high speed atmospheric flight and reentry as well.

That being said, the SV-262's canopy is the most practical, considering the weakness of "traditional" canopies.  NASA has been experimenting with "External Vision Systems" involving covered canopies and external canopies for future supersonic and hypersonic aircraft.

I'm not sure it's a controversial opinion, really, given that the VF-22 is easily the VF that most closely resembles the real-world fighter that was the inspiration for its design (the YF-23 Black Widow).

IMO, the VF-22's unique airframe design and emphasis on internal storage and passive stealth makes it much better suited to atmospheric combat and probably puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to the VF-19 in space.  The way the engines are laid out in the airframe is much more space-intensive than the standard approach, and with the limbs and ordinance and even gunpods all stored inside the airframe while in fighter mode its internal space for fuel is greatly diminished.  That fuel capacity is endurance in space, and without a standard set of FAST packs it's kind of up Septic Creek with neither boat nor paddle after giving away all that internal space to stuff like the legs, the VTOL exhaust vanes, etc. where its rival has both conformal tanks and optional dorsal boosters on later variants.  Not having underwing pylons seems like a pretty big setback too, since that makes its ordinance options more limited 

Reentry's kind of a non-issue, since pretty much every VF is made of materials that can more than take the heat and even gunpods can go through reentry without needing any special protection.  (Plus they have those reentry pods they used in Macross 7 if a high-speed reentry becomes necessary.)

The decision by the SV Works and Guld Works to put a heavy armored cover over the clear canopy on the Draken III and Lucifer respectively shows the General Galaxy tendency to go in for more radical, advanced designs that incorporate more overtechnology than what Shinsei's more traditional style does.  Canopy materials in Macross are not exactly weak, mind you, as they too are made of overtechnology materials that are many times stronger than steel... on more than one occasion we see canopies stand up to crush forces that are also crumpling the fighter's armor.  Shinsei's less radical design addresses the situational awareness aspect by having the holographic HUD on the canopy with the ability to project smaller display screens for zooming in on approaching aircraft, displaying warnings, etc.  The solid armor + display has the one weakness that, if the display fails, you're totally blind until you eject the armored cover.

[Devil 505]

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well... to be honest, I'm not really certain that the VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei from Macross the Ride was a modernization at all.

After all, the only real upgrade is the flight control system was retrofitted to accept an implant-based BDI system.  It gained some weight and the engines were swapped for a newer variant of the FF-2450 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine that produces somewhat less thrust than the earlier variant used on the VF-22 and VF-22S, so it actually has an inferior thrust-to-weight ratio to the production model.  (It's honestly a little worrying that the Schwalbe Zwei's engines are the same variant used on the VF-9E Cutlass, the failed attempt to upgrade the VF-9 with AVF technology that was canceled because it developed a disquieting tendency to spontaneously explode in midair.  That right there should give any pilot second thoughts about flying it.)

If they kept the inertia vector control system, it's also an obnoxiously expensive aircraft to build and maintain.

I probably read it wrong, but I thought the VF-22HG also had its leg thrusters upgraded?

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm not sure it's a controversial opinion, really, given that the VF-22 is easily the VF that most closely resembles the real-world fighter that was the inspiration for its design (the YF-23 Black Widow).

IMO, the VF-22's unique airframe design and emphasis on internal storage and passive stealth makes it much better suited to atmospheric combat and probably puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to the VF-19 in space.  The way the engines are laid out in the airframe is much more space-intensive than the standard approach, and with the limbs and ordinance and even gunpods all stored inside the airframe while in fighter mode its internal space for fuel is greatly diminished.  That fuel capacity is endurance in space, and without a standard set of FAST packs it's kind of up Septic Creek with neither boat nor paddle after giving away all that internal space to stuff like the legs, the VTOL exhaust vanes, etc. where its rival has both conformal tanks and optional dorsal boosters on later variants.  Not having underwing pylons seems like a pretty big setback too, since that makes its ordinance options more limited

You got a point there.  Looking at it now, the VF-22's engine placement does remind me of the ill-fated X-32B, which if I remember correctly, had center of gravity issues.  One could argue that the lower fuel capacity is balanced by the engines having to throttle back in space due to cooling issues, but I'd just be splitting hairs.  Even the VF-22 has external hardpoints and Super Packs, if the VF-22 Master File counts, which invalidates my argument.

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Reentry's kind of a non-issue, since pretty much every VF is made of materials that can more than take the heat and even gunpods can go through reentry without needing any special protection.  (Plus they have those reentry pods they used in Macross 7 if a high-speed reentry becomes necessary.)

Another good point, as much as I dislike falling back to Overtechnology as the sole explanation.

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The decision by the SV Works and Guld Works to put a heavy armored cover over the clear canopy on the Draken III and Lucifer respectively shows the General Galaxy tendency to go in for more radical, advanced designs that incorporate more overtechnology than what Shinsei's more traditional style does.  Canopy materials in Macross are not exactly weak, mind you, as they too are made of overtechnology materials that are many times stronger than steel... on more than one occasion we see canopies stand up to crush forces that are also crumpling the fighter's armor.  Shinsei's less radical design addresses the situational awareness aspect by having the holographic HUD on the canopy with the ability to project smaller display screens for zooming in on approaching aircraft, displaying warnings, etc.  The solid armor + display has the one weakness that, if the display fails, you're totally blind until you eject the armored cover.

Modern fighters like the F-22 have sensors embedded throughout the airframe, which could provide some level of redundancy, in combination with helmet-mounted displays, but I see what you're getting at.  On a related note, at least one company is designing an airliner that eliminates passenger windows in favor of flat panel displays.  This is being done to reduce weight and fuel consumption.

 

I also like the SW-XA1 Schneeblume for a more stealthy and realistic take on the VF-1.  I'd be willing to pay good money if someone did a similar design based on the VF-25.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

I probably read it wrong, but I thought the VF-22HG also had its leg thrusters upgraded?

It says that sub-hovering nozzles were installed, but the VF-22 always had those.

 

4 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

You got a point there.  Looking at it now, the VF-22's engine placement does remind me of the ill-fated X-32B, which if I remember correctly, had center of gravity issues.  One could argue that the lower fuel capacity is balanced by the engines having to throttle back in space due to cooling issues, but I'd just be splitting hairs.  Even the VF-22 has external hardpoints and Super Packs, if the VF-22 Master File counts, which invalidates my argument.

Wasn't even considering the X-32B, to be honest... but you've probably got a point there.

What I was referring to was the fact that the engines run much of the length of the airframe and the ducting for the intakes is necessarily an odd shape both to accommodate the battroid-mode orientation of the engines and the large rows of exhaust vanes under the engines which are used to provide most of the hovering thrust in GERWALK mode.  You're basically stuck with a huge portion of the craft's interior that isn't usable because you have to make room for this unusual engine arrangement.  To the best of my knowledge, no official Macross source has shown the VF-22 with under-wing or body pylons... but Master File's depiction isn't really unreasonable (even the F-22 has the option to hang stuff from the wings).  It's only been shown using a FAST pack once, in one of the Macross 7 Encore episodes where Milia nicks the Sound Booster packs from a VF-11D Custom.  (Exactly how those fit is unclear.)

The FF-2450 engines aren't throttled in space... they're throttled in atmosphere.  The FF-2450B is rated for 404kN in atmosphere, and 640kN while in space.  

 

4 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

Modern fighters like the F-22 have sensors embedded throughout the airframe, which could provide some level of redundancy, in combination with helmet-mounted displays, but I see what you're getting at.  On a related note, at least one company is designing an airliner that eliminates passenger windows in favor of flat panel displays.  This is being done to reduce weight and fuel consumption.

Every VF has had those.  In fact, we see a really weird example of their use in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, during the fistfight between Vrlitwhai and Hikaru's VF-1J.  Vrlitwhai tears the head off, and a bunch of other cameras suddenly kick in to replace the lost main camera system, showing perspectives of the fight from different portions of the body.  (They're pretty visible on many of the later designs, usually a colored tinted panel that's roughly lozenge shaped on the side of the nose, on the engine nacelle, etc.)

Both official spec and Master File have identified these sensor clusters as containing stuff like optical and infrared cameras, laser and LIDAR systems, etc.  The capability level expressed in Master File is actually pretty impressive... the VF-19's LIDAR system is able to detect and produce a three-dimensional image of an object 10cm in diameter at 50km.

[Devil 505]

On 1/16/2017 at 4:54 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

"Low-powered" is relative in Macross.  Outputs aren't listed for the guns on the VF-19 officially, but even the weakest laser weapons with official output ratings are 5,000kW.  The highest fighter-mounted beam weapon with an official output is 750,000kW.

The book The Science of Battlestar Galactica talks about real world science and technology in relation to the re-imagined series.  In one chapter, they go into detail on why ballistic weaponry was used instead of directed energy.  It stated that 100kW is considered to be the bare minimum for a weapons-grade laser.  In comparison, the cancelled YAL-1 airborne laser used a 1,000kW laser to intercept ballistic missiles.

On 1/28/2017 at 3:30 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

(There's the most bizzare entry in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 about the impact OTMat composites had on threaded fasteners...)

Whenever I think about that, I'm reminded of the "Self Sealing Stem Bolts" from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Wasn't even considering the X-32B, to be honest... but you've probably got a point there.

Looking at the main nozzle in relation to the lift nozzles, it does seem a bit reminiscent of a VF-22 in GERWALK mode.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The FF-2450 engines aren't throttled in space... they're throttled in atmosphere.  The FF-2450B is rated for 404kN in atmosphere, and 640kN while in space. 

You would think with the intake air acting as a coolant, those thrust figures would be reversed.

[Nazareno2012]

4 minutes ago, Devil 505 said:

The book The Science of Battlestar Galactica talks about real world science and technology in relation to the re-imagined series.  In one chapter, they go into detail on why ballistic weaponry was used instead of directed energy.  It stated that 100kW is considered to be the bare minimum for a weapons-grade laser.  In comparison, the cancelled YAL-1 airborne laser used a 1,000kW laser to intercept ballistic missiles.

That's why I think particle beam weapons are better than laser weapons as the particles in a particle beam create more damage than photons in a laser beam. More info on this can be found in the Atomic Rockets website.

[Devil 505]

1 hour ago, Nazareno2012 said:

That's why I think particle beam weapons are better than laser weapons as the particles in a particle beam create more damage than photons in a laser beam. More info on this can be found in the Atomic Rockets website.

Call me a Luddite, but I've always preferred good old-fashioned kinetic weaponry.

Edited February 5, 2017 by Devil 505

[This Confuses Gamlin]

On the topic of cockpit shielding, we can compare the survival rates in Delta of people taking direct shots to the cockpit.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 2/4/2017 at 10:42 PM, Devil 505 said:

The book The Science of Battlestar Galactica talks about real world science and technology in relation to the re-imagined series.  In one chapter, they go into detail on why ballistic weaponry was used instead of directed energy.  It stated that 100kW is considered to be the bare minimum for a weapons-grade laser.  In comparison, the cancelled YAL-1 airborne laser used a 1,000kW laser to intercept ballistic missiles.

Without specialized armor-piercing ammunition, energy conversion armor definitely hands a significant advantage to energy weaponry over projectile weaponry by making the relatively thin armor material as damage-resistant as meters of armor-grade steel.  You need an awful lot of brute force to get through that stuff.

Even so, the Macross franchise tends to do just about everything bigger.  A 5,000kW laser cannon is considered a light sub-weapon, and a 10,000kW beam weapon is considered to be a light defensive gun.  The Strike Valkyrie's beam cannon was rated at dozens of megawatts, and all indications are beam gunpods on 5th Generation VFs are rated at hundreds of megawatts in rifle mode and probably thousands in beam grenade mode.

 

On 2/4/2017 at 10:42 PM, Devil 505 said:

You would think with the intake air acting as a coolant, those thrust figures would be reversed.

Vacuum is an excellent insulator.  The air moving through the engine necessarily spreads the heat when the heat is transferred from the reactor to the airstream, so they don't have that vacuum barrier helping keep the heat from the reactor and plasma stream from overheating the rest of the engine... and are blowing the plasma out of the engine to provide thrust, and thus preventing it from remaining in proximity to the engine for long enough to transfer significant amounts of heat.

 

 

 

On 2/4/2017 at 10:54 PM, Nazareno2012 said:

That's why I think particle beam weapons are better than laser weapons as the particles in a particle beam create more damage than photons in a laser beam. More info on this can be found in the Atomic Rockets website.

All told, it's a change in the type of damage rather than the amount of damage... 10,000kW is 10,000kJ/s any way you shake it, so it's the same amount of energy being delivered to the target, and in principle they're both heating the target.  The advantage in favor of particle beam weaponry is probably the kinetic force the beam carries, whereas the laser weapon does the heating purely with radiation... warming the target instead of explosively disassociating it at the atomic level.

Super dimension energy weapons definitely have an advantage over both, since they're basically relativistic plasma weapons that provide both intense heating and nontrivial kinetic energy.

 

 

9 hours ago, This Confuses Gamlin said:

On the topic of cockpit shielding, we can compare the survival rates in Delta of people taking direct shots to the cockpit.

Not really an apples-to-apples comparison... Keith took hit hit on the side of the cockpit, whereas Messer took a hit on the canopy itself.

[Devil 505]

On 02/05/2017 at 11:39 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Without specialized armor-piercing ammunition, energy conversion armor definitely hands a significant advantage to energy weaponry over projectile weaponry by making the relatively thin armor material as damage-resistant as meters of armor-grade steel.  You need an awful lot of brute force to get through that stuff.

The VF-25G, VF-31, Sv-262, and VF-2SS having railgun projectiles as examples.

Edited February 24, 2017 by Devil 505

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

The VF-25G, SV-31, Sv-262, and VF-2SS having railgun projectiles as examples.

The VF-25G's 55mm SSL-9B Dragunov armor-piercing sniper railgun is kind of an extreme example... but anti-energy conversion armor ammunition has been used on pretty much every non-beam gunpod with the possible exception of the VF-0's GPU-9.  You're just not going to get armor that's hundreds of times as tough as an equivalent thickness of steel without some serious specialized ammunition.  

With the VF-17 as a benchmark, the typical 4th Generation AVF is expected to have armor strength that's at least equivalent to a VF-1 in an Armored Pack... by all accounts, that's closing on equivalent to 9m of armor-grade steel.  Consider that the 5th Generation has even better armor than that, and that some (like the YF-29) are implied to have as much as four times as much armor strength as a VF-25.  

AVFs have legitimately reached a level where they can laugh off practically any modern weaponry.

[Devil 505]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The VF-25G's 55mm SSL-9B Dragunov armor-piercing sniper railgun is kind of an extreme example... but anti-energy conversion armor ammunition has been used on pretty much every non-beam gunpod with the possible exception of the VF-0's GPU-9.  You're just not going to get armor that's hundreds of times as tough as an equivalent thickness of steel without some serious specialized ammunition.  

With the VF-17 as a benchmark, the typical 4th Generation AVF is expected to have armor strength that's at least equivalent to a VF-1 in an Armored Pack... by all accounts, that's closing on equivalent to 9m of armor-grade steel.  Consider that the 5th Generation has even better armor than that, and that some (like the YF-29) are implied to have as much as four times as much armor strength as a VF-25.  

AVFs have legitimately reached a level where they can laugh off practically any modern weaponry.

Now I'm wondering if we'll ever see "beam shrouded projectiles" like the Bowcaster rounds in Star Wars, or the "Plasma Infused" weapons in Fallout.

[JB0]

On 2/7/2017 at 9:58 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

by all accounts, that's closing on equivalent to 9m of armor-grade steel.

That... that is a lot of steel. And a useful frame of reference.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 2/8/2017 at 0:14 PM, Devil 505 said:

Now I'm wondering if we'll ever see "beam shrouded projectiles" like the Bowcaster rounds in Star Wars, or the "Plasma Infused" weapons in Fallout.

Unlikely, IMO... the heavy quantum used in the heavy quantum beam weapons that have suddenly become increasingly popular in the 5th Gen VFs has greater mass per unit of volume than any material that exists in realspace, which would tend to give it a huge advantage and firing it can be done while it's in its natural state or as a focused explosion of fusing heavy quantum.

I guess the slugs fired by the SSL-9B might count, since they're technically surrounded by a trail of plasma spalling from the round due to the incredibly high voltages it's subjected to in the barrel... (which is truth in television, if the Naval Railgun DARPA is working on is any indication).

 

On 2/10/2017 at 4:10 AM, JB0 said:

That... that is a lot of steel. And a useful frame of reference.

Yeah, overtechnology materials are a hell of a thing... the initial generation armor used by the VF-0 Phoenix was supposedly comparable to the armor of a main battle tank when energized.  If you go to the old figures, the VF-1's 30mm thick armor offered defensive ability 100x that of an equivalent thickness of steel, making it effectively equivalent to 3m of rolled homogenous armor-grade steel.  The GBP-1S Armored Pack took that up to 8m, and we're told the VF-17 in its naked configuration had armor strength equivalent to a VF-1 w/ Armored Pack and that wasn't an official AVF given that it was a 3rd (A-C variants) or 3.5th (D/F/S/T) Generation VF once it received burst turbine engines.

The VF-19 and VF-22's armor should be comparable to or superior to that, and the VF-171 is noted as being more robust as well.  The VF-25 is even better than that, and the YF-29 takes the cake by having the same armor material as the VF-25 but twice as thick and provided with twice the power, for four times the total effect (topping even the VF-25's Armored Pack, which has defensive capabilities rivaling cruiser-grade ship armor).

One thing to remember with Macross is that, while weapons don't necessarily LOOK super-killy and create colossal explosions of huge amounts of collateral damage, that doesn't mean they aren't a heck of a lot more powerful than anything we have today.  The VF-1's laser cannon is five times the power of the nastiest airborne laser system yet devised, and it was considered a light sub-weapon.  There are fighter-mounted beam weapons a hundred and fifty times that powerful on the books, and some that are likely even deadlier than that.  You need some heavy damn armor to not die immediately from a hit like that.

[Devil 505]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I guess the slugs fired by the SSL-9B might count, since they're technically surrounded by a trail of plasma spalling from the round due to the incredibly high voltages it's subjected to in the barrel... (which is truth in television, if the Naval Railgun DARPA is working on is any indication).

I was wondering about that.  In the atmosphere, the plasma trail is from the superheated air, but what about in space?