AVF Upgrade Candidates

[Graham]

22 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I may have been off on the power conservation end, but, the rest of the theory still stands I suppose. It might be a siple matter of the walkure support equipment and the different engines combined, that resulted in a need to conserve space. I mean the air frame is only so big, so when you start making modifications, something's got to give. Maybe in an effort to preserve as much missile armament as possible, they needed to sacrifice some space used by the larger railguns, in order to get everything else in. 

Unless we have physical specs on the new engines (we can assume that they fit in the leg, but with how much modification I don't know). It's entirely possible that the new engines needed some additional bracing, that necessitated the smaller guns.

I do think that there was some design consideration, or rather redesign consideration, that necessitated the swap to a smaller gun. It may not have been power consumption, though that certainly will be an unintended side effect, but it may have been required by physical constraints. Perhaps, the mechanism itself is of a different design that lent itself to the application more readily. We can't even be certain that the damage potential is tremendously different. Perhaps the 25mm gun was more suited to anti-mecha use, due to increased armor penetration (after all, the Var did seem to take an alarming number of NUNS personnel...).

It's all just speculation though so...

I don't think the 25mm LM-25S gun is actually smaller than the LM-27S 27mm gun. Physically the barrels, mountings, barrel shrouds etc appear to be externally identical size. The only difference really would have to be the bore diameter, and some modification to the feed and breach mechanism and magazine.

The 25mm vs 27mm railgun debate could go either way really. Without knowing more firm details (which we'll likely never get), such as muzzle velocities, rates of fire, type of ammo used etc, etc, it's all just speculation as to which is better for what purpose and why different calibres were chosen for the Siegfried and Kairos.

As Seto Kaiba theorized, it is most likely that the smaller calibre was chosen for the Siegfried in order to reduce the lethality to targets and give them a greater chance of survivability 

It could also be that as the Siegfried is a slightly later development of the Kairos, it was determined during development of the Siegfried that a 25mm railgun offered some small improvements in some areas, possibly in the areas of velocity, rate of fire, power consumption, slight increase in ammunition capacity etc., (all just my guesses), while still offering good enough armour penetration.

But I think for the moment, after careful consideration I think Seto Kaiba's less-lethal hypothesis is most likely correct.

[anime52k8]

I still don't understand the decision to use railguns over conventional beam weapons.

Anyways, I've been thinking about the multidrones; I imagine if you upgraded the drones themselves a bit and added beam weapons to each one you'd have something effectively equivalent to funnels in Gundam.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Graham said:

Can I ask where are you getting the figure of 23 missiles for the VF-25's CIWS pods from, as I don't recall any official numbers published. 

IIRC, that was a figure gleaned from freeze-framing the animation of the Macross Frontier series itself.

If it is truly the same HMM-5A also used on the Armored Pack, then 20 is the most likely correct count as that is how many the Armored Pack's HMM-5A hold.

 

 

2 hours ago, Graham said:

I'd say given how short the barrels are on the SV-262's LM-27C forearm mounted 27mm railguns, the muzzle velocity is likely to be substantially lower than the Kairos's 27mm LM-27S railguns. 

Unlikely, IMO... the Sv-262 and VF-31A/B are both using variants of the LM-27, which would ordinarily suggest the two are similarly-sized weapons.  Thanks to that large shroud over the VF-31's railgun, we don't know how much of that is actually barrel and how much of it is the connection to the feed system.

Even if the barrel was shorter, they could easily make up the difference by putting a higher voltage on the rails to increase the Lorentz force on the projectile.

 

 

2 hours ago, Graham said:

As a technical nitpick, from the appearance of both the VF-31's and Sv-262's forearm guns, they are technically more likely to be coilguns than railguns as both use cylindrical shaped barrels, but anyway the creators and all published material have chosen to stick with the cooler sounding and more commonly known term "railgun", so I will too.

That railguns don't/can't have round barrels is something of a modern misconception of the technology... one helped by armature-based railguns which DO need a rectangular-plan barrel to accommodate the sliding of the armature holding the projectile.

All you have to do to make a railgun with a round barrel is either have slots in the side of the barrel for a finned projectile to glide along or have the rails mounted flush to the inside of an otherwise nonconductive round barrel.  

Since a coilgun relies on a series of switched magnetic coils running in sequence to provide the propulsive force, the rate of fire is necessarily limited by the saturation point of the ammunition and the coils themselves... which makes them slower to fire, more complex, and less efficient.  A true railgun makes the most sense given the LM-25 and LM-27 being said to be rapid-fire weapons with a high rate of fire, given that as long as you maintain the high voltage on the negative rail your rate of fire is limited only by how fast you can feed rounds into the barrel and your muzzle velocity can be dialed up or down simply by calibrating the voltage at the negative rail.  It's gloriously simple, efficient, and terrifyingly effective.

 

 

2 hours ago, Graham said:

But even if the Kairos's railguns have the edge over those on the SV-262, I'd say from what we see in the anime, based on size and performance the Sv-2d62's quantum beam gun pod appears to have the superior performance over the VF-31's beam gun.

And how!  The VF-31's developers seem to have forgotten or omitted beam grenade mode from the LU-18A heavy quantum beam gunpod... while the Sv-262's developers seem to have remembered the glorious truth that there's really no kill like overkill.

My suspicion is that the Sv-262 has that capability because it's using the newer, more potent /FC2 style Stage II thermonuclear reaction engines like those found on the YF-29 and YF-30, and that it's those more powerful engines that give it the ability to use beam grenade mode without needing extra engines to make up the difference (ala the VF-27).

That does make one wonder why Xaos bothered to customize the railguns but not equip the /FC2 engine-equipped custom VF-31s with a better beam gunpod... I wonder if they're not allowed to have something like that, being a NGO?

 

 

1 hour ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I may have been off on the power conservation end, but, the rest of the theory still stands I suppose. It might be a siple matter of the walkure support equipment and the different engines combined, that resulted in a need to conserve space. I mean the air frame is only so big, so when you start making modifications, something's got to give. Maybe in an effort to preserve as much missile armament as possible, they needed to sacrifice some space used by the larger railguns, in order to get everything else in. 

That doesn't make sense though, since the railguns are confined to the arms and the engines and micro-missile launchers are in the engine nacelles.... and railguns are, by nature, very space-efficient things apart from the ammo feed.  Literally just two metal rails in the barrel and a connection to the high voltage bus.

They did apparently compensate for the loss of the usage of the internal leg bays by adding a second pair of pylons to the custom VF-31 via new wingtips.  (Not that they ever used that capability.)

 

 

1 hour ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Unless we have physical specs on the new engines (we can assume that they fit in the leg, but with how much modification I don't know). It's entirely possible that the new engines needed some additional bracing, that necessitated the smaller guns.

Same reason as above, the systems in question are in different parts of the airframe... so that doesn't make sense.  The arms aren't next to the legs on the VF-31, they're fused into the wing surface instead.

Edited January 5, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

I still don't understand the decision to use railguns over conventional beam weapons.

Anyways, I've been thinking about the multidrones; I imagine if you upgraded the drones themselves a bit and added beam weapons to each one you'd have something effectively equivalent to funnels in Gundam.

Oh, handily... funnel missile-type weapons have already been a thing for almost twenty years in Macross by the time Delta is set.  The YF-19 had missiles with built-in laser cannons, and an alternate model that had a shotgun-like railgun system instead.  If they were flying using a MPD arcjet or something like that, they'd just have to have the VF-31 supply power externally via that multidrone charger to keep the multidrone's cells topped up and it could potentially fly at a reasonable clip and mount a modest beam gun or something.

 

Macross II: Lovers Again's prequels did kind of beat them to that punch though... the VF-4S Siren had funnels in Macross: Eternal Love Song, and the VF-2SS has bits.

Edited January 5, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[anime52k8]

13 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That does make one wonder why Xaos bothered to customize the railguns but not equip the /FC2 engine-equipped custom VF-31s with a better beam gunpod... I wonder if they're not allowed to have something like that, being a NGO?

we'll if we're going with the assumption that the railguns were downgraded to reduce lethality, I could see leaving out the beam grenade mode for the same reason. if you're goal is to reduce casualties you probably don't want to be using a massive anti-ship weapon.

[Graham]

51 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Unlikely, IMO... the Sv-262 and VF-31A/B are both using variants of the LM-27, which would ordinarily suggest the two are similarly-sized weapons.  Thanks to that large shroud over the VF-31's railgun, we don't know how much of that is actually barrel and how much of it is the connection to the feed system.

Even if the barrel was shorter, they could easily make up the difference by putting a higher voltage on the rails to increase the Lorentz force on the projectile.

 

I'm thinking the "C" in the LM-27C may stand for Compact, whereas the "S" in LM-27S is for Standard. 

Looking at the animation and the toys and the models, I think it's pretty safe to say that the part of the railgun visible on the underside of the shroud is pretty much all barrel and the feed system likely doesn't start until near the rear of the shroud, where the railgun attaches to the block on the forearm.

What I'd really love to know is whether the magazine is (A) just in the rear shroud, (B) in the block on the forearm that the railgun attaches to, or (C) actually extends into the forearm (or at least part of it), which IMO could well be likely and give a decent size magazine capacity, given that the railgun rounds already take up much less space then conventional gunpod shells.

I do wish Kawamori would publish magazine capacities for all the gunpods and also missile capacities for the micro-missile launchers.

[Graham]

53 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

we'll if we're going with the assumption that the railguns were downgraded to reduce lethality, I could see leaving out the beam grenade mode for the same reason. if you're goal is to reduce casualties you probably don't want to be using a massive anti-ship weapon.

If that is the case, then assuming the VF-31's LU-18 beamgun  is technically capable of having a beam grenade function, that could potentially mean that the  Kairos's LU-18 beamgun is capable of firing in  beam grenade mode (just we never see it on-screen). Whereas on the Seigfreid the beam grenade function may be deliberately removed or disabled to limit lethality and collateral damage.

However, I have my doubt's that the VF-31's LU-18 beam gun is capable of having a beam grenade function, just based on the fact that it is physically a smaller gun than the larger, beam grenade capable beam guns carried by the Sv-262 / VF-27 / VF-30 / YF-29.

 

 

[Master Dex]

Just a thought... but maybe the reason the Siegfried has a lower caliber ammunition is the simplest reason of all... it cost less. Seto even pointed out how expensive the Siegfried customs must cost, and while it is a minor change, reducing ammunition size can save some money they might need elsewhere. It could also be for lethality reasons but doesn't change the fact these things are expensive, and Brisingr is well states to not be that wealthy.

[Nazareno2012]

25 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

Just a thought... but maybe the reason the Siegfried has a lower caliber ammunition is the simplest reason of all... it cost less. Seto even pointed out how expensive the Siegfried customs must cost, and while it is a minor change, reducing ammunition size can save some money they might need elsewhere. It could also be for lethality reasons but doesn't change the fact these things are expensive, and Brisingr is well states to not be that wealthy.

IMO, it is not really the reduced ammunition size that makes it cheaper but whether that ammunition is commonly available.

[JB0]

Honestly, the lethality argument seems dubious to me. If they can damage a "modern" VF, they can turn any unwitting pedestrians to a fine red mist easily enough. Or pilots, with a good hit to the cockpit area. (RIP, Messer. ) And if they can't damage a modern VF, why are they even carrying them in the first place?

 

We saw the Drakken guns opening craters eight feet wide in the ground, and even if the Siegfried is only making six-foot craters, it is still making craters bigger than people. It is just one of those things, where the damage they need to do is high enough that it is impossible to make them "safe".

[Valkyrie Driver]

If we assume that the Siegfried is a development from the Kairos (which makes sense), it's entirely possible that the 25mm Railgun was not found to have significantly less capability than the 27mm gun, and it was subbed in for other reasons (possibly cost, as Master Dex suggests). 

Perhaps the 27mm gun had function issues when coupled with the other modifications to the Siegfried? 

Regardless, the 25mm gun was effective.

[Seto Kaiba]

23 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

we'll if we're going with the assumption that the railguns were downgraded to reduce lethality, I could see leaving out the beam grenade mode for the same reason. if you're goal is to reduce casualties you probably don't want to be using a massive anti-ship weapon.

Yeah, that's a good point.  

 

 

23 hours ago, Graham said:

I'm thinking the "C" in the LM-27C may stand for Compact, whereas the "S" in LM-27S is for Standard. 

Looking at the animation and the toys and the models, I think it's pretty safe to say that the part of the railgun visible on the underside of the shroud is pretty much all barrel and the feed system likely doesn't start until near the rear of the shroud, where the railgun attaches to the block on the forearm.

What I'd really love to know is whether the magazine is (A) just in the rear shroud, (B) in the block on the forearm that the railgun attaches to, or (C) actually extends into the forearm (or at least part of it), which IMO could well be likely and give a decent size magazine capacity, given that the railgun rounds already take up much less space then conventional gunpod shells.

I do wish Kawamori would publish magazine capacities for all the gunpods and also missile capacities for the micro-missile launchers.

Usually the variant letters are assigned arbitrarily for things like that... but I suppose it could be like that.

I'm not so sure about the railgun's barrel running the entire length of the shroud, precisely because the same model is used by the Draken III and appears to be somewhat shorter.  (I suppose the key difference could be one is feeding rounds in from the side and the other is feeding rounds in front behind.)

My working theory is that the VF-31's railgun is storing its ammunition inside the forearm itself.  Since it's presumably firing inert kinetic slugs (given that the round that killed Messer doesn't seem to have exploded) they wouldn't have to worry about ammo cooking off if the armored shield on the forearm were penetrated.  That'd give it the most capacity without adding significant complexity to the feed system.  One reason I love the Master File books is they tend to delve into details like this with gusto, though they often acknowledge that the capacity for things like FAST pack booster launchers are not fixed because the interior is modular and can be adjusted to increase either fuel or munitions capacity... so there are likely tons of different "correct" answers.

 

 

22 hours ago, Graham said:

If that is the case, then assuming the VF-31's LU-18 beamgun  is technically capable of having a beam grenade function, that could potentially mean that the  Kairos's LU-18 beamgun is capable of firing in  beam grenade mode (just we never see it on-screen). Whereas on the Seigfreid the beam grenade function may be deliberately removed or disabled to limit lethality and collateral damage.

However, I have my doubt's that the VF-31's LU-18 beam gun is capable of having a beam grenade function, just based on the fact that it is physically a smaller gun than the larger, beam grenade capable beam guns carried by the Sv-262 / VF-27 / VF-30 / YF-29.

That was my read of it too... the LU-18A seems to be smaller than the various heavy quantum beam gunpods that came before it, and there's no clear point of articulation for the gun to open up to use beam grenade mode.

 

 

18 hours ago, Master Dex said:

Just a thought... but maybe the reason the Siegfried has a lower caliber ammunition is the simplest reason of all... it cost less. Seto even pointed out how expensive the Siegfried customs must cost, and while it is a minor change, reducing ammunition size can save some money they might need elsewhere. It could also be for lethality reasons but doesn't change the fact these things are expensive, and Brisingr is well states to not be that wealthy.

Actually, having the Siegfrieds use a different caliber of railgun from the standard VF-31 would make things more expensive in the long run for Xaos.  Remember, Delta Flight is one of four VF-31 units in the 3rd Fighter Wing stationed aboard the Macross Elysion, and the other three use the stock VF-31A Kairos.  Having the Siegfried use a different model of railgun in a different bore means they're going to incur extra costs with the need to maintain separate stockpiles of spare parts and ammunition for the standard issue LM-27S and the Siegfried's smaller LM-25S.

They're going to lose a lot more money on the logistical complications than they'd gain from having a smaller, less expensive round.

 

 

17 hours ago, Nazareno2012 said:

IMO, it is not really the reduced ammunition size that makes it cheaper but whether that ammunition is commonly available.

It adds the additional logistical issue of not being able to use repelacement parts and ammunition stockpiles from Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Flights to repair and resupply Delta Flight aircraft.

 

 

16 hours ago, JB0 said:

Honestly, the lethality argument seems dubious to me. If they can damage a "modern" VF, they can turn any unwitting pedestrians to a fine red mist easily enough. Or pilots, with a good hit to the cockpit area. (RIP, Messer. ) And if they can't damage a modern VF, why are they even carrying them in the first place?

 

We saw the Drakken guns opening craters eight feet wide in the ground, and even if the Siegfried is only making six-foot craters, it is still making craters bigger than people. It is just one of those things, where the damage they need to do is high enough that it is impossible to make them "safe".

Well, remember a railgun isn't given a fixed muzzle velocity.  They can dial it up or down by adjusting the voltage on the negative rail... but while it's true those shells will make mincemeat out of bystandards, civilians aren't the only ones afflicted by Var syndrome and VFs are much better armored than battle pods or Zentradi infantry.  If they avoid shooting directly at the cockpit (without the armored cover in place it's one of the weakest areas on a VF) the less powerful round would give them a better chance of surgically disabling an enemy mecha without harm to the pilot while wreaking a minimum of havoc and collatoral damage on the surrounding systems and area.

 

 

4 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

If we assume that the Siegfried is a development from the Kairos (which makes sense), it's entirely possible that the 25mm Railgun was not found to have significantly less capability than the 27mm gun, and it was subbed in for other reasons (possibly cost, as Master Dex suggests). 

Perhaps the 27mm gun had function issues when coupled with the other modifications to the Siegfried? 

Regardless, the 25mm gun was effective.

Seems unlikely, IMO... if the 25mm version was just as effective as the 27mm version, why did both Windermere and the Brisingr Alliance NUNS both go in for a 27mm option?

[Master Dex]

Set straight by Seto again, heh.

 

I can tell you why the round that killed Messer didn't explode though. It didn't come from the railguns, it was a beam cannon shot from the right side beam cannon on the monitor (head) turret, which in Fighter mode of the Sv-262Hs is also the aircraft nose. The animation makes it pretty clear too it is a beam.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, Master Dex said:

Set straight by Seto again, heh.

Yeah, the logistics of building and maintaining relatively small numbers of modified and experimental vehicles is something I unfortunately deal with on a day-to-day basis... it's never cheap and it's never pretty, and the supporting mechanics are never happy.  If it's logistics hell with cars, I can only imagine how much worse it would be with aircraft or something like a giant robot.

 

15 hours ago, Master Dex said:

I can tell you why the round that killed Messer didn't explode though. It didn't come from the railguns, it was a beam cannon shot from the right side beam cannon on the monitor (head) turret, which in Fighter mode of the Sv-262Hs is also the aircraft nose. The animation makes it pretty clear too it is a beam.

Hmm... you are indeed correct.  I'd recalled that shot as coming from farther up, but when I went and checked the episode on the Blu-Ray I saw precisely what you describe.  The shot did indeed come from the ROV-76 beam machine gun on the nose/head of Keith's Draken III.

Man, that's gotta suck WORSE than taking a hypervelocity armor piercing slug to the chest... but it certainly explains why he painted the inside of the canopy red when he died.  Being hit by what was no doubt at 10,000kW+ beam weapon probably burst his torso like a melon hit by high caliber handgun fire, and that's not counting the nastier possibilities of such a high-powered beam weapon hit on flesh that are straight out of the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy RPG critical hit tables.  Some poor schmuck at Xaos probably spent a week sponging a fine Messer mist out of the cockpit interior and controls. 

[Devil 505]

On 1/6/2017 at 9:47 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, the logistics of building and maintaining relatively small numbers of modified and experimental vehicles is something I unfortunately deal with on a day-to-day basis... it's never cheap and it's never pretty, and the supporting mechanics are never happy.  If it's logistics hell with cars, I can only imagine how much worse it would be with aircraft or something like a giant robot.

 

Hmm... you are indeed correct.  I'd recalled that shot as coming from farther up, but when I went and checked the episode on the Blu-Ray I saw precisely what you describe.  The shot did indeed come from the ROV-76 beam machine gun on the nose/head of Keith's Draken III.

Man, that's gotta suck WORSE than taking a hypervelocity armor piercing slug to the chest... but it certainly explains why he painted the inside of the canopy red when he died.  Being hit by what was no doubt at 10,000kW+ beam weapon probably burst his torso like a melon hit by high caliber handgun fire, and that's not counting the nastier possibilities of such a high-powered beam weapon hit on flesh that are straight out of the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy RPG critical hit tables.  Some poor schmuck at Xaos probably spent a week sponging a fine Messer mist out of the cockpit interior and controls. 

I would assume a beam weapon would instantly cauterize whatever it hits.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Devil 505 said:

I would assume a beam weapon would instantly cauterize whatever it hits.

That'd depend on the type and power output of the weapon in question.

A low-powered laser intended for anti-infantry use is going to make a nice little crater of burned flesh and vaporized tissue that self-cauterizes, though you may still receive secondary internal damage from the energy transfer necessary to vaporize flesh which would damage surrounding tissues.

A laser weapon powerful enough to vaporize neat little holes in material many times stronger and more thermally resistant than steel is likely going to cause body-wide systemic damage from both secondary heating and the pressure wave caused by all that flesh, blood, and bone in the path of the beam flashing to vapor inside the body cavity (ouch).  If the pressure change is sudden enough and significant enough, you're looking at the potential for blood and organs adjacent to the beam's path to boil or flash to steam.  If the victim is lucky, that's total systemic failure from their organs boiling in their own blood and fluids.  If they're unlucky... that's a build-up of pressure in the body cavity fast enough that you burst like a balloon full of red Kool-Aid.  If they're VERY unlucky... that pressure build-up is going on in their bones because the bone marrow was flash-boiled by the beam and the bones nearest the beam explode like fragmentation grenades.

A particle beam weapon or dimension beam weapon is going to add kinetic force to that grisly mess, and the dimension beam weapon's also adding MUCH more heat than the laser is, making the catastrophic body explosion more likely.

The Draken III's ROV-76 is identified as a beam weapon, but it's not identified whether it's a particle beam gun or dimension beam gun.  Both have historically been used as alternatives to laser weapons for monitor turret-mounted weaponry.

 

The way Messer managed to paint the entire inside of the canopy with his own blood suggests that he probably fell victim to the "your body a'splode" outcome.

[Devil 505]

On 01/10/2017 at 7:08 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

That'd depend on the type and power output of the weapon in question.

A low-powered laser intended for anti-infantry use is going to make a nice little crater of burned flesh and vaporized tissue that self-cauterizes, though you may still receive secondary internal damage from the energy transfer necessary to vaporize flesh which would damage surrounding tissues.

A laser weapon powerful enough to vaporize neat little holes in material many times stronger and more thermally resistant than steel is likely going to cause body-wide systemic damage from both secondary heating and the pressure wave caused by all that flesh, blood, and bone in the path of the beam flashing to vapor inside the body cavity (ouch).  If the pressure change is sudden enough and significant enough, you're looking at the potential for blood and organs adjacent to the beam's path to boil or flash to steam.  If the victim is lucky, that's total systemic failure from their organs boiling in their own blood and fluids.  If they're unlucky... that's a build-up of pressure in the body cavity fast enough that you burst like a balloon full of red Kool-Aid.  If they're VERY unlucky... that pressure build-up is going on in their bones because the bone marrow was flash-boiled by the beam and the bones nearest the beam explode like fragmentation grenades.

A particle beam weapon or dimension beam weapon is going to add kinetic force to that grisly mess, and the dimension beam weapon's also adding MUCH more heat than the laser is, making the catastrophic body explosion more likely.

The Draken III's ROV-76 is identified as a beam weapon, but it's not identified whether it's a particle beam gun or dimension beam gun.  Both have historically been used as alternatives to laser weapons for monitor turret-mounted weaponry.

 

The way Messer managed to paint the entire inside of the canopy with his own blood suggests that he probably fell victim to the "your body a'splode" outcome.

That makes sense.  It probably also explains why the lightsaber in Star Wars: A New Hope didn't cauterize that alien's arm in the cantina, but I digress...

Getting back to the subject of VF designs, one thing that irks me is the forward-swept canard design on some VFs (SV-51, YF-29, VF-27, Schneegans).  A normal canard swept backwards is supposed to redirect atmospheric lift to the wings.  A forward-swept canard would direct the flow to the fuselage.  Is there some other purpose that I'm missing for a forward swept canard?

 

[snakerbot]

There are other reasons for canards. Sometimes they function as control surfaces to aid maneuverability, which seems to me like the most likely reason for having them on VFs. The only reason for having them be forward swept that I can think is needing to have the aerodynamic center of the canard in a certain place, and for some reason the entire canard can't just be moved forward.

Edit: As an example, the Beechcraft Starship has swing-canards which rotate forward a little to move the center of lift for landing.

Edited January 12, 2017 by snakerbot

[Valkyrie Driver]

11 hours ago, snakerbot said:

There are other reasons for canards. Sometimes they function as control surfaces to aid maneuverability, which seems to me like the most likely reason for having them on VFs. The only reason for having them be forward swept that I can think is needing to have the aerodynamic center of the canard in a certain place, and for some reason the entire canard can't just be moved forward.

Edit: As an example, the Beechcraft Starship has swing-canards which rotate forward a little to move the center of lift for landing.

I think the most likely reason for forward swept canards is because they look cool (I guess?). I mean your logic isn't bad, and as far as I know, you're not wrong. 

Also, in most modern fighters that use canards, they're using them as a control surface, in the absence of a tail plane. The Flanker series is a notable exception, but even then I think the canards are still control surfaces, adding to the super-maneuverability of the fighters.

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

Getting back to the subject of VF designs, one thing that irks me is the forward-swept canard design on some VFs (SV-51, YF-29, VF-27, Schneegans).  A normal canard swept backwards is supposed to redirect atmospheric lift to the wings.  A forward-swept canard would direct the flow to the fuselage.  Is there some other purpose that I'm missing for a forward swept canard?

The available descriptions in Macross Chronicle, Great Mechanics.DX, etc. indicate they're being used for attitude control, particularly to control the pitch of the nose.  The Sv-51 also allegedly uses its canards as an air brake when needs dictate.

[Chronocidal]

On the subject of canards.. does anyone have any memory or know of an instance showing whether the ones on the VF-31 series actually move, or are they just stationary surfaces?  Reason I ask is that their mounting point pretty severely limits how much they can actually move around. 

Even if you assume the panel lines on the rear half mark the control surface itself, that still means they're only good for a nose-down moment, unless the canards have separate leading and trailing edge surfaces.

Just curious, it's part of why I think I like the look of the 31 better without any canards at all.  It certainly would make it easier to pick up off the shelf.

[NightmarePlus]

57 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

On the subject of canards.. does anyone have any memory or know of an instance showing whether the ones on the VF-31 series actually move, or are they just stationary surfaces?  Reason I ask is that their mounting point pretty severely limits how much they can actually move around. 

Even if you assume the panel lines on the rear half mark the control surface itself, that still means they're only good for a nose-down moment, unless the canards have separate leading and trailing edge surfaces.

Just curious, it's part of why I think I like the look of the 31 better without any canards at all.  It certainly would make it easier to pick up off the shelf.

There was one scene in episode 13 where a mook 31A maneuvered behind a Var'd 171 and shot it down. During that 3-5 second scene it showed the canards moving. If i had a Gif i would post it.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

On the subject of canards.. does anyone have any memory or know of an instance showing whether the ones on the VF-31 series actually move, or are they just stationary surfaces?  Reason I ask is that their mounting point pretty severely limits how much they can actually move around. 

Even if you assume the panel lines on the rear half mark the control surface itself, that still means they're only good for a nose-down moment, unless the canards have separate leading and trailing edge surfaces.

Just curious, it's part of why I think I like the look of the 31 better without any canards at all.  It certainly would make it easier to pick up off the shelf.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the VFs with canards have said canards as a purely stationary surface... 

Usually the canards are fully-movable control surfaces able to fold up and/or down as well as rotate to change their angle of incidence and even function as an airbrake in a pinch.  I'm not sure why some of them have a rear panel line, since every piece of art I have shows canards moving as a single piece.  They may also be variable camber, which would pose some interesting possibilities...

[Chronocidal]

Yep, I assumed they'd be a fully movable surface, and looks like they are from the animation, it's just a rotation around a fairly awkward axis.  Maybe the axis is flexible, since the canards can fold up and down though.

The timestamp is roughly 13:08 in episode 13, and they definitely twist around a bit.  Just looks like they tilt up quite a bit before they do to get more of an effect.

[Scream Man]

Seto mentioned higher up that the ammo for the railguns was probably stored in the arm, which was safer since it didn't explode. That would make sense, since we see Hayates arms blow off multiple times, and they didn't seem to excessive. And you wouldnt want live ammo in an area you also have projecting energy shields and being used to block! 

[This Confuses Gamlin]

21 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

On the subject of canards.. does anyone have any memory or know of an instance showing whether the ones on the VF-31 series actually move, or are they just stationary surfaces? 

Episode 4 concert, several shots of the canards moving as full control surfaces.

[Devil 505]

11 hours ago, Scream Man said:

Seto mentioned higher up that the ammo for the railguns was probably stored in the arm, which was safer since it didn't explode. That would make sense, since we see Hayates arms blow off multiple times, and they didn't seem to excessive. And you wouldnt want live ammo in an area you also have projecting energy shields and being used to block! 

That's pretty much one of the main reasons why the U.S. Navy is investing so much in railgun technology.

[Seto Kaiba]

19 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Yep, I assumed they'd be a fully movable surface, and looks like they are from the animation, it's just a rotation around a fairly awkward axis.  Maybe the axis is flexible, since the canards can fold up and down though.

I would expect as much, considering on more than a few of these aircraft the wings themselves are capable of similar feats... and it might be an explanation for a few art anomalies involving the angle of the VF-11's canards.

While I was musing on this I noticed something else interesting...

Normally, a Variable Fighter uses either boundary layer control or canards to assist in attitude control and improve performance in low speed and/or high angle-of-attack flight... and it's damned rare for one to actually use both.  Prior to the Macross Delta series, there were only three examples and only one of those was a production aircraft: the VF-0's delta wing variants (VF-0C/D), the VF-19 prototype and the initial mass production models (VF-19A/C/E), and the YF-30 Chronos technology demonstrator.  The VF-31 follows on from the YF-30's design in having both, while the Sv-262 doesn't seem to have either one (possibly making it unique among Macross's VFs).

 

 

12 hours ago, Scream Man said:

Seto mentioned higher up that the ammo for the railguns was probably stored in the arm, which was safer since it didn't explode. That would make sense, since we see Hayates arms blow off multiple times, and they didn't seem to excessive. And you wouldnt want live ammo in an area you also have projecting energy shields and being used to block! 

Yeah, it wouldn't be the safest or sanest thing in the world... though Shinsei Industry does have a pronounced bad habit of storing magazines full of high-powered explosive anti-energy conversion armor shells on the back of the antiprojectile shields of their fighters.  It would probably be less dangerous if the VF-31's forearm shields were made of ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor like the antiprojectile shields used by the VF-25 and VF-27 and the VF-25's Armored Pack.  That's battleship-grade defensive ability, but it's also ruinously expensive stuff even in small quantities so a cash-strapped backwater like the Brisingr Alliance might skimp and go in for layered energy conversion armor like what was used on the antiprojectile shields for the VF-11 Thunderbolt and VF-19 Excalibur.

With a railgun, the goal is usually to achieve armor penetration and a kill using sheer kinetic force rather than an explosive round, so it'd make plenty of sense for both safety and practicality if they used inert high-density slugs like the ones on the VF-25G's SSL-9B railgun.

 

 

51 minutes ago, Devil 505 said:

That's pretty much one of the main reasons why the U.S. Navy is investing so much in railgun technology.

That and muzzle velocities exceeding what a conventional chemically-propelled round is capable of...

Nothing indimidates like the ability to reach out and touch someone... with a high-density metal slug... at 5 kilometers per second.

[Devil 505]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That and muzzle velocities exceeding what a conventional chemically-propelled round is capable of...

Nothing indimidates like the ability to reach out and touch someone... with a high-density metal slug... at 5 kilometers per second.

The main reason why the Navy hasn't proceeded with at-sea testing yet is because of barrel life and power issues, two things that are inconsequential with Overtechnology and fusion engines in Macross.

Going back to the main subject of the AVF, I was looking at the specs for the YF-21 and the VF-22 over at the Macross Mecha Manual, and I was wondering why are they apparently the only VFs that have overheating issues with their engines in space.  Does it have to do with the stealth features?

Edited January 14, 2017 by Devil 505

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

Going back to the main subject of the AVF, I was looking at the specs for the YF-21 and the VF-22 over at the Macross Mecha Manual, and I was wondering why are they apparently the only VFs that have overheating issues with their engines in space.  Does it have to do with the stealth features?

Well, the General Galaxy YF-21 prototypes and the mass-production VF-22 Sturmvogel II aren't alone in having that particular problem.

Shinsei Industry's YF-19 prototypes also had that engine cooling issue, and it's highly probable that the VF-19's initial mass-production variant (VF-19A) has the same problem given that it's described in Macross Chronicle and other sources as being all but identical to the prototype and uses the same FF-2200 engine the YF-19 was initially outfitted with.  It's possible that it's a more widespread problem even than that.

The "Why" of the problem isn't well-documented, given that the problem itself is only mentioned in passing in the few sources to discuss it at all.  The very brief description given is enough that I have a reasonably good idea what the actual root cause is.  Thermonuclear reaction turbine engines use intake air as both a propellant and a coolant when flying in atmosphere, so I suspect the problem lies with the heat exchange process itself.  4th Generation VFs use thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines, which boasted improvements in heat exchangers and fuel efficiency that conferred greater maximum thrust.  I think that 100%+ increase in maximum thrust vs. the previous-generation's engine technology pushed the engine's thermoelectric generators and heat exchangers to the limit... that the new reactor design was putting out so much heat that it was building up faster than the engine could convert it into electrical power and/or dump it into the intake airflow, which put the engine in danger of catastrophic overheating.  In space, the propellant is the plasma from the reactor itself.  That means the plasma's vented from the engine after the generator has wrung all the power it can out of it, and since vacuum and near-vacuum are great insulators all of that excess heat doesn't get a chance to transfer itself to the rest of the engine before it's blown out the nozzle.

 

The reason I said it's possible this issue is more widespread than just those four aircraft is that the convention for listing VF maximum engine thrust changed from static thrust to maximum instantaneous thrust in space in Macross Plus and Macross 7, and that convention has been used ever since.  Some sources give the VF-11 a static thrust figure, whereas the YF-19 and the YF-21 have separate values for space and atmosphere (though Macross Chronicle has since applied that to anything from Macross 7 and later).  I think it's highly probable that the problem exists for all thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines and Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines... that they all operate with diminished thrust in atmosphere to avoid a core overheat, since the problem is never mentioned as having been resolved or anything like that.

[Devil 505]

52 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, the General Galaxy YF-21 prototypes and the mass-production VF-22 Sturmvogel II aren't alone in having that particular problem.

Shinsei Industry's YF-19 prototypes also had that engine cooling issue, and it's highly probable that the VF-19's initial mass-production variant (VF-19A) has the same problem given that it's described in Macross Chronicle and other sources as being all but identical to the prototype and uses the same FF-2200 engine the YF-19 was initially outfitted with.  It's possible that it's a more widespread problem even than that.

The "Why" of the problem isn't well-documented, given that the problem itself is only mentioned in passing in the few sources to discuss it at all.  The very brief description given is enough that I have a reasonably good idea what the actual root cause is.  Thermonuclear reaction turbine engines use intake air as both a propellant and a coolant when flying in atmosphere, so I suspect the problem lies with the heat exchange process itself.  4th Generation VFs use thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines, which boasted improvements in heat exchangers and fuel efficiency that conferred greater maximum thrust.  I think that 100%+ increase in maximum thrust vs. the previous-generation's engine technology pushed the engine's thermoelectric generators and heat exchangers to the limit... that the new reactor design was putting out so much heat that it was building up faster than the engine could convert it into electrical power and/or dump it into the intake airflow, which put the engine in danger of catastrophic overheating.  In space, the propellant is the plasma from the reactor itself.  That means the plasma's vented from the engine after the generator has wrung all the power it can out of it, and since vacuum and near-vacuum are great insulators all of that excess heat doesn't get a chance to transfer itself to the rest of the engine before it's blown out the nozzle.

 

The reason I said it's possible this issue is more widespread than just those four aircraft is that the convention for listing VF maximum engine thrust changed from static thrust to maximum instantaneous thrust in space in Macross Plus and Macross 7, and that convention has been used ever since.  Some sources give the VF-11 a static thrust figure, whereas the YF-19 and the YF-21 have separate values for space and atmosphere (though Macross Chronicle has since applied that to anything from Macross 7 and later).  I think it's highly probable that the problem exists for all thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines and Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines... that they all operate with diminished thrust in atmosphere to avoid a core overheat, since the problem is never mentioned as having been resolved or anything like that.

I always wondered how heat exchangers would work on a fusion engine.  I've been following the development of the Reaction Engines SABRE for years, especially with its approach to precooling the incoming air flow, but that's a hydrogen burning engine rather than a fusion engine.

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

I always wondered how heat exchangers would work on a fusion engine.

Much the same as they do in a real-world fission power plant. The nuclear reaction is primarily a heat source, not a direct source of electrical or mechanical force.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Devil 505 said:

I always wondered how heat exchangers would work on a fusion engine.  I've been following the development of the Reaction Engines SABRE for years, especially with its approach to precooling the incoming air flow, but that's a hydrogen burning engine rather than a fusion engine.

Available information suggests this is accomplished three ways:

1. Direct airflow contact with the outside layer of the compact thermonuclear reactor.
   Every diagram we've gotten for the interior of a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine has shown the Compact Thermonuclear Reactor (CTR) system is situated directly behind (or even partially inside) the high-pressure compressor stage and in direct contact with the airflow passing through the engine.  There may be a microchannel heat pump or advanced Peltier effect cooling system helping move that heat into the airflow.
    
2. Thermoelectric effects.
   The diagrams indicate that thermonuclear reaction turbine engines use thermoelectric effects for power generation, among other things.  Thermoelectric effects can be used both to generate electrical energy from heat (Seebeck effect) and to transport heat to provide cooling (Peltier effect).  By an amusing coincidence, carbon nanostructures like graphene are excellent for use in thermoelectric systems due to their high Seebeck coefficients.  (This probably applies to hypercarbon as well.)
    
3. Airflow plasma injection.
   Plasma from the CTR system is vented into the high-pressure air flowing through the turbine body, carrying heat away from the reactor with it.

 

7 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Much the same as they do in a real-world fission power plant. The nuclear reaction is primarily a heat source, not a direct source of electrical or mechanical force.

There are some fission generators that do convert the heat from the reaction directly into energy... radioisotope thermoelectric generators are very popular for spacecraft applications and for remote locations that need relatively little power from a high-endurance power source like automated lighthouses and buoys.

Power generation in thermonuclear reaction turbine engine applications is achieved in two stages: the first is a high-efficiency OTM thermoelectric generator, and the second is a similarly high-efficiency MHD generator.

[JB0]

RTGs are adorable, and why I specified power plant.

(Also incredibly low-efficiency, but overtechnology solves all!).

[GuardianGrey]

Greetings all, it has been a while.

On the tech, some of it makes sense on how it's looking, though I still have questions.

Beam Weapons
On this, there has been no doubt on improvements.

The flash-boil of a body to exploding via a focused particle beam (plasmatic) discharge was covered in a YouTube video on Doom's BFG¹, if you are interested in the actual mathematics of.
For unadulterated damage from an unfocused plasmatic discharge in real life, look at the aftermath of almost any lightening strike (Tree go BOOM due to flash-boil).

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)?

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).
If one thinks a focused beam of visible energy doesn't have the potential to incite Recoil concerns in Space, remember that unfocused Photonic energies from a star is enough to push a solar sailed craft away from the system center (given the right set factors for).

 

Projectile Weapons
To ditch ballistic ammo for railgun rounds seems to make real world sense, though the addition logistics (especially for an air-/space-craft) still makes it questionable to me.

On the positive side for the Railgun; there is no space/weight taken up by the charge &/or casing for the ammo, leaving the penetrator itself (a plus in said crafts, were every cc/mg counts).
This also doubles for the charge not 'cooking-off'/exploding (if solid-slug rounds, might not be the case for any HE slugs) if the ammunition is hit.
Making of the ammunition is also streamlined to only making the penetrator itself, and not the added facilities & quality control for the charge (& its potential casing, if needed).

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.

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")

 

Frame & Other Systems
Again, improvements and actually questions on stuff from a layman.

Frames & Armor
With the different types of energy conversion armor plating, it is clear that there has been development in this field, but what about internal structures?
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.

Flight Control & Electronics
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.

Fold-Quartz
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?)

Multipurpose Container System 
This is an innovation that I Originally thought was a dumb Idea, though it is showing promise.

 

Shout-Out
Seems with the Sv-154 Svärd, JBO got their wish for a F-104 Starfighter inspired VF, which is not unlike the LV-7 Valorious Rapier "Excalibur" from the Air Cavalry Chronicles of the 1990s.

 

Back to Topic (Evolved)
Some Old designs could be revisited with the new tech.
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.

VF-0/VF-1 series
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.

VF-11 Thunderbolt
This one, I am going to let die. Even if the MAXL main fuselage upgrades were made into the VF-11C's Frame, the level of new Tech would not be able to be incorporated into, I feel.

VF-19 Variants
Another one I will pass on trying to promote newer gear on, because they did so in canonical for most of it already.

VF-22 Variants
This one I think I could see the ISC installed (had originally a primitive version in the YF-21 & VF-22HG), EX Cockpit upgrade (like VF-171EX) & the space between the back engine nacelles could be placed a multipurpose container system (if not needed for structure/other reason).

VF-3000 Crusader & VF/VA-14 Vampire
Like the VF-0/VF-1 series, a full internal frame work-over most likely would be needed. Though, the size would allow components to be integrated more easily.
The small Flip-up of the rear fuselage of the VF-3000 might be able to be made into a minor multipurpose container system.

VF-XS/VF-2SS Valkyrie II series (from Macross II)
I know they are not Canonical, but please here me out (using the Images from the Macross Mecha Manual as reference).

With the current understanding of Technologies; the design allows for the back unit (in Red/orange & that flip-up like the original VF-0/VF-1 series) to be a version of the multipurpose container system, and the needed thrusters from move to the minor nacelle pods (in Yellow) on the back.
The Cockpit would be simplified (I feel) by making it an EX-gear compatible (considering the follow frame of controls in are similar).
Most of the rest to make it on par with a VF-25 series, or VF-31 A/B would be need debated.

____________________________________________
¹ = YouTube "The SCIENCE! - WTF is wrong with the BFG in DOOM?"