Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[TG Remix]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Her sister ship, Graf Zeppelin II, was assigned to protect South Ataria island and may now be floating out near Pluto.

Never heard of that one! What story did she come from?

 

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Available information suggests planetary defense forces vary in size depending on the emigrant fleet that ultimately colonized the planet.  The New UN Spacy escort fleet that the emigrant ship was protected by becomes the planet's New UN Spacy defense force after colonization begins.  So some planets have a Battle-class to rely on because they had the good fortune to be colonized by a 3rd Gen or later emigrant fleet.  Fleets that didn't leave with one (or lost theirs) would have to build one or buy one.  

The defense forces would probably be on the small side too I'm imagining, even moreso with short range fleets since they're already in close proximity to Earth and every other well developed planet in that 100 ly radius.

 

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Or that Marines are simply carried as infantry aboard naval vessels... the Marines we see postwar have been the Spacy Marines.

Either that or Zentradi ships, and they already have their own landing ships through the Quiltra-Queleual LSTs and the Assault Module of the Queadol-Magdomilla class (though with the Okeanos from Frontier I'm wondering if they can act independently from the Oribital Module, or just rid of the bigger part of the ship entirely.)

 

There seems to be enough assault and transport ships the NUNS have that can be used for landing operations. Since the Varauta ships were from a local planetary fleet before being modified, you can probably use their Giant Battroid Transport Carrier for the job, or a Large Battleship that Gigile commanded since that was said to be used as both an assault ship and a flagship. In the Macross II continuity, there is the Daedalus II that I'm quite fond of from Macross 2036; essentially a assault carrier type ARMD built with the capability to commit Daedalus Attacks, with the same exit ports the original ship had on each side. Interestingly Battleship of the Galaxy also included it in its own take of the main continuity.

Edited November 16 by TG Remix

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Never heard of that one! What story did she come from?

I've mentioned her a few times before in this topic.

First mention of the Graf Zeppelin II (CVN-100) was in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix (2012).  She's mentioned and shown in the section of the book devoted to talking about the Asuka II (CVN-99) as a second ship of the same experimental class and type that was a predecessor to the Prometheus (CVS-101).  Master File says she served as part of the UN Navy 2nd Fleet and that her home port was Norfolk, VA.  She's seen among the ships defending South Ataria island in December 2008 in Macross the First (2014), as a carrier launching VF-0's.  

Her name is noted to be something of an irreverant in-joke regarding the circumstances of her construction.  The Asuka II-class was designed in Japan and was originally meant for service with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces.  When the UN Forces decided to build a second ship of the same class, the contract to build the new ship landed at some unspecified shipyard in (West) Germany.  The irony of this was apparently too much to be contained by anyone in the military administration, and she was named in honor of Germany's only other aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, which had also been a copy of a Japanese aircraft carrier design.

 

7 hours ago, TG Remix said:

The defense forces would probably be on the small side too I'm imagining, even moreso with short range fleets since they're already in close proximity to Earth and every other well developed planet in that 100 ly radius.

Defense forces for those worlds settled by the short-distance emigrant fleets were probably initially quite small.  They're probably not small anymore, given that those emigrant planets are within spitting distance of Earth and were among the first planets colonized.  They'd have had more time than almost anyone to build infrastructure, harness natural resources, and grow their local defense forces with the close support of Earth's immense manufacturing power.

 

7 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Either that or Zentradi ships, and they already have their own landing ships through the Quiltra-Queleual LSTs and the Assault Module of the Queadol-Magdomilla class (though with the Okeanos from Frontier I'm wondering if they can act independently from the Oribital Module, or just rid of the bigger part of the ship entirely.)

I'd assume the lander can operate independently.  Zentradi ships use networked clusters of reactors and drives, so I'd assume the lander probably has its own fold system cluster and we know it has its own reactors, engines, and weapons.

 

7 hours ago, TG Remix said:

There seems to be enough assault and transport ships the NUNS have that can be used for landing operations. Since the Varauta ships were from a local planetary fleet before being modified, you can probably use their Giant Battroid Transport Carrier for the job, or a Large Battleship that Gigile commanded since that was said to be used as both an assault ship and a flagship. In the Macross II continuity, there is the Daedalus II that I'm quite fond of from Macross 2036; essentially a assault carrier type ARMD built with the capability to commit Daedalus Attacks, with the same exit ports the original ship had on each side. Interestingly Battleship of the Galaxy also included it in its own take of the main continuity.

For a given value of "assault"... they're not really made to land ground forces.

The Daedalus II-class is as close as it really gets, but it's not an assault lander like the Daedalus was.  It's a dedicated space carrier like the ARMD-class but with the capability to carry out ramming attacks.

[TG Remix]

So I wanted to talk about the production side of designs for a bit.

I was looking through the "This is Special Animation - Macross 7" artbook, and something caught my eye on page 52, the final page where it was going through the last of the Varauta ships it had presented there. I noticed a design that's nowhere seen anywhere else, from concept art books to any official mentions elsewhere:

 

Underneath the High Speed Raiding Space Cruiser there's a similar looking but different ship dubbed the "バトルスーツ母艦," which roughly translates as "Battle Suit Mothership." To me at least somewhere in 7's production it seems to imply that Zentradi Battle Suits was going to be apart of the Varauta Army's arsenal, which would track considering they got a whole group of unwilling recruits of Zentran through the Macross 5 fleet. It also seems like it would eventually become what we know as the Large Battroid Transport Carrier/Mothership (バトロイド大型輸送母艦), as not only it's not in this book along with other later designs like the Vanguard Frigate and New Giant Carrier, but it also has some design similarities like the tube pattern, the bow mounted beam guns, and the flat stern. Switch battle suits to the functionally similar Battroids, and I think I kinda cracked the case.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Underneath the High Speed Raiding Space Cruiser there's a similar looking but different ship dubbed the "バトルスーツ母艦," which roughly translates as "Battle Suit Mothership." To me at least somewhere in 7's production it seems to imply that Zentradi Battle Suits was going to be apart of the Varauta Army's arsenal, which would track considering they got a whole group of unwilling recruits of Zentran through the Macross 5 fleet. It also seems like it would eventually become what we know as the Large Battroid Transport Carrier/Mothership (バトロイド大型輸送母艦), as not only it's not in this book along with other later designs like the Vanguard Frigate and New Giant Carrier, but it also has some design similarities like the tube pattern, the bow mounted beam guns, and the flat stern. Switch battle suits to the functionally similar Battroids, and I think I kinda cracked the case.

Yeah, that's the conclusion I would've reached as well based on the similarities in the bow's design... that this was an early draft of the Battroid Large Transport Carrier that made its appearance in Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me!.

[TG Remix]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, that's the conclusion I would've reached as well based on the similarities in the bow's design... that this was an early draft of the Battroid Large Transport Carrier that made its appearance in Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me!.

So that's why I have no recollection on it in the TV show! The short movie iirc was something that was released days after the final episode.

 

In universe I always was kind of confused about its usage within the Varauta Army; the New Giant Carrier was said to be built because they lacked a dedicated carrier like the more conventional Uraga or Guantanamo classes. Yet the Battroid Transport Carrier is described as having launch catapults for fighters, even if it's mainly designed to have them as cargo. I guess it comes to something like the differences between a aircraft carrier and a landing helicopter assault ship, where the latter is more generalized and more firepower oriented?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

So that's why I have no recollection on it in the TV show! The short movie iirc was something that was released days after the final episode.

Yeah, that's the one.  It's basically just a bonus TV episode, but it's classified as a movie because it was screened in cinemas as a special feature.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

In universe I always was kind of confused about its usage within the Varauta Army; the New Giant Carrier was said to be built because they lacked a dedicated carrier like the more conventional Uraga or Guantanamo classes. Yet the Battroid Transport Carrier is described as having launch catapults for fighters, even if it's mainly designed to have them as cargo. I guess it comes to something like the differences between a aircraft carrier and a landing helicopter assault ship, where the latter is more generalized and more firepower oriented?

The key word in that description is "dedicated".

Most ships in Macross, even those which are not strictly speaking aircraft carriers, carry at least a few combat mecha for defense purposes.  The ships of the Zentradi forces are mainly considered to be classes of battleship, and yet they still have hangars supporting units of battle pods and battle suits for defensive and offensive use.  The New UN Spacy similarly deploys small numbers of Valkyries aboard its Northampton-class frigates and stealth cruisers like the Algenicus as seen in Macross 7 PLUS and Macross M3.

Where the New UN Spacy from the 2030s and beyond seems to favor a reasonably strict division of roles between escort warships and dedicated aircraft carriers, the Protodeviln-controlled forces of the Varauta fleet follow the earlier and more Zentradi-like model of multipurposeful ships.  Most of their fleet is made up of cruisers and battleships that are a good deal larger than anything in the New UN Spacy's regular forces, in order to accommodate having the heavy armor and weapons of a space battleship while also having room for a modest fighter complement. 

The Varauta standard battleship has a fighter complement roughly comparable to a Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, but it's more than twice the size, much more expensive, and nevertheless still nowhere near as effective as that much smaller carrier.  With only four catapults that must be fired one at a time, the Varauta battleship needs a lot longer to get its 40 aircraft in the air compared to the Guantanamo and its ability to operate eight catapults in parallel.  It's why Macross Chronicle notes that the Varauta need to field 2-3 of the standard battleship to achieve the same operational capacity as a single NUNS carrier.  The same is true for the larger ships too, like the assault ship Gigile favored.  It was nearly 900m long, cost ten times as much as a regular battleship, and still couldn't rival the carrier performance of a single Uraga-class despite a similar aircraft capacity.  The large Battroid carrier is kind of that idea taken to its logical extreme.  It can carry a hundred Valkyries, but it can't deploy them efficiently or effectively because it's simply not set up to handle that many aircraft.  Despite its enormous capacity, it's worse off than smaller ships of the line in terms of carrier performance and a lot more vulnerable for it.

Faced with the Spacy's ability to get a crapton of aircraft in the air quickly, the Varauta realized they needed similiar capabilities and thus the new giant carrier was born.  It was that lesson taken to its logical extreme... a ship that had one job: get the maximum possible number of fighters in the air all at once.  The ship is basically a massive hangar complex and eight three-plane scramble catapult decks strapped to an engine.  It's noted that it can launch 24 aircraft simultaneously and be ready to launch 24 more in two and a half minutes, allowing it to get its entire complement of 200 aircraft in the air in just 20 minutes.  That is an insane pace that says that the Varauta were absolutely not messing about when they designed the thing.

Luckily for the Spacy, the Varauta forces were late to the realization and only managed to build three of the bloody things before the war ended.

[TG Remix]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Where the New UN Spacy from the 2030s and beyond seems to favor a reasonably strict division of roles between escort warships and dedicated aircraft carriers, the Protodeviln-controlled forces of the Varauta fleet follow the earlier and more Zentradi-like model of multipurposeful ships.  Most of their fleet is made up of cruisers and battleships that are a good deal larger than anything in the New UN Spacy's regular forces, in order to accommodate having the heavy armor and weapons of a space battleship while also having room for a modest fighter complement. 

Does make me want to bring the topic that despite all of their inherit differences from what the Macross 7 fleet has in its arsenal...They were UN ships from the start! Even when not citing Macross Chronicle, in the Kazutaka Miyatake Design Works book, Miyatake states that the concept behind them is that they were "Earth ships" that were remodeled, not unlike what happened with the conversion from the VF-14 to the Fz-109A. Whether that means they were either local UN Varauta ship classes, or uncommon but standard non-hero designs like the VF-14 hidden in certain corners of the galaxy, they do show similar design pathos that showed they were human designed, as they were built with stealth exteriors and "planks" of Energy Conversion Army that even as overtechnology in practice it was only applied to the mechs for Zentradi and not their ships.

 

Personally, with the relevation that they were UN ships, it'd be nice to see a bit more variety in terms of ship types within the military, even if we'll probably never see them on the side of the protagonists as the carriers and Northampton since 7 have been going strong for 4 series since. (Not sure if I should self promote here, but it's a nice little exercise to edit the ships to make them look more conventional before they were modified here)

 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Varauta standard battleship has a fighter complement roughly comparable to a Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, but it's more than twice the size, much more expensive, and nevertheless still nowhere near as effective as that much smaller carrier.  With only four catapults that must be fired one at a time, the Varauta battleship needs a lot longer to get its 40 aircraft in the air compared to the Guantanamo and its ability to operate eight catapults in parallel.  It's why Macross Chronicle notes that the Varauta need to field 2-3 of the standard battleship to achieve the same operational capacity as a single NUNS carrier. 

I'm not sure if it's said that the Standard Battleline Battleship was said to be particularly expensive. If anything Chronicles infers that costs are kept low as a mass production type, and the performance is comparable to the average UNG ship of its period. Though I suppose compared to the insanely optimized and inexpensive design like the Guantanamo it would be more costly by comparison. Though it is true, it's a battleship first and foremost...Which does kinda make me wonder if the hull designations of these things under UN control if they'd have the same moniker as the big ships like BB-61 USS Iowa.

 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The same is true for the larger ships too, like the assault ship Gigile favored.  It was nearly 900m long, cost ten times as much as a regular battleship, and still couldn't rival the carrier performance of a single Uraga-class despite a similar aircraft capacity.  The large Battroid carrier is kind of that idea taken to its logical extreme.  It can carry a hundred Valkyries, but it can't deploy them efficiently or effectively because it's simply not set up to handle that many aircraft.  Despite its enormous capacity, it's worse off than smaller ships of the line in terms of carrier performance and a lot more vulnerable for it.

I'm more convinced it's more to ferry Battroids and other equipment to one place to another, something more analogous to the Quiltra Queleual Landing Ship Tanks. Seems to me that considering the Flagship Carrier Gepelnitch decided to make his home not only was designed to wipe out a small scale Zentradi fleet, but to also dock 30-40 frigates as well as 6-8 bigger ships within its interior docks, I'm assuming that it was going to do much of the grunt work when it comes to sending many VFs at a time when push comes to shove. A 500 variable fighter capacity is nothing to scoff at in the slightest, probably more than some entire fleets and planetary defenses alone through that.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Does make me want to bring the topic that despite all of their inherit differences from what the Macross 7 fleet has in its arsenal...They were UN ships from the start! Even when not citing Macross Chronicle, in the Kazutaka Miyatake Design Works book, Miyatake states that the concept behind them is that they were "Earth ships" that were remodeled, not unlike what happened with the conversion from the VF-14 to the Fz-109A. Whether that means they were either local UN Varauta ship classes, or uncommon but standard non-hero designs like the VF-14 hidden in certain corners of the galaxy, they do show similar design pathos that showed they were human designed, as they were built with stealth exteriors and "planks" of Energy Conversion Army that even as overtechnology in practice it was only applied to the mechs for Zentradi and not their ships.

Most of them, anyway.

The "new giant carrier" type was an original development by the Varauta forces late in their conflict with the Macross 7 fleet, and Gigile's assault ship is indicated to be something developed from the Varauta standard battleship so that may also be an original design of theirs.

Exactly what they looked like before has of course never been revealed, but all things considered it seems likely that many of them were transitional designs used after the First Space War but before the introduction of the classes we're familiar with accompanying 3rd Generation and later emigrant fleets.  Varauta 3198XE was discovered and settled by the Megaroad-13 and its accompanying fleet in 2025.  (Soon, isn't it?)  As far as we know, they didn't have any factory satellites until the colony was taken over by the Protodeviln eighteen years later in 2043.  Building ~500 hundred new warships between 2025 and 2043 while also building up colony infrastructure and exploring other worlds in the system strikes me as a bit much for the ~80,000 people of the colony to do.  That they departed Earth with most of those ships strikes me as a lot more likely, since Earth DID have the manufacturing muscle to casually build something the scale of the Varauta fleet flagship... one of the largest human-built ships in the setting.

 

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I'm not sure if it's said that the Standard Battleline Battleship was said to be particularly expensive. If anything Chronicles infers that costs are kept low as a mass production type, and the performance is comparable to the average UNG ship of its period. Though I suppose compared to the insanely optimized and inexpensive design like the Guantanamo it would be more costly by comparison.

Macross Chronicle notes that mass-production of the standard battleship made it economical to produce, but that suggests that the individual unit cost is probably quite high if the only way to do it economically is in bulk.

It's also a much more complex design than the Guantanamo-class Advanced ARMD, given its combination of battleship and carrier functions.

 

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Though it is true, it's a battleship first and foremost...Which does kinda make me wonder if the hull designations of these things under UN control if they'd have the same moniker as the big ships like BB-61 USS Iowa.

Given that the Earth UN Forces and New UN Forces use a hull classification symbol system that's either a direct continuation of, or heavily inspired by, that of the pre-war United States I would agree that it's likely that the battleships would be BB-something under the Spacy's system.

Older lore had the ARMD-class ships interchangeably using ARMD-## and SCV-##.  Macross 7-era lore has revised that to ARMD-## and CV-##, with other carriers shown to use CV-## and frigates shown to use FF-##.  Frontier-era screencaps show that they've started sticking mission letters onto them too.  The Northampton-class ships are marked with FFM-##, while the Guantanamo-class ships are CVR-## and the Uraga-class CVS-##.  Those don't have a clear interpretation.  I doubt those frigates are minelayers, which is what the now-disused M mission letter normally meant, though it would make sense for the Guantanamo-class ships to be considered part of the fleet's radar picket.

 

11 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I'm more convinced it's more to ferry Battroids and other equipment to one place to another, something more analogous to the Quiltra Queleual Landing Ship Tanks. Seems to me that considering the Flagship Carrier Gepelnitch decided to make his home not only was designed to wipe out a small scale Zentradi fleet, but to also dock 30-40 frigates as well as 6-8 bigger ships within its interior docks, I'm assuming that it was going to do much of the grunt work when it comes to sending many VFs at a time when push comes to shove. A 500 variable fighter capacity is nothing to scoff at in the slightest, probably more than some entire fleets and planetary defenses alone through that.

That wouldn't really make it analogous to a Quiltra Queleual-class ship.  The Quiltra Queleual is basically an aircraft carrier for reentry pods.  It has the means to move the very many battle pods stored in it around and get them to the target.  The Varauta battroid carrier doesn't seem to have that, to the extent that it's described as being inferior as a carrier to all the other Varauta ships, which are already noted to be pretty bad in that regard.

The Varauta flagship is a whole different kind of beast.  It's made to be something equivalent to a Battle-class, with the firepower to engage an enemy fleet solo and the fighters to back it up.  It's built to be a carrier, and a mothership to smaller warships similar to a Zentradi mobile fortress.  It's also so big it can't rapidly move into or out of combat, making it unsuitable for raiding.

[TehPW]

 I'm having a lazy Saturday night, my wife & minion & The Pants are out & about and I'm listening to random and subscribed YT stuff, when I'm not playing DDO. This YT is renown for his F-14 RIO knowledge and tonight's topic on when the F-14 program got DFCS installed made me think: Has anyone done a proper, actually took the time to think 'Can It Fly?' look at the VF-1 (maybe the VF-0, which looks more like a design that would fly... like a brick) on DCS or similar? I'm not talking video games, which do NOT replicate flight characteristics (just X/Y/Z axis on a static image) but the various popular flight sims that gained traction and functionality in the past 5 years...?

[Seto Kaiba]

37 minutes ago, TehPW said:

I'm having a lazy Saturday night, my wife & minion & The Pants are out & about and I'm listening to random and subscribed YT stuff, when I'm not playing DDO. This YT is renown for his F-14 RIO knowledge and tonight's topic on when the F-14 program got DFCS installed made me think: Has anyone done a proper, actually took the time to think 'Can It Fly?' look at the VF-1 (maybe the VF-0, which looks more like a design that would fly... like a brick) on DCS or similar? I'm not talking video games, which do NOT replicate flight characteristics (just X/Y/Z axis on a static image) but the various popular flight sims that gained traction and functionality in the past 5 years...?

With enough thrust, anything can be made to fly.

Flying well or controllably or stably... now that's another matter.

Can it fly?  Yes.  Absolutely it can.  It's actually got almost 18% more wing area to play with than other fighters in its size class (e.g. the F-16).  Its aerodynamics are reasonably good, though like the YF-23 it uses a combination of a V-tail and thrust vectoring in place of elevators.  Not counting overboost, its engine power is very close to that of the F-22 Raptor while weighing 11 metric tons less at standard takeoff weight.  It's not going to be super stable, as noted in Macross Delta by Mirage Jenius, but that's partly intentional since high mobility and instability are essentially two sides of the same coin (and are why digital flight control systems exist to take some of the burden of maintaining stable flight off the pilot).  

People have modeled them in immersive flight sims and they DO fly... though not well.  Without the various technological cheats (all of which exist in the real world) that the VF-1 uses to fly well, the end result tends to be somewhat uninspiring.  Most "realistic" sims have limited or no support for thrust vectoring or ruddervators (being designed around the needs of more conventional civilian aircraft) and often don't bother at all with unglamorous or highly specialized systems like blown flaps or boundary layer control or strictly experimental ones like vortex flow control.

Both Western and Japanese fans have built and flown model VF-1s as well, though a consistent theme is that they typically don't even try to do the ruddervators or thrust vectoring and instead use the beavertail as an ad hoc elevator to achieve more traditional attitude control.

[jvmacross]

10 hours ago, TehPW said:

 I'm having a lazy Saturday night, my wife & minion & The Pants are out & about and I'm listening to random and subscribed YT stuff, when I'm not playing DDO. This YT is renown for his F-14 RIO knowledge and tonight's topic on when the F-14 program got DFCS installed made me think: Has anyone done a proper, actually took the time to think 'Can It Fly?' look at the VF-1 (maybe the VF-0, which looks more like a design that would fly... like a brick) on DCS or similar? I'm not talking video games, which do NOT replicate flight characteristics (just X/Y/Z axis on a static image) but the various popular flight sims that gained traction and functionality in the past 5 years...?

 

[TehPW]

yes, someone who is into civilian model flying planes created mockups of the VF-1... but that still does replicate the real thing... with all the bells whistles that Seto mentioned, these miniature planes still dont fully replicate the flight. No front slats no proper flaps that extend, no aspects in how those upper inlets affect flight (do they actually close in flight?)

these are concepts i wonder if anyone has done in Wind Tunnels? I look over my shoulder to a anime wall scroll i bought back when i was working/living the Ventura area in the early 2000s, of a VF-1J looking at it from the Pilots 5 oclock (sans the UNSPACY Kite) and that art IS flying...

IDK. I guess I'm having Old fart moments...

 

 

[pengbuzz]

I also wonder what role RCS thrusters play in them flying in atmosphere? I would assume they take over for the missing horizontal stabilizers and whatnot in the animes.

[Seto Kaiba]

24 minutes ago, TehPW said:

yes, someone who is into civilian model flying planes created mockups of the VF-1... but that still does replicate the real thing... with all the bells whistles that Seto mentioned, these miniature planes still dont fully replicate the flight. No front slats no proper flaps that extend, no aspects in how those upper inlets affect flight (do they actually close in flight?)

Quite a few of those bells and whistles would be difficult to replicate on a scale model like that... the slats, the double-slotted fowler flaps, the ruddervators, the wingtip verniers used for attitude control, the boundary layer control system, etc.

The dorsal sub-intakes do remain open in flight.  Like most things on the VF-1's design they fulfill multiple purposes but the two main ones are serving as an intake for the VF-1's boundary layer control system (which is used for laminar flow control to reduce parasitic drag and minimum airspeed and increase the usable angle of attack the aircraft) and as an inlet for one of the Valkyrie's heat exchangers that's used to vent waste heat in atmospheric flight.  The sub-intake is shuttered in Battroid mode and in space flight, since heat can be exhausted from the exchanger directly upwards and there's no air for passive cooling in space.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie volumes 1 and 2 describe another use case for the intakes specific to Valkyries operating in space.  Essentially, the intakes don't serve any functional purpose on their own in space but they are a substantial cavity in the airframe in close proximity to the engines... making them an ideal place to install an optional set of propellant tanks.  The intake spaces are filled in with a set of soft plastic fuel bladders containing supplemental propellant to extend the Valkyrie's range in space.

Master File also asserts that later models, like the VF-19 and VF-25, would go on to add more functionality to the sub-intakes including:

• As an inlet for a Slush and Liquid Air Cycle System (SLACS), a system which allows a VF to harvest propellant from atmospheric gases in flight via compression and cooling of air passing through the sub-intake.
• As an intake for airflow to be used in blowing Flow Control on the aircraft's control surfaces (incl. both the wing and tail).
• As a supplemental propulsion system, turning the heat exchanger in the sub-intake into a de facto engine nozzle to provide thrust in GERWALK mode.  (It's implied this is part of why the VF-25 and VF-31 don't have a visible large engine nozzle for forward thurst in GERWALK mode.)

 

24 minutes ago, TehPW said:

these are concepts i wonder if anyone has done in Wind Tunnels?

There can't be very many fans out there who have access to a wind tunnel... and fewer still who have access to one meant for scale aircraft testing.

I'd assume I'm one of very few who has access to a wind tunnel at all, and that's a MGP system meant for automobiles.