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ShadowLogan wrote:@xunk16
What we know of the "Children of Zor" is not much. Sentinels-era DVD extras does include designs created for Sentinels but not used by the RPG or other incarnations (AFAIK), you'd have to check the "Elements of Robotechnology" (IIRC the name) from the Legacy DVDs (I don't know if they where carried forward with any later DVD/Blue-Ray bundles). Other than this, they might get a mention in one of the old Art Books (one for Sentinels, but I can't confirm this as I don't have the book) or any official promotional material you might find for Academy (which is probably very limited in scope IIRC).

ShadowLogan wrote:I think this is really a product of the times that RT/OSM was written vs today. Some one looking at RT today (or even recently in past 10-15years or so) is bound to ask "where's the [passive] stealth", but back then it wasn't a big thing (acknowledged stealth aircraft only came out in the open in 1988, 3 years after RT and a few more from the OSM perspective). It's like looking at new designs that entered public awareness in 2000s vs back in the 1970s, stealth just wasn't the thing at the time.

ShadowLogan wrote:All I can say is that these are possible enemies that have been brought up in the show (or planned in case of Acedemy, but IIRC those exist in Sent. OVA per-production materials on the DVD extras, which also includes additional races to boot). Beyond that its speculation, we know the "exist" in the sense they are put out there as possibilities which suggests they are "real". How probable they are within is not known as they have never been fleshed out AFAIK.

ShadowLogan wrote:Except we know that this one is not on Palladium, at least not fully given HG says the Shadow Fighter " combining radar stealth" (Infoepdia entry). Palladium does say its RAM, but we know they aren't the only RT product to say RAM is involved in the Alpha design (MPC Alpha).

ShadowLogan wrote:The VR-038 Infopedia entry " it saw numerous variants, culminating with the -038 version".

ShadowLogan wrote:We do not have descriptions of these numerous variants of the VR-030 series (or even all the VR-050 series). This can be extrapolated out to various mecha, including the Alpha (letter variants). Its these "new variants" that would count as "upgrades" to the Alpha Fighter, which is a family of variants (known being Genia, -H/I/Z/S/X, Shadow Drone) that could be considered upgraded over other variants due to features/abilities not present on the others.

Seto wrote:Well, yes and no... there is some fairly prominent usage of ECM to achieve active stealth in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, but in Robotech's case it's worth noting that the Robotech official setting materials are a LOT younger than the Robotech series itself is. The series is from 1985, but the official setting materials weren't composed until 2001. HG could have gotten away with no stealth if they hadn't been foolish enough to include 5th Generation stealth aircraft in the damn From the Stars limited comic. That makes it totally bizarre that the VF designs conceived after these 5th Generation stealth aircraft inexplicably lack anything resembling stealth technology until the introduction of a bloody cloaking device in 2044.

The principles behind radar stealth go back to the 1940s, it's just that the idea of an aircraft that applied those principles to become "invisible" to radar wasn't something that emerged into the public consciousness until the F-117A was unveiled in '88.

Seto wrote:So, essentially, they don't exist because they've never been depicted or described in an official source...

Seto wrote:But -038 is a model number... poor wording aside, that supports my point. The 030 series had a BUNCH of models until they finally settled on the 038.

Cyclone variants aren't specification changes, they're mounted equipment changes.

ShadowLogan wrote:In general ECM is used in TMS and TRM saga. HG can still get away with using stealth designs from the Global War period and a lack of Stealth in later designs from two different angles:
1. Passive Stealth technology is expensive and complex, in order to keep costs and complexity down they passed over passive stealth on VTs which are already costly/complex (at least for general force, they might have a "silver bullet" stealth force that is much smaller in number, essentially that is what we have now in the US in terms of numbers, silver bullet F-22/B-2 complementing larger numbers of B-52/B-1/F-15/F-16/F-18).

ShadowLogan wrote:2. Radar technology has advanced such that passive stealth has been rendered a moot and require some form of active effort (the F-22 and F-35 are both expected/projected to need active stealth at some point in their service life).

ShadowLogan wrote:I think they exist because they are depicted in the series audio itself, making them cannon since all material is supposed to derive/based on the 85ep and nothing conflicts with their existance w/n that source. It is true they have never been revisited though, which is something the RPG could have done with some degree of freedom given the huge blank slate they would have and multiple angles they could take with Zentreadi offshoots and Space Pirates.

ShadowLogan wrote:I agree the wording is not the best in the Infopedia entries (among other issues), but it also doesn't help that the VR series apparently uses a different designation system than followed by other VT types (VHT, VF, VM) given we know the Letter designation use is unique to the VR line. I do not think this rules out upgrades to any design, given we know at least one case where Veritechs get upgrades from one model to another (VF-1A/J upgraded to the VF-1R) in the past.

ShadowLogan wrote:I think we have to remember a few things to. The OSM cribbing HG does might actually work against them in this case because in the OSM the Legoiss/TLead are much younger than their RT counter parts and GCM is not as fleshed out/detailed as SDF:M is. This all adds up to the 10+ years of use not present in the OSM, where HG would have to do the work in either creating new Alpha models or invest in the Block system. Neither of which seems likely short of some type of RT: Veritech Technical Files, which isn't going to happen either.

Seto wrote:Realistically, I'd expect the cost argument to go in the other direction... that the comparatively trivial expensive of introducing stealth features into the design of a VF would have been seen as entirely justified given the already high cost-per-airframe. If replacement is prohibitively expensive, you want to take every measure you can to ensure that units come back in one piece.

Seto wrote:That's usually the catalyst for further development of passive stealth technology... as radar improvements that eroded the effectiveness of the F-117A's brand of passive stealth were a catalyst for the better airframe shaping and RAM compositions used on the B-2, F-22, and F-35. It's harder to defeat radars with active stealth than with passive stealth, so you'd expect it to go the other way.

Seto wrote:We can't really say with any certainty that they actually exist... and that it isn't just the paranoia of Leonard and other like-minded nutters.

Seto wrote:There is that, yeah... but that was admittedly under somewhat different circumstances given that it was early days after the total devastation of Earth's surface and the loss of its infrastructure. We're also not sure how widespread the VF-1R ever became too, because the VF-1 just disappears after 2015 in canon.

Seto wrote:It's not at all uncommon for block updates to be few and far between

ShadowLogan wrote:Cost is tricky thing though, if the platform gets to expensive in terms of cost that can lead to cuts in planned production numbers. Cost killed/limited B-2 and F-22 production, and it could do the same to Veritechs if they become to expensive.

ShadowLogan wrote:The Stealth "arms race" you've laid out though can still reach a point where the Radars are better than available technology. If the SDF-1 brought examples of radar type(s) more powerful than an AESA (which can detect stealth), and techniques/materials could not be gleamed from the SDF-1 to counter it...

ShadowLogan wrote:That is a possibility, however Leonard's statement doesn't exist in a pure vacuum. This topic itself is worth its own separate in-depth thread.

ShadowLogan wrote:Not saying this isn't the case, but what about expansion/updates that do not qualify as block/model updates.

Seto wrote:Occasionally... but only if the cost is excessive beyond what's justifiable for the program requirements, and even then we've seen exceptions where runaway overspending still somehow got a pass like the F-35.

Seto wrote:That'd be inconsistent with the available material in the RPG and, indeed, even the OSM.

Seto wrote:Normally, a block update is the smallest level of upgrade... representing a change to the basic specifications of the aircraft. Bigger changes than that constitute new variants, though apart from the -R type VF-1 they don't appear to bother upgrading one variant into another so it's not really an upgrade.

ShadowLogan wrote:Procurement is a complicated thing, you have cost, politics (on varying fronts), and performance all balancing for a yes/no.

ShadowLogan wrote:As RT designs are a product of the times they are created in, the only way to get stealth out of them is to either give them an active system OR give them "super Radar Absorbent Materials" that outclass anything we have today. That's really the only routes available.

ShadowLogan wrote:Given the RPG doesn't really do stealth "well", it tends to be all-or-nothing, instead of reduced detection range (which is what passive stealth really is) I don't know how inconsistent that would really be given mechanically the RW stealth operates differently than the RPG-W.

ShadowLogan wrote:While they don't appear to bother upgrading one variant to another, they don't exactly say it isn't done either. We know the VHTs are another case of receiving upgrades (show), other ASC mecha are also implied to receive the "pupil pistol" in the show. So we know it isn't just the TMS era that this happens in, but also the TRM era. That really only leaves the UEEF with no clear examples, but it seems unlikely they wouldn't do upgrades even if we can't point to anything specific*.

Seto wrote:Even super-RAM can't fix what's fundamentally broken about the Alpha's design, that's why they needed a cloaking device.

Seto wrote:That's more an issue with the Shadow Device's stealth being treated as an all-or-nothing thing... there are ways to handle it using the existing rule

Seto wrote:Dialog aside, Dana's "new" Spartas has literally nothing that sets it apart from the "old" model Spartas units she was driving before and that the rest of her unit uses throughout the series. Likewise, it isn't clear if the pupil pistol was ever actually widely adopted or if it was something that only Dana's unit got and abandoned almost right away. If it's just trial equipment, it's not really an upgrade.

ShadowLogan wrote:Depending on where the threshold is when it comes to signature reduction to be considered full stealth (above arictle mentions concept for F/A-18 with 50% reduction as stealth) from a non-stealth design, it might be possible to achieve it with the Alpha from a relative POV (ie regular Alpha has a return of X, but the -S due to RAM is at 50% of X which makes it "stealth" relative to the original design).

ShadowLogan wrote:I'm not looking at just the 2E Robotech Shadow Device when I say Palladium doesn't do stealth well, there are a few designs in their Rifts setting that are supposed to be "Stealth" but suffer from the same all-or-nothing thing. Given TSC's recton of the SD, that isn't out of place but Palldium's handling of Stealth is more widespread.

ShadowLogan wrote:I am not talking about Dana's prototype VHT specifically from TRM#2 or#3, I know its supposed to be different but various bits of dialogue in Ep53 indicate upgrades:
-at the end when Dana informs the 15th about their next mission
-comments when they first enter (different machine, something we wouldn't be able to tell if it was just the pupil pistol)
-one of Leonard's aides reports mass production of new equipment (implied to be pupil pistol) has begun
-Denis Brown states the pupil pistol has been integrated with weaponry to help fight the bioroids (he doesn't limit it to just the VHTs, this coupled with Leonard's aide I think implies that it has a more wide spread deployment not that it appears to be of much help)

Seto wrote: So, I did a spot of research, and that's not really comparable to the Alpha's situation at all... because the reduction in (frontal) radar cross-section is due mostly to shaping tweaks rather than additional RAM. It's mostly a result of switching from drop tanks to conformal fuel tanks and adopting enclosed weapons pods. Your article also specifically notes that they're not trying to make the Super Hornet into a stealth aircraft, just to make it slightly more survivable in the field. Block III offers some minor improvements to radar cross-section, but that's tweaks a design that already took consideration of stealth principles beforehand... it's not out-and-out converting a non-stealth aircraft into a stealth aircraft like what you're positing. It's also only an improvement from a specific set of angles (frontal).

Seto wrote:Fair enough. I don't really do Rifts, so my impressions are shaped mainly by RT and M2

Seto wrote:But we can't actually demonstrate anything, which makes it hard to build an argument on it... there's never any change visible to viewer, except for the temporary airtight cockpit block on the Spartas which seems to be less an upgrade and more disposable optional hardware.

ShadowLogan wrote:Though as I said where is the cut off for designating an originally non-stealthy aircraft stealth when signature reductions occur?

ShadowLogan wrote:I know we can't demonstrate anything concrete per say beyond the dialogue, but upgrades do not always have to be something anything we can point to as "new" or "better" from an external display POV, it could be all under the hood so to speak. Like replacing components that are hard to procure with "new" versions that do the same thing.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

ShadowLogan wrote:Though as I said where is the cut off for designating an originally non-stealthy aircraft stealth when signature reductions occur?

Usually, the distinction between a "stealth" and "non-stealth" aircraft is whether or not the aircraft was specifically designed to minimize its detectable reflection and emission of electromagnetic waves of various types, infrared, visible light, and/or sound waves for the express purpose of evading detection.

Aircraft that were not designed to be stealthy but were later upgraded with limited applications of stealth technology (like the F-15SE or F/A-18E/F) are not typically considered to be stealth aircraft. By the same token, aircraft which achieved some measure of stealthiness by accident rather than design (like the F-16) are also not typically considered to be stealth aircraft.