That's a Good Question.

>>14213671
2expensive probably

>>14213671
Their sector of the galaxy is the equivalent of some fly-over state like Minnesota.
Its why you see them use VF-171's as their main VF. Presumably they're too poor/irrelevant to get the cool drones.
That said, there's still 20 something episodes for drones to show up.

>>14213671
The X-9 was only really good because it's AI had no restrictions. Since the Sharon Apple incident the AI for ghosts have been put on a leash so to speak.

>>14213722
The QF-4000 from Frontier has 1/3 of the total costs when compared to the VF-171.

after plus the ghosts are shackled They wouldnt be able to do what the x-9 could anyway. the shota from frontier could unshackle them but the dont really elaborate on how or why no one else can do this

>>14213766
He had illegal shit installed on them iirc.

>>14213722
>poor enough for vf-171's
>not poor enough to hire pmc's with vf-31's
u wot?

>>14213801
cheaper to hire a group that has the latest tech over having a fleet of your own

>>14213725
And they probably put some new regulations on cybernetic implants thanks to galaxy and it probably affected the Ghosts since they were one of the main weapons employed by the Galaxy crew

>>14213788
And he was the head of a weapons R&D,they probably allowed him to get away with thanks to that

NUN is still against AI and cyborgs. The whole Sharon and Macross Galaxy incidents kind of screwed the pooch on posthumanism and the singularity.

The X-9 was being controlled by an illegally-developed program with zero failsafes installed derived from the already highly-autonomous Sharon Apple AI. It's about two steps away from having an actual human pilot in the X-9, with all the annoying biological restrictions and the moral compass removed. The Galaxy V-9 follows the same development of the X-9, which is why they start crushing the Frontier redshirts once Galaxy starts unloading them by the dozens. Normal QFs aren't usually that spectacular.

There isn't a poor or not poor. Chaos isn't even being paid by the individual NUNG colonies in the sector.

The NUNG pecking order goes with garrison fleets being the lowest, followed by colony fleets, then core world groups. Arad himself said this episode that their current conflict is a speck in the eyes of the NUNG.

Besides, if the VF-31 can be screwed by visuals-hack jamming from the Sv-262s I doubt NUNS Ghosts will do anything other than job like in the first episode of Frontier unless a NUNS battlegroup arrives in-system and begins shitting out an absolute fuckton of QFs and accompanying RVF controllers.

If you guys want to ask uncomfortable questions you should really be asking why haven't super fold jammers gone widespread yet.

The answer is there isn't one, do you ask why the US Army in WWII didn't use drones? Slow down people, this isn't Gundam SEED. Let the show run in its entirety first before you question its settings.

>>14213999
The US Army Air Force did use drones though.

>>14213999
I do wonder if the Ghosts Galaxy was using weren't in fact more or less "piloted" by the mind of a Galaxy operator, since the anime at least implied that a great number of them joined in the cybernetic overmind it would be easy for them to control and as the movie showed us, three people are able to completely control a kilometers sized cyborg

>>14214022

Did they use these grandpa MQs to bomb German positions en masse though?

I've been wondering why they got rid of the yf-19's panoramic cockpit.
It definitely can't be the to technological expenses

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>>14214071
Nah, they used them for training, if I recall.
There were some surprisingly advanced concepts that were being prototyped back then though.

>>14214105

Maybe they already incorporated it directly into the helmet?

>>14214071
>>14214112
Ther was, also, Operation Aphrodite.
The plan was to use decomm'd B-17s as flying bomb drones, filling them to the brim with explosives.

It's surprising to me that the larger factions would just ignore this shit. It would make sense if they were just too far away for a fast response to VAR outbreaks/Windemerean attacks. I guess I am really just underestimating the scale of humanity's space holdings.

>>14214154
>It's surprising to me that the larger factions would just ignore this shit.
Its not really that surprising if you watched the previous entries.

Macross 7 was told to deal with the Protodevlin on their own, Frontier was pretty much fighting the Vajra until the very end where reinforcements came in(And it only happened in the movies).

There's too much stuff that NUNS have to deal with, the added authority for each colony from the restructuring into NUNS helps them deal with such stuff on their own since they don't have to call home first to do things, unless they are calling home for reinforcements that would probably be late.

>>14213671
Multiple things.

>>14213999
Covers a good amount of it. Legal operators of ghosts have a lot of shackles on their AI. These only get released in extreme situations or if some shady stuff is going down.

A big portion of Frontier's forces were actually Ghosts. However, those were largely nullified by the fold wave jamming that Vajra brought, degrading performance severely. I wouldn't be surprised if fold wave jamming was one of the tricks picked up from the Vajra.

The introduction of ICS also allowed manned craft to perform at levels that previously lethal levels.

>>14214152
iirc, a Kennedy blew up in one of those.

Even as early as WW1, the military was playing around with unmanned flying bombs like the Hewitt-Sperry.

>>14214287
Yep, Joe Jr. to be exact.
>Hewitt drone
Oh crap, haven't read on that bastard in a long while.

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>>14213860
Well there are still Cyberdroids like El. Implants and cybernetics are common but only Macross Galaxy went with digitizing their personalities. What was Sharon Apple? An AI that got memories and emotions from an emotionally unstable woman.

>>14213766
It's probably alot like jailbreaking your phone, only with highly lethal military hardware.

>>14213766
LAI has ties to the Macross Consortium the developers of the X-9 Ghost. LAI has this habit of working with other companies like Shinsei and Nova.

Not to mention under the table like leaking YF-29 data to Macross Galaxy or letting Macross galaxy park their VF-27 at their hangers or help build the Dimension Eater.

Just as Luca didn't trust Bilrer having a monopoly on Fold Quartz he should look closer to home.

>>14214149
It's a possibility but since Hayate hasn't been flying with one it wouldn't help anyway

>>14214105
Maybe its not really that much of a boost in pilot performance.

In battroid the cockpit goes panoramic even on the 171.
In fighter mode they use the traditional style maybe because it probably doesn't add much if the pilots are dogfighting in fighter mode and would most probably be looking up past the canopy to track their targets as opposed to looking at their feet.

>>14214152
The germans did it too, during their crazy prototype phase.

I'm more annoyed that seemingly every macross from now on will have its own "not the military" military group that the main characters can join, so as not to be ... part of the military. Yawn.

>>14214921
Kawamori is a hyppy after all. We should be happy he never goes full UNDERSTANDING: if a guy doesn't want peace even at the end, kill him. It happened to Bodolza, the Galaxy people and Grace.

>>14214921

Hikaru was the one to series lead to join the military really. Basara joined a band, Alto joined a PMC and Hayate has joined an aerial aerobatics team. It's kind if nice they're all vaguely different, though yea, another military lead would be nice.

>>14214927

> to series

TV series even.

>>14214921
>joining NUNS
>getting good hardware when you're not in a special forces squad
Pick one.
Only way to get good hardware in NUNS is in special forces squad, otherwise you'll be flying stuff like the 171s until they recognize your skill.

There's also the whole benching-good-pilots thing NUNS does(It makes sense to do so, but hey, if you joined because you wanted to fly), Isamu ditched them because he doesn't want to get benched. PMCs probably pay better as well.

>>14213766
Because Luca is an absolute madman

>>14214921

Well Alto did join the military for a good chunk of Frontier TV after getting annoyed at SMS. Didn't he join for 4 or 5 episodes up to nearly the end of the show?

And really it does make much difference since they all act like soldiers, killing enemies and so on when necessary - it just allows more freedom in breaking chain of command and not following orders or doing your own thing. Which is good in a story. There's very little lost.

>>14214952
>it just allows more freedom in breaking chain of command and not following orders or doing your own thing. Which is good in a story. There's very little lost.
And setting-wise, having plenty of PMCs around makes sense considering that NUNS cannot deal with everything everywhere.

And not to mention if people need some private military for shady and possibly illegal purposes.

AND

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>>14214921
>Implying the military in Macross is worth shit now

NUNS has been a joke for like over 20 years. Only time I thought they were cool was pic related

>>14214952
>Didn't he join for 4 or 5 episodes up to nearly the end of the show?
Yes but he was effectively joining the "villains". It wasn't supposed to be a good thing

>>14214993
>Only time I thought they were cool was pic related
And that was with SMS forces backing them up.

>>14215006
Given that the two foremost Quarters are SMS-owned (probably all of the Quarters that appeared in Frontier are), it's more like NUNS is the one doing the backing up.

The issue of NUNS competency aside, the Frontier movies took a odd take with hypercompetent NUNS troopers taking down Galaxy cyborgs that should have put up quite the resistance, and Frontier managing to not only stand up to but subvert the Vajra to their cause thanks to Galaxy-influenced shenenigans. Of course it all goes to shit for NUNS Frontier when Galaxy decides to make their move, but for a time, at least, they weren't jobbing.

Frontier at least had a NUNS presence in the form of Leon Mishima, Howard Glass, and Catherine Glass. Delta has so far completely forgone any current NUNS personnel that isn't a one-off fodder appearance, though, so I can see why some might think the contrast between the main characters and the military is more jarring. Still, we're only at episode 6, so there might still be hope for the brownshirt army.

>>14215070
I thought the Zentradi captain was at least from NUNS, being the captain of a full Macross and all, he just has Chaos guys under him just like how SMS' forces on board the Frontier fleet works under orders from NUNS Frontier.

Anyway, the Quarters putting the carrier deck away to hold their main cannon with both arms is amazing

>>14215188
Admittedly, the possibility never crossed my mind.

Japanese wikipedia article on MDelta calls him a former NUNS member.

>>14213671
too OP
banned for life

>>14213671
they can't use those drones, they appeared in Frontier and started wrecking shit

Besides the reasons already mentioned, one of the main advantages of Ghosts was that due to being piloted by an AI, they could pull high-G maneuvers that would kill an organic pilot. Even Guld's resilient Zentradi biology couldn't stand up to that in Plus.

But by the time of Frontier and Delta, the implementation of ISC technology meant that human pilots could perform similar feats. Ghosts are still decently effective weapons, but they can be reliably matched or even outperformed by a skilled human pilot in a well-equipped VF. So in most cases, the cost isn't really justifiable.

Also, besides what everyone just said, the Knights already have their own drones to satisfy that kind of thing.

>>14214167
At least, in the series, Frontier showed that the Vajra were basically attacking everywhere that was colonised by people, including Earth, so at that point the threat would have become very real.

Not quite the blowout that they showed in the movies, but I imagine it'd have resulted in something similar, given enough time.

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>>14216301
>only TWO fighters defending Macross city.

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>>14216703
>and they succeded.

>>14214105
Frontier was really bad about showing it too. At least we got glimpses of it in the few 171 cockpit shots.

>>14216703
>>14216707

The pilots had to have been Max's twin daughters

>>14214022
And so did the Navy and they took the drones they had into battle to see how well it worked. I think they managed to sink a few Japaneses ships in this test run.

Pretty sure it's been said in one of the Macross world guides that NUNS/NUG purposely doesn't give long range colony fleets the latest tech just in case they go rogue, which is the whole reason the VF-171 was developed when better shit exists, and SMS and Chaos only have advanced VFs because they're privately funded.

>>14218677
I don't think that's true, considering that the YF-24 data was transmitted to all fleets, that such a rule is kinda pointless when galaxy went rogue and developed the YF/VF-27, and other colony fleets have already had VF-19 derivatives for over 20 years now

Doesn't really make much sense to me why the minimum level fighter for everyone isn't VF-19 at least. I guess to show off that the VF-171 is still cool? Or was it that VF-19 still looks too much of a hero mech?

Regardless, the 19's been around a long time already now

>>14218751
At this point the VF-171 is probably like the AK-47 of VFs. It's rugged, it works, you can buy them by the boatload, spare parts are cheap and easy to come by, and it's reliable.

>>14213671
Hasn't it been a point in every Macross with Ghosts so far that they just end up getting hacked and made useless or turned against their controllers?

>The VF-171 is a multi-purpose Heavy Variable Fighter developed from the special forces Heavy Variable Fighter VF-17. It first flew in 2046 and is widely deployed as the main VF of the New Unified Forces in the 2050s. However, as the New Unified Forces place emphasis on unmanned craft in the 2050s, the manned combat craft has been reduced to a comparative few.

>By having solved the problems of the VF-17, the VF-171 became one of the fighters which spread the most in the 2050s. However, compared to the VF-25, the next main fighter, the VF-171 has an unfavourable performance. Nevertheless, with it's established reliability, high performance and a substantial warfare equipment system, it is a masterpiece Variable Fighter/Attack Craft that the New Unified Forces have used for a long time as the main Variable Fighter/Attack craft of the New Unified Forces. It is deployed in each Emigrant Fleet as of 2059.

>Though the VF-171 was adopted as the main manned craft, because of the number of situations where the AIF-7S unmanned aircraft increasingly took charge in combat, the VF-171 seems to have rarely been put into combat missions. Though, in the Vajra attack incident on the Frontier Fleet that occured in 2059, a large number of VF-171 were put into combat, and it had insufficient performance against the Vajra opponents.

>>14218885
>The VF-171 progressed in deployment as the successor craft of the VF-11, in place of the VF-19, VF-22 and so on; whose deployment the Unified Forces were unable to get because of problems of cost and so on. What the VF-171 aims at isn't merely high-performance, but the improvement of control, which was the defect of the VF-17; by using high low-output engines with high reliability, and greatly reducing the pilot's load by updating the control system avionics, so that the VF-171 became an airframe that treated even general pilots easily. Perceiving these improvements as well as detuning the craft, the VF-171 has the durability, payload and so on that the VF-17 handed over. Though, from the extension of the nose and application of ordinance stations under the main wings, probably because of an increase in inerception missions, the VF-171's stealthiness seems to have been degradated. Nevertheless, the latest production models in 2059 are equipped with the ASS/PS 155 3rd generation active stealth system, which is the same class as the VF-19's system; and this has improved the stealthiness of the VF-171. It's integrated performance now surpasses that of the VF-17.

Source: Sketchely's translations

>>14218888
>The QF-4000 is a general-purpose unmanned aerial combat vehicle which the New U.N. Forces have mass-produced since 2045, and are deploying in support of the VF-171 Nightmare Plus. It is remotely guided from a mother ship or other aerospace craft which has QF-4000 guidance abilities. The computer of the Ghost controls specific things, such as airframe control and attack sequences, while the mother ship gives more simple instructions and the authorization to attack. When guidance from the mothership is severed, some combat operation can be continued, but only by previously programmed instructions.

>It is not necessary to set limits on the QF-4000's mobility to protect the pilot, so it operates at the full potential of the airframe itself. Since the design was based on the X-9, the QF-4000 has a reputation for high-maneuverability, comparatively superior to the VF-171. It's productivity is high and it has an inexpensive cost; construction and maintenance costs are said to be 1/3 of the VF-171. Moreover, since life-support and manned-flight control systems are unnecessary, the weight of the airframe is lighter.

>In many immigration fleets, they active as the primary air force.

>The AIF-7S variant is an unmanned aerospace combat fighter developed by the Macross Frontier's New UN Forces to limit the use of manned combat fighters. It excels in high mobility and flexibility ranging from reconnaissance to combat, but there are also many weak points because it is an unmanned aircraft.

>>14218873
Visually it'd have made a more generalist impression if it turned out with the Typhoon/Rafale's silhouette. Even with the lengthened nosecone, I keep seeing only its Nighthawk roots.

>>14218751
The oft-given reason (the meta one) is that Kawamori wanted something less hero-like. Apparently the -17 fit the bill, and thus got -171'd.

Well, it is still an out-series number like the -3000 or the -5000. I guess it fits the bill still.

>>14218751

The VF-19 and VF-22 are very expensive. UNS/NUNS keeps them only for their best pilots, major core worlds, sensitive missions, or any combination of those.

General Galaxy has a spec ops paramilitary that answers to them only and they use VF-22s.

>>14218891

> AIF-7S

I'm sure I've seen there before looking at pics, anyone know where/when they show up?

>>14218977
Those are the ones Luca used.

>>14218873
>spare parts are cheap and easy to come by, and it's reliable.
And if what Frontier did with their 171s is anything, it can be upgraded with better hardware in a pinch.
Its not as good as a newer VF, but hey, its something.

>>14218708
Monkey model ISC. Earth ISC is mode advanced.