Thread:Zillafire101/@comment-4960835-20160524105213/@comment-25309944-20160915184026

@Gorzill Aside from France's gradual development in strategic airpower capabilities, not much would change between the Borealum Crisis in 2810 and this event (2816? 2817?). You'll probably see improvements, refits, etc of existing designs and materiel, increasing their range and general efficacity. Nothing too revolutionary, aside from probably the introduction of the Angelfire II, which would be just an all-round improvement on the original. I really, really think you might want to take a look at the French military section if you're looking to have the Persan gear up to fight the Grand Navy of the Empire. If that's not the point and the Persan are tooling themselves to fight other foes to the detriment of attempts at parity with the French, then disregard the following.

In particular, I'm not sure the omnifighter design concept is a step in the right direction; it seems to be tooled to fight adversaries and situations which you simply won't find when facing off against the French, principally dogfighting situations where an omnifighter is going to get close enough to the Torrent to be able to effectively use its cannons, let alone its claws. Take the French Torrent as the quintessential example of how France is going to employ its airpower, and compare it to the omnifighter concept which I'll be pulling from here. You also mentioned that the information on that page is from roughly the end of the Second War of Mirusian Coalition and that it would have been improved (mounted with a hyperdrive) since then, so that's what I'll be going with. There's a lot of problems that the omnifighter concept is going to encounter in going up against the Torrent such as disparities in speed and range due to the difference between the Torrent's aerodynamic and (comparatively) lightweight design and the omnifighter's distinctly non-aerodynamic shape and greatly superior weight due to armor. Whereas in an atmosphere the Torrent can rely on the aerodynamic properties of its frame to keep it in the air and on gravity to accelerate by pointing its nose down (how fighters IRL tend to accelerate quickly), the omnifighter has to constantly expend energy to fight against gravity, inertia, and air resistance to keep it in the air and maneuver in any meaningful capacity. Further, in hyperspace, the Torrent's design is again optimized to glide through hyperspatial fog and to filter it through its propulsion system. This means that the omnifighter is going to be much slower just as a factor of its design, and have a much smaller operational range both in an atmosphere and in hyperspace, the two operational environments where you'll find French aircraft. You'll almost never find French assets in open space. Then there's the issue of actually engaging a Torrent. The Torrent is meant as a platform to deliver missiles to their targets, which means that an air-to-air engagement with a Torrent primarily takes place at a couple hundred lightyears (or kilometers in an atmosphere) with exchanges of beyond-visual-range missiles. This is how air-to-air engagements work today. As far as I can tell, the omnifighter can't engage in that kind of fight at distance due to its armament, nor can it easily close the distance due to its slow speed, and its size and armor mean that it would be a very visible, very easy target to Torrent missiles at great range even if it was armed correctly and within range. I would highly recommend looking at other anti-air options, I'm not sure the Persan would develop this concept since they'd have had fifteen years and three Mirusian conflicts to analyze French airpower in action. I really think they'd have been able to develop something capable of defending against French airpower at this point.

I really like the idea of a wiki page with differences in Persan and French points of view, though even the framing and narrative of French accounts would differ based on who you're talking to. Most would portray the Persan attack as directly following a gradual withdrawal into isolation, though accounts would differ on whether Baako's failure was in not engaging with the Persan, listening to them, and bringing them back in, or in military weakness towards them despite clear signs that they were casting off international restrictions.