Out Of The Dark – Snippet 20
He shook the thought aside and looked out through the superb vision of his one-piece bubble canopy. The F-22 had been designed for stealth from the ground up, and external fuel tanks were about as unstealthy as aircraft got. Nonetheless, they’d left Plattsburgh carrying four of them each, extending their operational range. They’d dropped them over Randolph, New York, three hundred and twenty miles from takeoff, which gave them roughly another thousand miles on internal fuel. If Robinson’s prediction was on the money, that would be all the range they’d ever need.
Now, looking out, he could see the other three fighters holding formation on him, and he found himself wishing they had AWACS support. They didn’t, but at least they did have the F-22’s AN/APG-77 active electronically scanned array radar, which was the next best thing. With a range of two hundred fifty miles in the current upgrade, it offered superb threat detection and identification capabilities. It was capable of tracking multiple targets simultaneously and allowing its pilot to “manage” the battle space as no previous fighter aircraft had ever allowed, and it was a low probability of intercept system, practically impossible for conventional radar warning receivers to detect. Unfortunately, he had no idea whether that would hold true for aliens capable of interstellar flight. Somehow, he wasn’t filled with optimism.
They were on their own now, although he’d managed to set up a data link with Robinson. He hadn’t brought it online yet, but the people who’d been so busy blowing up cities and air bases hadn’t bothered with taking out any of the communication and GPS satellites . . . yet, at least. It was loss of ground stations — the physical destruction of bases — which had torn such holes in the communications net, so he was confident Robinson would be there whenever he brought the link online.
Assuming, of course, that he survived long enough to do anything of the sort. Then again —
He stiffened as a spray of icons appeared suddenly on his heads-up display.
“Flight, Longbow,” he said over the multifunction advanced data link, using the call sign he’d been assigned when his flight school instructors discovered he’d been on his high school archery team. “Acquisition. We go as planned.”
Brief acknowledgments came back. The MADL had been specifically designed to allow stealth aircraft to communicate and share data without compromising their stealthiness. It combined latency and frequency-hopping through array antenna assemblies that sent tightly directed radio signals between platforms. Hopefully, the bad guys — whoever or whatever the hell they were — weren’t going to pick it up. Or, looked at another way, Torino supposed, if the bad guys were going to pick it up, then his four fighters were already toast.
He looked out at the other planes. They were spreading farther apart, settling into their preplanned approach, and he returned his attention to the HUD’s icons.
There were thirty-six of them, each indicating an airborne target moving at just under six hundred miles per hour, two hundred miles in front of his fighters. Their targets were moving roughly southeast, crossing their range, and he watched the displays projecting the target envelope of the six AIM-120-D AMRAAM “Slammers” nestled in his aircraft’s internal weapons bays. The geometry meant he and his flight were closing the range at a shade better than seven hundred miles per hour — call it twelve miles per minute — with a range basket for the Slammers of better than a hundred miles. Of course, the closer he got, the higher his probability of kill became, which made it a trade-off between launch point and the point at which his aircraft could be detected, and he didn’t know damn-all about the systems which might do that detecting….
He thought about that for a few moments, trying to weigh and balance factors when he knew nothing at all about the opposition’s capabilities. Then he decided.
“Flight, Longbow. Launch in ten mikes from… mark.”
His left hand was busy, and target designations appeared on his HUD as his onboard computers handed them off to the rest of the flight. They continued
arrowing straight towards their targets . . . who ambled along, apparently without a care in the world even as the range dropped to less than a hundred miles. The alien shuttles simply flew onward in their neat formation, stacked in twelve triangular flights of three, and Torino found himself shaking his head.
Well, he thought, that answers one question. They can’t pick up our radar.
***
Shuttle Commander Fardahm checked his instruments and flexed his ears in satisfaction.
Fardahm had always secretly envied his fellow pilots who’d been assigned to command the Deathwing assault shuttles. They were the ones who saw all the excitement, got to deliver the troops close to the action, even got to join the hunt when air support was called in. Pilots like Fardahm didn’t. Most of the time, at least; there were exceptions. This was his third deployment, and his Starlander-class shuttle had been tasked to deliver an entire infantry battalion behind an enemy position to cut off retreat as part of a major attack on his last one.
Normally, though, that wasn’t what Starlanders were for. They were the heavy-lift shuttles, designed to transport armored vehicles, construction equipment, large numbers of passengers, and general supplies rather than the combat infantry the Deathwings normally hauled around. They were also unarmed and a good twenty percent slower than the supersonic assault shuttles which were designed to provide ground support for their troops. “Trash haulers,” the Deathwing pilots called them, and Fardahm had to admit that sometimes it rankled. Not that he intended ever to admit it to a living soul.
Well, they can call us what they like, but they’d play hell getting anything bigger than a foot-slogger down on this ball of dirt without us! Yeah, and who hauls most of the ammunition those hotshots get to shoot off? Not to mention the food they stuff into their faces!
His ears twitched in derisive amusement, but he had to confess — to himself, at least — that he was more nervous than usual about this op. A Level Two civilization was a hell of a lot more advanced than the primitives they’d been up against in his previous two deployments. He’d watched the long-range imagery of the kinetic strikes going in, taking out the locals’ military infrastructure, and been frankly delighted to see it. The night-side strikes had been especially impressive, but what had most impressed Fardahm was the knowledge that each of those pinprick boils of light had been blotting away creatures with far better ability to kill Shongair infantry troopers than any other species the Empire had ever conquered. Personally, though he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, he didn’t envy the foot-sloggers, this time around. Usually, they got to have all the fun — not to mention the choicer cuts of any local prey — but this time they might just find themselves up against adversaries with real firearms, and that could be nasty.
On the other hand, these critters do have a fairly advanced communications ability, he reflected. That means all of them are going to know we’ve already kicked Cainharn’s own hells out of them. We’re not going to have to physically march all over the entire damned planet to get that message across to every isolated little group of primitives. So it’s probably actually going to be easier for the grunts this time, now that I think about it.
I kind of pity Fardahm.
He thinks we Humans are so well organised and intelligent that we will do the most logical thing and stand down.
Sorry pal. Race Humans: Amount of maddness from 10% to 100% depending on the circumstances. Have fun on our Planet.
Showtime! 6 X 4 = 24 leaves 12 still to be canonised. Note that the belief of “hit them hard at the top, and they’ll give up” is confirmed again.
Interesting specs. It is explicitly stated that the Deathwing assault shuttles are supersonic. Which implies that the transports are subsonic. And at the same time we know that the assault shuttles are 20% faster than the transports. This means that at very best the assault shuttles won’t travel above Mach 1.2. My guess is that the fact that they are “supersonic” means that they can supercruise – IE that they can have a sustained supersonic speed of 1.2, but can in an emergency go faster.
The assault shuttle maximum speed is unknown – if they have afterburners it can be virtually unlimited. However, from all of these statements, they seem to be no better than most 4th generation fighters. At best they are on even footing with the F-22’s in terms of pure speed. And unless they have anti-grav, then they will be much less maneuverable than Earth fighters, since they need to be a lot larger to be space-capable. So overall, they are probably slower and less maneuverable than most modern fighters. Modern jets can easily go above Mach 2 at high altitude on afterburners.
I suspect that unless those Deathwings get involved, all 36 of these transports are going down. They don’t have any armament, are not even supersonic, and most likely far less maneuverable than the F22s. They are going down even if the fighters have to use their cannons. The only way for any to survive is to try to get back up into orbit, above the maximum ceiling of the Earth fighters.
Also, I wonder how many shuttles the aliens have. How many did they bring with them? They can’t go home and get more, after all. After these 36 are down, what’s left? Unless the aliens have Von Neumann machines and/or robots that can mine asteroids and build more shuttles in space (which sounds doubtful) they should start running out of hardware pretty quickly. Even after all of Earth fighters are gone, what about ground-based SAMs? MANPADS can also be quite effective if launched while the plane is taking off or landing.
BTW, how come the site was down for an hour and a half today after the snippet released? Was it hit that much? What failed?
All 24 missiles to be 24 hits?!? impossible! Even todays active countermeasures in normal god damned transport planes, would lower that.
This invasion looks like degenerating in to a bloody shambles on day one. Not even fighter escorts for your drop shuttles on the first landing?!! Mince I tell you. They have made too many assumptions, obviously didn’t take any time examining information from the hack. Losing an entire body of heavy lifters is going to have them racing back to examine just what they missed.
@4 yes, they are acting like Earth is a class 4 so they haven’t bothered to take even the most basic of precautions. It’s been a long time since they had to fight an opponent who was on the same level or there abouts now they get a refresher course. Nothing like on the job training!
I can see this book being on my favourite list.
@4 you’re thinking like the transports NEED ECM, they don’t, these aren’t comparable to Higgins boats or Black Hawk helicopters in role(s) but more like Jumbo Jets used to move troops around.
Did any one else note the approx. number of troops on those shuttles? Assume 300 men per battalion, 36 shuttles nets you more then 10,000 (ten thousand) men on those shuttles, the invasion force was said to be in the thousands, the invasions about to loose a LOT of men
@6 – did they ever fight anybody on this level? I thought nobody ever did in the history of this interstellar organization. Unless they continue to periodically fight amongst themselves.
Also, Amazon just shipped this book to me. Yay! I may go to this site anyway, though – for the comments. :)
The Shongairi should learn the meaning of the proverb “Pride goes before fall.” In this case, it looks like the drop is going to be a looooooong way down.
Shuttle Commander Fardahm is about to experience his 30 seconds of screaming terror.
There’s 36 transports each able to carry a battalion of infantry, or probably a platoon of tanks, or a company of other vehicles. So this flight is probably dropping a division or so of troops and equipment. I’m guessing that this won’t make much of hole in their TO&E.
I wonder if they’ve read up on the National Guard.
@4&5 I don’t expect 24 for 24, just because nothing is perfect. Plus ‘hits’ may not do catastrophic damage. Of course they each have a pair of Sidewinders for when they get closer.
Let’s not forget that this could just be one of many similar engagements taking place all over the planet.
I’ve been experiencing problems connecting to this site all day, both from home and from work (shhh, don’t tell my boss! :-0). Drak, do you know what the problem might be? I’ve gotten errors like “Unable to establish a database connection” and “This page timed out” and “Unable to display this page.”
Thanks for any info!
Sounds like a turkey shoot to me too. Fardham hasn’t picked up any threats and if he’s running the equivalent of an over sized A380 even one AMRAAM hit could drop these civilian shuttles. I agree that 24/24 is unlikely but I’ll be optimistic and go with an 80% hit ratio. Would they have to double up on targets with their 20mm’s? Thanks David for writing another book that seems to have me hooked with these snippets. Even worse, you couldn’t just make it a four thousand page novel, no, it’s another series which means I’ll have to wait for. Besides all the other books you are working on and oh, let’s throw in little things like sleep, eating, family time, the mornings that you wake up and just want to take a break from writing, I expect you to have written a 4000 page novel in a week or two…yea. Thanks for the good reading. We all enjoy your books.
@Evilauthor, yes but the rest of the planet may not have 5th generation stealth birds which survived the original bombardment.
If the other landers saw non stealth jets coming in on them they could scatter or as mensioned climb back to orbit. From what I understood most of the ground action will end up taking place in eastern Europe. If the f22s survive and are able to opperate from civilian airstrips they could make any future landing across the US a verry dicey prospect. Until they are located and killed on the ground that is. We haven’t seen any examples of ET having fighter interceptors. Just the assault shuttles and transports. Which makes scense from the alien’s view, why drag modern fighters across thousands of light years just to handle folks with swords and longbows?
@13 Civilian airstrips won’t have reloads. And fuel may be problematic, as well. No sense taking off with no ammo and on fumes.
No jets are necessary if you know where are they coming. THAT’S the problematic part. If I were the commander of that Space Surveillance base I would be already relocating most of the stuff I have to secondary bases (even better, relocate somewhere not planned since aliens will know all about contingency sites), because if dogs get mauled, they’ll will be looking for revenge.
BUT once you have the location and their flightpath, all you need is a AA battery commander in the area.
Let em suggest 12 battalions to a division is more typical, these folks land land with their equipment, and therefore the Shongairi are about to lose something closer to an army corps. Also, given they were planning on fighting escapees from 1635, sans American high-tech, they likely have trucks or walkers, but no tanks. Why bother? The line about ‘they may have firearms’ leads to the question: Do the Shongairi even have tanks?
On the other hand, I will be most interested in reading the authorial explanation of how a subsonic aircraft gets into orbit. Perhaps the Starlanders have a separate space drive that is not effective in atmosphere?
The cross-ocean counterparts who tried landing in North Korea will have a particularly fine day of it, I suspect.
@13. I suspect fuel is not a difficulty but missiles are. Cannon ammunition may also be a challenge.
@13 – Ground action in eastern Europe? They are going to get reamed. If there is one thing that Russia is prepared for is a land war. This requires a modified quote:
“You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia ‘! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
@ SCC a C5 will carry 270, these are 3 times as big, that means they are probably carrying close to 800, more of a Battalion size any way, than 300.
The way these transports are coming in, you don’t need 5th generation fighters, you just need something fast enough to catch them. They probably aren’t even operating any sort of advanced radar beyond that needed to avoid mountains.
@17 I like it.
@14 Missiles will be a problem but cannon shells could be transported to location using civilian trucks. Av gas can be obtained, a lot of civilian traffic won’t be flying any more.
Btw, good point about anti aircraft missiles.
I suspect the USAF vehicles burn JP something..modified kerosene, and not the AvGas a piper cub will need.
What are they planning to land the Starlanders on? An interstate, one set of wheels on each side of the median? Or perhaps they are antigravity VTOL?
I am also curious what they are ground attacking in the United States in their current location.
LOL – I had some text in angle brackets, but the comment system parsed it out. Next step would be to try escaping the angle brackets and see if the back end is as hacker proof as it seems. :P
@Thirdbase, using those figures the invasion suffers up to approx. 28,000 (twenty eight thousand) casualties, that sounds like the loins share of ground forces they brought with them.
Also just because this three times the size of a C5 doesn’t mean it carries three times the cargo, compare the C5 to the Space Shuttle, the C5’s about 80 feet longer but carries 122 tons to the shuttles 24
@19 and @20 They use AVTUR (aviation turbine fuel) which is similar to kerosene. Lots of commuter aircraft and most helicopters use it as well so supply shouldn’t be a problem. I believe that they should use the highways as run strips and hide under the overpasses. There are many smaller high tech militaries around that should cause the invaders grief as well, with planes that are 90% as good as F22s plus attack helicopters. The helos in particular would have been more likely to survive having more dispersed bases, plus being more often deployed. Not stealthy but agile and well armed.
@SCC Yes, but they also need bullets, guns, food, vehicles, fuel, and all the other fun things that a modern or future army needs. If they drop just 30,000 infantrymen anywhere in the US, I give them a week, before they are either screaming for help, or are in danger of being destroyed.
The comparison to the shuttle isn’t all that accurate, since they are designed for different missions.
A question for Drak, if he sees this. Are there gaps in these snippets that are filled in the book? I am getting my copy tomorrow and wonder if I need to start from the beginning to get everything.
Of course, they could be three times the linear dimension of a C5, meaning they were carrying an enormous amount of stuff. Straight into the ground, it appears.
I have some problem with the idea of someone conquering a planet with 30,000 troops, unless each one came with a Spiderman Giant Mecha with reusable explosive throwing katana as seen on the Japanese live-action Spiderman series. If you expect a planetary population of 100 million — guess — and you can convince them that you are divine beings, you might still need hundreds of thousands of troops, simply because the occupied people are so spread out. That’s ignoring occupying places like northernmost Canada or — in recent prehistoric times — at least one part of the world in which it appears warfare had not yet been invented.
Damon, I have no idea if the Hardcover has additional scenes that I haven’t snippeted.
Drak, thanks for the prompt reply. I am getting the ebook tomorrow from barnes and noble. Another Weber adventure to look forward to.
interesting ending….much like “Excalibur Alternative” ends…. Earth against the universe!
There does seem to be a problem with the server for this site. My submission, at about 3AM Monday morning, didn’t take. Much the same thing happened Sunday morning.
(#20 Comment by George Phillies) The answer for the LZ of the Starlanders, as originally planed, may be the one I came up with in my comment # 35 September 26, 2010 @ 4:03 am for snippet 19.
Another though on the propulsion engines. If the heat exchanger is hot enough, the water molecules would be cracked. Only to recombine further down the tailpipe, increasing the thrust.
@1
What strikes me is that the Shongairi seem to have ignored that in the initial survey, the outnumbered, theoretically inferior group with nothing to lose opted to attack.
Then again, they really should have taken a week or two to read up on earth’s recent military history and do some analysis.
On the subject of how much the shuttles can carry, I’m pretty sure Translation Convention is in effect, link below explaining, follow at own risk, but when they say “battalion” they mean battalion as we understand, they’re talking in our terms
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention
On the LZ, whilst a water landing looks likely, I’m 100% convinced the shuttles might be be up to it, putting such capabilities into a craft that can VTOL/STOL on land and is also capable of SSTO? Unlikely, the craft would be capable of TOO much and cramming all that into a single hull would comprise carrying capacity. A second point would be if they land on water we can’t nick them
The question of the Shongair troop numbers is interesting. They appear to recycle troops from past conquest, with cold sleep, these troops could be hundreds of years old. Add in the newbies from the generation at launch, & the number could be quite large. This assumes that those in cold sleep would not be a great burden on the starships. A rational planner would take the worse case scenario imaginable, & add 20 to 50% overkill to that. And if the numbers came out within acceptable cost, do it. After all, if you don’t need them this time they can still be used in the next conquest, or the one after that.
This is based on the assumption of a level 4 civilization, and two lesser ones. So, if troops are plentiful & cheep, there may well be a huge number of them.
The human death toll has not been given yet, so it is a bit early to say that the Shongair have overwhelming forces or not, from their point of view.
I’m curious where the idea that there are only thousands of Shongarai troops around? They are attacking with all the troops they planned on bringing, which included enough to conquer three separate worlds.
@Thirdbase from snippet 6/chapter 2
The capital ships and transports were still two standard months of normal-space travel short of the objective, sliding in out of the endless dark like huge, sleek hasthar, claws and fangs still hidden, while the medical staffs began the time-consuming task of reviving the thousands of ground personnel who would soon be needed.
This is where I get my thousands of troops number. Other comments in the paragraph this sentence comes from suggest that all things told the Hegemony Council’s level of technology is actually pretty low, compare the five or six lightspeed multiplier to the twenty times lightspeed when Humans started fighting the Shirmaksu Empire in The Apocalypse Troll, they do however seem to some form of FTL communication, if not instantaneous communication.
A couple of points:
1. The US Reserve forces are fairly geographically dispersed. Most individual and a lot of unit equipment is stored at centers or arsenals around the country. As an example, when we deactivated the Army Reserve’s 205th Infantry Brigade (Light) in 1994, as the Bde S-4, I travelled to every company level center to confirm that all equipment was inventoried and being turned in and that nothing was being forgotten in the corners or containers or at off-site storage centers. The brigade had three light infantry battalions, a field artillery battalion, a cav troop, an engineer company and a support battalion. All the company level weapons were at these centers spread out across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Even the 105mm M101A1 howitzers were at the home stations. The rifle companies had M16A2 rifles, M249 LMGs, M203 GLs, M60 GPMGs, 60mm M239 mortars and Dragon and TOW II guidance systems along with the night vision sights and systems. As far as maintenance and ammo, Fort Greely (?, memory fails me), an Army National Guard post in Minnesota, Camp Douglas in Iowa and Fort McCoy (then an Army Reserve training post) all had Ammo supply points for training and mobilization. Would the Shongairi have watsed KE on these sites? Oh, and we had an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter battalion attached, with companies at commercial airports throughout these same states. The Guard’s 33 BCTs are the same way, with the bulk of their equipment at NG training sites, like Camp Atterbury or Camp Shelby. Then there’s all the “odds and sods”. The Army Reserve has no combat units (except a rifle battalion in Hawaii and 2 attack heli bns), but plenty of combat MPs and engineers, but the other point is that there are about a dozen combat vehicles in the training commands for MOS training, especially maintenance. Then there’s AMC’s arsenals and depots. Maybe the Shogairi took out Watervliet Arsenal, where most of the Army’s artillery is manufactured, but what about Anniston Depot, where the combat vehicles are overhauled or recapped? There’s probably a couple dozen M1A1 AIM or M1A2 SEPs, M2 or M3 Bradleys, M109A6 Palladin’s going through the depot. What about Galveston, where the Army does its aviation depot maintenance?
2. The Air Force Reserve and ANG are also dispersed across the country at local commercial airports. JP-8/JP-4 is the common fuel for the ground and aviation forces, which is AC-1 (aircraft commercial) with additives. Ammo however will be another story. There are no more F-4s in service or even very many at the “Boneyard”. Davis-Monthan out in the desert is where the services store aircraft or retire them to. Remarkably, you will find late model F-15, F-16 and F/A-18, even B-1B airframes there as the services rotate aircraft to even out flight hours on the fleet. You will also find well preserved older aircraft held in reserve or for Foreign Military Sales. Even in 2012, I’d be willing to bet you’d find a couple dozen F-14Ds, not to mention A-10s, A-7s and A-6s, along with some F-111s, and early model F-16, F-15 and F/A-18 along with some B-52s. And there’s an ammo storage point nearby. Would a couple dozen F-14Ds with AIM-54C Phoenix, AIM-7M Sparrows and AIM-9P Sidewinders, along with an M61A1 make it a hard day on the Shogairi, not to mention some F-15Es, both types having very capable strike packages?
@26: Just finished the book last night. Picked it up at B&N on Sunday. Yes, the hardcover sequence is somewhat different from the snippets. I’d start over. It’s not a very long book anyway so you’re better off just reading it from page 1.
As far as troop numbers, even if the Shogairi took out every major US military installation in CONUS, there would still be around 250,000 Army Guard and 150,000 Army Reserve Soldiers, not to mention the 850,000 former Soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve. Now many would have died or benn severely wounded in the strikes on the amjor cities, but all in all, adding in Marines, shore based Navy and Air Force and their Reserves, there’s probably at least one million people with current or recent military training, with many having recent combat experience. Then there’s the unknown number of civilians with some military training, the law enforcement community, especially their SWAT units, we could talking a million and a half, with an armed populace able to support them or conduct guerilla warfare against isolated Shongairi detachments or whatever rear area they establish.
Why do I suspect that the sight of a B-70 will not make these visitors happy, except that assuredly at this point none are left? I would be inclined to suspect that the aliens are optimized for space warfare, so that efforts to fire missiles at their fleet will be an epic fail. Delivering the gift that keeps on glowing to landing sites may be more promising.
Success- picked it up at B&N today, before flying home to UK tomorrow, that saves me a month’s wait!
The numbers game (Shonagairi/US forces) is not too relevant, I assume they have landing forces in Africa, India and so on as well. A few Pakistani nukes may not do them much good as well.
I shall try to hold off reading it till the snippets finish! Any date for the next Safehold?
Note:
I wish I could return the e-book I bought of this.
Somebody said the loss of a division is no Big Deal! They can’t afford to lose companies, much less divisions! They have to occupy an entire planet with a population (even after the strikes) in the billions. To quote another book “to High Command it looks like we’re conquering the entire world.” “We are, but now we have to hold it.” Just look at how many troops we had to bring in after “Victory” was declared in Iraq.
@42 The price of impatience.
@ Randall, I based that upon any realistic size force required to attack and seize a populated planet. In other words, they would be losing a fraction of a percent of their force. In terms of the Iraq invasion, it would be like the US having a platoon or company wiped out. We would see it as a tragedy, but it wouldn’t make a difference. If they haven’t brought enough troops, then it will make even less of a difference.
@Mike S you forgot the circa 14 million (if not more) licensed hunters is the US plus at least another, what 40 thousand or more in various militias
@40 One is still on display, see wikipedia for details, but I doubt it’s anywhere flight ready
@46 I agree a B-70 is currently on display, and is very impressive, but I suspect that by this point in the book that location is a hole in the ground. There are something like 100-150 million gunowners in the country, many of whom own several pieces. I am not sure if we will get to see the ground force commander, who might better have her staff do the database searching, explain to the commander about some obscure irrational concept like ‘private ownership of firearms’.
@37 My expectation, which may be in error, is that a large number of the places you listed are also holes in the ground.
It seems to me that I have heard of ‘Deathwing’ as a title in a game of some sort, but rummaging through my board game collection would be a nuisance. My own guess is that the Starlanders are not supersonic until they leave the atmosphere–and how they are supposed to do this is unclear–and the Deathwings can pull perhaps 800 mph, i.e., they actually can outfly an F-94, but will not like meeting an F-101. Also, the comments on unusual occasions on which Deathwings get to join the hunt tends to suggest that the visitors tend to view air support of ground operations as something that you do not do very often, certainly not as a part of regular combat.
Sorry, I just had a thought, we know that the Shongairi tactics aren’t as advanced as they seem to think, but how primitive are they really, what if they try WWI tactics like mass troop warfare and the like (one friend once told my the idea in the charges in WWI was to stab machine gunners with bayonets, while doubtful, this gives you and idea of how bad it was at the start).
Additionally Shongairi seem to be hunters, could they be proud warrior race guys?
@ George, Deathwing was: Deathwing, the first expansion set for the Space Hulk game.
Google is your friend, so is wikipedia.
The Shongairi don’t seem to understand the concept of Total War.