The SB thought line of thought fails to make any sense to me what-so-ever.
The reason being that jet fighters are meant to strike really fast from outside visual range. The idea of only using jet fighter against 50 foot tall enemy shock troops or bridge bunnies is as stupid as the Hollywood idea of jet fighter threading the needle through office buildings at super sonic speeds. That is the job of attack helicopters and maybe VTOL fighters. Jet fighters are meant to go stupid fast and be long gone before the munitions hit. that is the entire point of going that fast, evasion. not wire guided missiles are meant for shooting from dozens of miles away not half a block. Think of the SR-71 Blackbird... by the time it showed up on radar it was literally two countries out of your airspace.
When confronted with the idea of how to fight a race of 50 foot tall invaders you have to look at what weapons we had and of what use they were. infantry (mechanized or not) is only there to launch rockets and TOWs and such. even 50 caliber rounds are kind of useless. So all thos weapons and troops are desperation attacks. Not at all ideal. This leaves you with main battle tanks, helicopters, and bombarding with jets and boats. Bombarding means no chance to hold ground and your reducing all combat to scorched earth tactics. As we are only talking about foot soldiers. Never mind their siege and mechanized forces. They figured said 50 foot tall men would be armored as well.
So they where confronted with the idea of only scorched earth tactics and/or thousands of tanks everywhere as functional military tactics. So they had to look at what to do with the new tech they had. Well 50 foot troops (as the weakest unit type) mean you need speed enough to get to the fights and main battle tanks are fairly slow compared to things with a stride that large. Helicopters are useful, but bunny hopping around the battlefield only works with enough disposable cover... which would mean more scorched earth tactics.
So they had to design of the new weapon system one that needed several design specifications:
1: Can hold ground against 50 foot ground troops. This requires:
A) The weapon system can carry weapons that can damage armor a foot or more thick
B The weapon can function in urban environments and leave them as intact as possible.
C) Mobility enough to actually ignore roads and keep up with the running speed of said 50 foot ground troops... and any vehicles they can use.
D) The 50 foot ground troops come from space so they must have orbital or air mobile fire support if not orbital bombardment.
This is the basic design specification for fighting the infantry. (feel free to add to the list)
---
Enter the vertitech, it has plane mode for mobility between sites and ups the effective deployment range. It has battliod mode for holding ground and is mobile enough to avoid being skeet practice like a helicopter. Geriwalker was more for getting the plane pilots to a humanoid form and making it a VTOL made it useful. I'd say that geriwaler makes it urban combat capable and battliod made its way in as a logical extension. Having hot swappable munitions and ability to deflect a knife or hammer adds to unit survivability. Also carrier capacity was already existing tech.
The major issue with the system are them being hanger queens (though imagine a helicopter based versions maintenance workload... ignoring its useless in space) and requiring at least three major skill sets to operate... and of course training your fly boys in infantry tactics.
Also Its not at all unreasonable to think the Macross had some broken battlepods on it when it crashed. That influenced design decisions. Also, they barely got this tech working before the Earth got attacked. Making 40 specialized weapon systems would have made a darker shorter series. The 'jets for the win' theory is extinction educingly stupid.
To recap using bombarding units for urban combat mean your going to run out of urban environments This means jets are only good for attack units. Veritechs are only a third as stupid as deploying a race of 50 foot , organic soldiers... and only a 200th as stupid as making them fail at basic maintenance forever.
The reason being that jet fighters are meant to strike really fast from outside visual range. The idea of only using jet fighter against 50 foot tall enemy shock troops or bridge bunnies is as stupid as the Hollywood idea of jet fighter threading the needle through office buildings at super sonic speeds. That is the job of attack helicopters and maybe VTOL fighters. Jet fighters are meant to go stupid fast and be long gone before the munitions hit. that is the entire point of going that fast, evasion. not wire guided missiles are meant for shooting from dozens of miles away not half a block. Think of the SR-71 Blackbird... by the time it showed up on radar it was literally two countries out of your airspace.
When confronted with the idea of how to fight a race of 50 foot tall invaders you have to look at what weapons we had and of what use they were. infantry (mechanized or not) is only there to launch rockets and TOWs and such. even 50 caliber rounds are kind of useless. So all thos weapons and troops are desperation attacks. Not at all ideal. This leaves you with main battle tanks, helicopters, and bombarding with jets and boats. Bombarding means no chance to hold ground and your reducing all combat to scorched earth tactics. As we are only talking about foot soldiers. Never mind their siege and mechanized forces. They figured said 50 foot tall men would be armored as well.
So they where confronted with the idea of only scorched earth tactics and/or thousands of tanks everywhere as functional military tactics. So they had to look at what to do with the new tech they had. Well 50 foot troops (as the weakest unit type) mean you need speed enough to get to the fights and main battle tanks are fairly slow compared to things with a stride that large. Helicopters are useful, but bunny hopping around the battlefield only works with enough disposable cover... which would mean more scorched earth tactics.
So they had to design of the new weapon system one that needed several design specifications:
1: Can hold ground against 50 foot ground troops. This requires:
A) The weapon system can carry weapons that can damage armor a foot or more thick
B The weapon can function in urban environments and leave them as intact as possible.
C) Mobility enough to actually ignore roads and keep up with the running speed of said 50 foot ground troops... and any vehicles they can use.
D) The 50 foot ground troops come from space so they must have orbital or air mobile fire support if not orbital bombardment.
This is the basic design specification for fighting the infantry. (feel free to add to the list)
---
Enter the vertitech, it has plane mode for mobility between sites and ups the effective deployment range. It has battliod mode for holding ground and is mobile enough to avoid being skeet practice like a helicopter. Geriwalker was more for getting the plane pilots to a humanoid form and making it a VTOL made it useful. I'd say that geriwaler makes it urban combat capable and battliod made its way in as a logical extension. Having hot swappable munitions and ability to deflect a knife or hammer adds to unit survivability. Also carrier capacity was already existing tech.
The major issue with the system are them being hanger queens (though imagine a helicopter based versions maintenance workload... ignoring its useless in space) and requiring at least three major skill sets to operate... and of course training your fly boys in infantry tactics.
Also Its not at all unreasonable to think the Macross had some broken battlepods on it when it crashed. That influenced design decisions. Also, they barely got this tech working before the Earth got attacked. Making 40 specialized weapon systems would have made a darker shorter series. The 'jets for the win' theory is extinction educingly stupid.
To recap using bombarding units for urban combat mean your going to run out of urban environments This means jets are only good for attack units. Veritechs are only a third as stupid as deploying a race of 50 foot , organic soldiers... and only a 200th as stupid as making them fail at basic maintenance forever.