(UNE) AF-11.5 "Horus"

Dominion over the sky is yours with a few v11.5 Atmospheric Fighters! (AF-11.5)
Dubbed as the "Horus" by pilots and engineers alike, it was created with the intent of excelling in areal dogfighting and general patrolling.

Lightweight, high lift potential, and very mobile; a Horus comes standard with its unique two vertical stabilizer columns that allow for an equally unique range of maneuverability. Otherwise, these planes are rather malleable and can be equipped with additional weaponry or other form of attachment as the need arises.

Although the craft has many advantages, its shape produces more drag than its hypersonic counterparts as well as reduces maximum acceleration. As it is propelled mainly by a pseudo-scramjet, a high velocity is requisite to achieve maximum horsepower. (One solution that is common is to carry multiple fighters aboard a specialized ORBIT Shuttle, before launching the fighters once a desirable velocity was achieved, a practice that developed as early as the beginning of the 21st century.) The majority of the space in the engines is used to accelerate incoming air where fuel is then injected and ignited by a small, pulsating laser.

These fighters are also very difficult to fly and require specially trained pilots, which only adds to Earth's problem of their already over-specialized planet-side military. Luckily, however, the majority of Coalition forces lack planes that are any more advanced than the planes of Earth's First World War period, flight-capability wise. (The Coalition's plasma weapons, however, are roughly enough to make up the difference.)