Starfury
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The Starfury is the primary fightercraft of the Earth Alliance. Several variants have been made, including the Aurora, the Badger and the Thunderbolt.
Aurora-class
These Starfuries are the most common Earth Alliance starfighter model. While identified as "Aurora-class" in secondary sources, "Starfury" is the only name used for them in the series. Starfuries have been in service since at least 2243, when they were widely deployed in the Earth-Minbari War.
Starfuries are space-superiority starfighters armed with dual pulse cannons mounted beneath the cockpit. Four "wings" radiate from the cockpit, ending in large engines, but the wings do not have control surfaces or other aerodynamic characteristics allowing the fighter to maneuver in an atmosphere; they can only operate in the vacuum of space.
Each of a Starfury’s engines can thrust forward or backward, allowing the fighter to rapidly rotate to face in any direction. Arguments have been made that the placement of the engines makes the fighter unnecessarily vulnerable to attack by increasing its overall profile, but there may have been other, unspecified design considerations (heat dissipation, radiation leakage, or some unpredictable issue) that required moving the engines away from the cockpit. Starfuries do not have artificial gravity technology with which to compensate for inertial effects on the pilot, limiting their usable acceleration to the tolerance of their human operators.
The pulse cannons of Starfuries can fire at variable rates. Presumably the destructive energy of each pulse increases with the interval between pulses. Starfuries generally demonstrate higher rates of fire when attacking fast-moving, poorly armored targets like starfighters [1] and lower rates of fire when attacking slow-moving, heavily armored targets like capital ships [2]. The firepower of these weapons is sufficient to cause significant damage to capital warships, and a squadron of Starfuries was once able to destroy a Centauri Warcruiser without capital ship support, although it must be noted that the Warcruiser was a suicide drone that did not attempt to evade or return fire upon its attackers [3]. The pulse cannons have the ability to track targets within an unspecified arc in front of the fighter [4].
Starfuries have a claw-like device mounted on the ventral surface which can grab other vessels for towing.
Thunderbolt-class
Thunderbolts, specifically identified as as a separate class of Starfury,[5] are multi-role starfighters used by the Earth Alliance in space-superiority, air-support, and surface-attack roles. Thunderbolts have been in service since at least 2260.
Thunderbolts differ from earlier Starfuries in at least two major ways. First, they have retractable airfoils that allow them to enter a planetary atmosphere and remain maneuverable. This allows them to operate in an air-support or surface-attack role, as seen in "Severed Dreams". It is unclear why the airfoils are retractable, since they would not significantly affect the fighter's performance in space, but retracting them might reduce the fighter's sensor profile, making them more difficult to detect or target. It is also possible that retracting them could slightly reduce angular momentum, increasing maneuverability in space, while simultaneously protecting their fragile structure from micrometeor impacts. One other possibility is that folding the airfoils allows a Thunderbolt to occupy the same hangar rack as a standard Starfury. Captain Sheridan gladly accepted the addition of Thunderbolts to B5's fighter complement, without mentioning any need for modifications.[6]
Second, in addition to "four uni-directional pulse cannons" mounted in the fighter’s chin, a Thunderbolt can carry four missiles in racks underneath its wings. These missiles were used only against surface targets in the series.