Luftwaffe

"Atmospheric" air force of the Grand Army, undoubtedly the hardest hit by the recent round of budget cuts. The role of air forces in a space age remains very much in doubt.

Nonetheless, the Luftwaffe maintains three primary missions:

• Air superiority and atmospheric defense. Luftwaffe officers take as an article of faith that a purpose-built atmospheric fighter will ALWAYS outperform dual-purpose "aerospace" fighters. GA Combined Arms Doctrine still holds that air superiority is an important condition of victory that is not necessarily guaranteed by space superiority.

• Tactical ground support. Several iterations of the rugged Spitfire and new flying drones serve as the GA's quick-striking aerial artillery. Spitfires are capable of landing virtually everywhere, and Spitfire wings are often attached to GA ground forces regiments.

• Long-range strategic bombardment. Without a doubt the most expensive and contreversial capability of the Luftwaffe, and viewed as the core of the service's identity thanks to its legacy of "Bomber" Gage Rizett. A modern Tacfortress has more long-range missile and fewer 'dumb bombs' than the Great War models, but it is still capable of cutting a huge swath of destruction and performing missions of "city busting". In theory this allows the total destruction of the enemy's economic base. Many have argued that if you want to do this kind of damage, you do it from orbit, or with Ultima missiles. Nonetheless, the Luftwaffe consider this a core capability for the GA to possess, in the event the GA should want to level a city somewhere it doesn't have spacecraft in orbit but doesn't want to use an Ultima missile. (And, most likely, is in the Core, as most Tacfortresses are based in Trianable.)