So I started thinking.
Lets say a group, say an Inner Sphere House like Kurita is intent on hitting Earth and is deploying the Sword of light or another group of similar caliber. And their target is an American City like say...Los Angeles or something like that.
In BattleTech, at least to my knowledge. Most don't hit drop ships as they're deploying. But our Military would absolutely never let those forces hit the ground. You'd have F-15s firing those Anti-Satellite missiles into drop ships. You'd have Cruise Missiles and Anti-Air batteries engaging the moment they came into range. Not to mention the ridiculous number of fighters hitting them and their ASFs as they came down to land. Then, assuming any force survives that...now they're getting hit my HIMARS/MLRS, Tomahawk cruise missiles and Artillery. Even as the Military is vectoring in forces to directly engage.
. . . Do you know how much armor a typical dropship has?
Firstly, Dropship armor is rated in aerotech scale, so when you look at Sarna and see these small numbers listed you need to multiply them by TEN to get their equivalent armor values for normal BattleTech...
A
Union, for instance, has 18 AeroTech / 180 BattleTech grade Armor per SIDE, and their captains know how to rotate the ship while descending to minimize the fire taken on one side. And the Union is a dedicated Mech Carrier. When they go into an area they expect to take fire as they land from they send in Assault Carrier class Dropships like the
Fortress which has EVEN MORE ARMOR.
Anti-satellite missiles have very little, IF ANY explosive payload. Satellites are NOT hardened targets, and a missile simply HITTING them is generally enough to destroy one or knock it out of orbit. To be frank, I'd argue those missiles likely do nothing to most dropships, or at MOST 1 point of damage. Cruise missiles and anti-air batteries are things dropships are designed to handle as those have been used as defenses in BattleTech for generations.
Also, BattleTech Aerospace fighters will generally give them air superiority over our modern airframes. Not because of better performance, some have better performance, some have lesser, but due to a few reasons:
1. Being able to out climb anything we have.
Remember, altitude advantage is a thing in aerial combat, and all our fighters have a flight ceiling where they can no longer perform. Aerospace fighters functionally have no such ceiling, as they are EXPLICITLY designed for both space and atmospheric use.
2. Being flying tanks.
The second utterly massive advantage BattleTech Aerospace fighters have is just how much damage they can soak. Remember, these craft use the same weapons and armors as BattleMechs, and while people here seem utterly sold on underselling BattleTech weaponry's ranges, nobody has argued that their weapon POWER is underplayed... and this applies horrifically to the matchup of Earth airframes vs aerospace fighters. Missile shots that would KILL a normal airframe will just SCRATCH an aerospace fighter. An Aerospace fighter could like COLLIDE with an F-22 and keep flying while an F-22 will be so much scrap.
3. They have lightspeed weapons.
Weapons grade lasers and PPCs meant to shoot at BattleMech scaled armored enemies are going to be UTTERLY DEVISTATING to have to engage in a dogfight with. There's no dodging them, no chaff deploying, the only chance is not to let them lock on, as even a marginal hit by a Large Laser WILL destroy any modern aircraft... with the POSSIBLE exception of a Warhog.
And before people go around claiming BattleTech weapons have short ranges and are thus useless against modern aircraft, upon mounting on an Aerospace fighter, the range for weapons change from 1 hex = 30 meters, to 1 hex = ~600 meters, thus a large laser has a range of 9 km... or if using the ACTUAL rules that state that all BattleTech ranges ARE explicitly truncated for gameplay purposes and that the ACTUAL weapons would be "to the horizon"... those lasers would be to the horizon and thus things would literally be at "lookshoot" situations.
Oh... and by the way, THIS APPLIES TO THOSE DROPSHIPS TOO. Those dropships are actually COVERED IN GUNS, including many, MANY lasers that potentially are "to the horizon" as well which makes many of the defenses firing at the Dropship as it comes it potential targets for it's own counter-fire... as well as any aircraft attempting to attack it.
Finally, on cruise missiles and larger, I need to double check the rules, but I'm fairly certain in the aerospace rules there's rules for using smaller direct fire weapons as anti-large missile weapons. If that's the case, the Dropships have even more options against attackers as they come in...