History Headscratchers / AceCombat7SkiesUnknown

* Why didn't Shilage, Voslage and the other nations annexed and integrated into Erusea try and gain their independence after [[VideoGame/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies Erusea lost the Continental War?]] Heck, ISAF may have been more than happy to do so.

** Here's a possible answer: There was a skeleton crew aboard the ship, and the carrier might have been partially automated with Belkan technology. I mean, seriously, did Osea NOT learn anything about reducing warship crew stress after occupying Gründer Industries' facilities?

* So in ''Ace Combat 5'', it's revealed that North Osea Gründer Industries is a Belkan front operation, that's at least partially responsible for V2 and the SOLG. That was in 2010, but this game takes place a decade later and NOGI is still in operation because....reasons? You'd think their assets would have been seized and they would have been shut down after AC5 but apparently that didn't happen so of course, they just caused Osea more grief. Does Osea just never learn anything?

** [[https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Aces_at_Wars This in-universe article]] confirms that a year after the Lighthouse War, Gründer finally got their just deserts.
* Why was it that Captain Torres and his crew spent nearly 700 days underwater and apparently were never given a [[ThereAreNoTherapists psychological evaluation]] upon rescue? The briefings make it sound like Torres and his men cracked under the pressure of long isolation underwater and literally nobody in the Erusean Navy ever thought to do anything besides just stick them all back on the submarine carrying literal nukes and then act shocked when Torres and his merry band of [[SubmarinePirates submarine pirates]] decide to make off with the submarine and attempt to blow up Oured with a nuke.

** You don't need to enter the harbors with the drones, you just need to get the drones within range to make the attacks. Also, the drones attack more than just 4 ports, they attack what looks like 7 in the news broadcast, and then attack multiple staging areas at the same time. As for how such a small attack can cripple the Osean Navy so easily, it's simple: They attacked the fuel storage facilities with missiles/rockets/bombs, and than had the drones slam into ships or drydocks. Even if the ships were only damaged, they'd still need months of repair work before they can put to sea again, which is time Erusia can use to launch their land war, and take vast swaths of territory before the IUN can mount a response.

** Additionally, considering the Grunder logos seen on a good number of the containers, it's not far-fetched to suggest that the radicals' hand from the Belkans came in more ways than one, allowing them to use the company's assets and logistics to help stage the attack.

*** You're also discounting the fact that it looked, for all intents and purposes to everyone involved, like Trigger ''had'' fired the shot that killed Harling. In this early in the war, not only was the capabilities of Erusea's cyberwarfare assets greatly underestimated, but Osea was, as shown in dialogue in mission 2, ''incredibly'' up their own asses about the infallibility of their own IFF systems. The idea that a drone could flawlessly imitate Osea's own IFF systems was liable to get you laughed out of the courtoom. Not only that, but its highly plausible Trigger ''himself'' was convinced he had killed Harling (The game ''does'' go to lengths to make it seem like you fired the missile, after all), and did not protest the fact in court, which likely further sealed the verdict.

*** The accepted canon in the Ace Combat Wiki is that Avril was fired upon by Osean aircraft in the first place because her F-104, with its stubby wings, slim airframe, and lack of radio/IFF made it look superficially like the Erusian drones the Oseans were already chasing. So, technically the Osean plane fired upon a ''noncombatant,'' which would have been a war crime in and of itself, if it weren't a case of mistaken identity and the fact that Avril was flying an unregistered and obviously unmarked ''war plane.'' Given that Osea was in the process of sinking knee-deep into a political shitstorm what with their attack on Farbanti going on, Avril's little incident would be a ''very'' inconvenient mark on an already growing tally. So it is decided that they'll arrest Avril on a technicality, and ship her off to the ass end of nowhere where she can either wait out the war or at the very least die as a decoy. Kind of a dark side of Osea if you ask me, but then again the game seems to make it clear that Osea's penal system is...not exactly the epitome of sunshine and rainbows.

* So in Ace Combat 5, it's revealed that North Osea Grunder Industries is a Belkan front operation, that's at least partially responsible for V2 and the SOLG. That was in 2010, but this game takes place a decade later and NOGI is still in operation because....reasons? You'd think their assets would have been seized and they would have been shut down after AC5 but apparently that didn't happen so of course, they just caused Osea more grief. Does Osea just never learn anything?
** Grunder Industries' HQ may have been seized by the Osean government, but shutting the entire firm down would be difficult as it probably had branches in other countries. Said branches could have been engaged in other activities and more than likely disavowed the Grey Men in public, allowing them to exist on a legal technicality. Osea would have to legally prove that each branch was complicit with the Grey Men in order to shut them all down.

* So how did Osea get the Admiral Anderson ready for launching aircraft in about a day after being abandoned at sea for presumably months? A carrier that size (implied to be equivalent to a Nimitz-class) needs, at minimum, a couple hundred people on board to actually operate the ship and ready it to launch airplanes (a reactor crew, a flight deck crew, etc.), so where the hell did they come from? Reactivating the Anderson presumably wasn't part of the plan after Operation: Daredevil (or at least immediately after), the Osean ships (or the majority of them) that took part in the operation were torn apart by the Arsenal Bird and it's implied the ship is empty and shut down prior to Avril showing up in her boat. So presumably Osea just found a carrier crew on the spur of the moment from somewhere, got them all over there, did a full reactor startup (a process that takes DAYS under ideal conditions) after weeks/months of being adrift at sea and then got the ship prepped for flight ops in 24 hours, which is amazing considering they botched the Tyler Island operation so badly, everyone was suffering from a coms blackout due to Kessler Syndrome and it's implied they threw everything they had left to recapture the space elevator (and took heavy losses in the process).
** Here's a possible answer: There was a skeleton crew aboard the ship, and the carrier might have been partially automated with Belkan technology. I mean, seriously, did Osea NOT learn anything about reducing warship crew stress after occupying Grunder Industries' facilities?