Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Eugh, I think you've got this one completely wrong. To suggest that "they aren't equipped for planetary overpressure" implies that they can be so equipped is just like suggesting that "The Sopwith Camel can't carry Tomahawk cruise missiles" implies that the Camel could carry such missiles. It simply makes no sense - you're essentially arguing that the fact that someone specifically said you're wrong actually proves that you're right .
I don't think your analogy washes properly because it's just a pair of completely dissimilar concepts that have been put together specifically because they're an impossible combination.
My point is that there must be something unique about this situation: why is Halcyon warning us we can't fly in an atmosphere... *now*? Or, more importantly, *ever* -- if I'm your Sopwith Camel pilot, I *know* what kind of ordinance it can and cannot carry... so my Wing Commander mentioning that to me in one particular briefing is quite unusual.
It's not even some new kind of ordinance - it's a universal concept, a type of combat, that he's suddenly warning us about. If Halcyon were saying "oh, and your Rapier can't mount the new Hyper-javelin Super-missile", then I'd understand what you were saying... but he's telling us, for some reason, that the Rapier can't fly in an atmosphere in this mission.
I think we have to separate two things here - atmospheric flight, and atmospheric combat flight. In the case of the Rapier II, it's clear that the ship is capable of one, and it's equally clear that the ship is incapable of the other. Whether or not the Rapier II ever could be equipped for atmospheric combat flight is a silly thing to debate - we know that it's not equipped for it, and nowhere in any WC source are we given any reason to believe that it can be equipped for it. The fact that it happens with other ships (although there's no direct evidence that it does) is absolutely irrelevant, because there's no reason to take those other examples as being representative of a general trend.
Any WC source... other than End Run?