In strategy games, artillery units provide you the luxury of picking away at your enemies from beyond the range of their weapons, unless they close in on you or also employ artillery. Unfortunately, being mostly ground-borne, the artillery units can be attacked by basically anything, rendering them rather vulnerable.
Air forces on the other hand don't need to worry about most enemy combatants as their weapons cannot target them. Except Anti-Air. Which happens quite often as most flyers simply have to wander into their range to be able to deliver their payload.
Solution? Combine the pros of both unit types to negate the weaknesses. Outfit your fighter bomber with long-range missiles. Teach your dragon to hurl fireballs further than enemy archers can ever hope to shoot. Equip your starship with a Plasma Cannon or Wave-Motion Gun so the other side wouldn't even know what hit them. And even if they did, there would hardly be anything they could do about it.
Airborne Artillery is a flying combatant whose weapon outranges all Anti-Air, if not all other units effective range. Hovering safely several meters to kilometers above ground it's safe from nearly everything. No ground unit can get in close enough to land a hit without risking a load of punishment coming down on their head and only a handful of enemy aircraft can target it. Static defenses are rendered practically useless unless the carefree commander lets their flying catapult accidentally wander into their range during their demolition frenzy.
These unit types can sometimes disturb the gameplay balance since, compared to conventional ground-based artillery, Airborne Artillery usually has a movement advantage and isn't restricted by terrain and thus can deal death even from places no other combatants can ever reach, like high mountains or open sea (if the game doesn't feature navy). However, to make up for this such units are often quite high up the Tech Tree, are much more expensive, can mostly only target ground units, and also travel rather slowly, so faster Anti-Air and fighter aircraft may have a chance of taking them out.
Outfitting an Ominous Floating Castle with long-ranged weaponry will turn it into this trope. Cumulonemesis may also possess long-ranged attack.
Subtrope of Death from Above. May partially overlap with Orbital Bombardment, where the attacks actually come from the planet's orbit where hardly anything besides an ICBM or a Wave-Motion Gun can reach it. Compare Airborne Aircraft Carrier which also attacks from high altitudes, but its range actually depends on carried flyers' active range.
Your pitiful flak cannon can't possibly land a hit on any of the following Video Game examples:
- The Scrin Devastator of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is a capital class spaceship, whose plasma cannon outranges everything else except artillery units, but those can't target airborne units.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series
- Zig-zagged with Soviet Siege Chopper of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 expansion Yuri's Revenge. It is a Dual Mode Unit — while airborne, its assault cannon's range is rather short. To deploy its artillery piece, it needs to land and thus become vulnerable to all weaponry.
- The Imperial Giga Fortress of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is a behemoth of a unit that can attack any unit on land or sea and defend itself against air attackers. It can also transform into a ginormous demonic flying head whose God's Breath weapon outranges every Anti-Air structure in the game. Its only weakness when transformed is to fighters, and even then Apollo and MiG fighters won't be able to take one out in a single pass (Tengus, on the other hand, are a perfect counter since they don't need to rearm).
- The Allied Harbinger gunship is for all intents and purposes an AC-130 gunship that fires either mini-nukes or a chaingun. Its main weakness is that it circles around a target, usually bringing it in range of Anti-Air defenses (while it doesn't have the range to attack them with impunity, it certainly has the firepower to kill them very quickly).
- In Star Wars Empire at War, starships like the Marauder and Broadside Cruiser have long range that allow them to strike at targets such as enemy ships and space stations outside their range of attack.
- StarCraft:
- The Terran Battlecruiser can fire its Yamato Cannon (essentially a focused nuclear explosion) at a range greater than Anti-Air defenses, but it takes time to recharge.
- The Zerg Guardian in StarCraft and Brood Lord in StarCraft II are large flying creatures that outrange all stationary Anti-Air structures.
- The Protoss Tempest in the second game is a flying artillery ship with ridiculously huge range but needs to be escorted to provide line-of-sight.
- H.A.W.X.: The F-14 Tomcat's loadout in the game includes "Radar-Guided Missiles" that can be fired at targets from extreme range, which are suggested for one of the mid-campaign missions to destroy radar and SAM sites without alerting the enemy to your forces' presence. This is loosely based on the real-life AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile designed for use in the F-14's role as a carrier-based interceptor to destroy incoming Warsaw Pact bomber groups: during the Iran–Iraq War, an Iranian Air Force F-14A shot down three Iraqi MiG-23s with a single Phoenix from over 80 kilometers—before its own radar had even resolved the radar contact as Actually Four Mooks. Several other missions suggest planes with radar-guided missiles, including the F-15C for the mission immediately after the previously-mentioned one and the Rafale C to defend a space center closer to the end.
- X: In X3: Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude, M8 Bombers and M7M Missile Frigates can both fire heavy ordnance from practically the other side of the sector, outranging any defensive fire (though the missiles themselves are Destructible Projectiles and have a longer range than the ship's own radar, meaning another ship or a spy satellite has to act as a Target Spotter). An M7M with a full cargo bay of missiles can singlehandedly wipe out entire sectors.
- Gihren's Greed:
- Zigzagged with the Apsalas-II and III. As Mobile Armours, they can use their beam cannon well out of enemy range (for comparison, their beam cannons have a range of 5 hexes while most artillery or long-range Mobile Suits tend to have max range of 2 or 3 hexes). However, depending on the game their beam cannons may only be MAP attacks and so they're completely helpless if an enemy (even as simple as the Saberfish aerospace fighter, a completely obsolete piece of hardware) manages to get close.
- The Adzam's beam cannons have a range of 4, allowing it to attack enemies with impunity. However, it's fairly slow due to its function as an aerial artillery unit, and so vulnerable if enemies manage to get close. Unlike the Apsalas above, however, the Adzam is also armed with machine guns for close-quarters defense in addition to the beam cannons.
- The Psyco Gundam and Psyco Gundam Mk-II in their Mobile Fortress modes can function as this, outranging their targets with their beam cannons. In their gigantic Mobile Suit modes they lose the range advantage (going from a range of 3 hexes to 2), but they gain access to more of their weapons including melee attacks. Furthermore, in their Mobile Fortress modes, they can be targeted by dedicated air-to-air weapons by enemy artillery or aircraft which are not affected by their anti-beam weapon I-Fields.
- The gigantic Garuda-class aircraft are basically flying bases and the best air transport in the game, even by the time of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. This is thanks to their huge amount of HP, excellent movement range, and the ability to carry a small army of Mobile Suits aboard. In addition, thanks to their long-range beam cannons, they can also act as aerial artillery. Like above examples, however, enough fast-moving air-to-air units (including Mobile Suits riding flying sleds) can bring them down.
- SD Gundam G Generation:
- The Wing Gundam Zero Custom naturally comes with flight ability and extremely long-range Twin Buster Rifles that allow it to perform this role. Its major weak points include how much energy the Buster Rifles need to fire (depending on the game, it isn't unusual for it to only be able to fire 3 shots before having to refuel), as well as the fact it's often one of the more expensive Mobile Suits to manufacture. The energy issue can be resolved via equipped items and upgrades, but in games where enemies have anti-beam defenses (e.g. machines from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans all inherently have anti-beam coating), its usefulness takes a nosedive.
- Super Robot Wars: The various warships that appear throughout the series tend to take this role thanks to often having at least one weapon with superior range (e.g. depending on the game the Main Cannon Barrage of the Ra Calium may have a range of 6-7 compared to the 4-5 range for the Geara Doga's beam machinegun or Zaku III). Those ships equipped with Wave-Motion Gun-style attacks like the Nadesico or Dreisstrager can have even longer ranges (e.g. with the right skills, upgrades, and equipment the Weistregger can have a range of 13).
These non-video game examples attack from beyond your AA Gun's range as well.
- Count Zero: Immediately after Turner botches Dr. Mitchell's extraction, an unidentified attacker craters his base camp. While Turner at first suspects an orbital laser strike or a tactical nuke, he eventually concludes that the attack must have come from a massive railgun hidden on one of the corporate blimps he had spotted on radar prior to the extraction run but dismissed as weather balloons because they stayed hundreds of kilometers away from the base camp.
- Modern air combat is practically based on eliminating targets from beyond visual range and the range of most conventional weaponry. This includes air-to-ground missiles with the effective range of over 100 km as well as air-to-air missiles with similar properties.
