As though a Moskurger couldn't spot a disease-ridden tiger with Arstotzkan sympathies from a mile away.
I'll vote for the Helicopter for now, because while I think a SAM is the best way by far to bring down the alien craft, I'm not too enthusiastic about the "manned by a pilot" portion of the thing and I'm not too confident in other targeting solutions either.
The S.A.M. is remote-controlled. The pilot is in my guided missile proposal. Radio controlled missiles won't do much in a 2400kph battle, and the pilots will most likely be located and torched, or the radio signals get jammed, or something, but no pilots are included in the construction of Kashyyk's UF-SAM-41.
I see the following proposals:
Observation helicopter: useful, but prone to getting blowed up. But getting some heavy artillery onto landed craft is one way of keeping them landed...
Dive-bomber: I like the idea, but a conventional plane just seems too prone to getting blowed up. We already have dive-bombers and they haven't even gotten close.
Air-launched anti-ground Pilot-Guided missile: Our pilots and planes are dropping like flies as it is, so there is no real difference in whether or not the craft is capable of landing without leaving a hole in the ground, and pilots make decent guidance systems for missiles if they can handle the acceleration, and we already have, what, solid fuel? you can do a lot with basic rocketry... We need something dynamic to get our first few salvages and this is it!
Ground-launched anti-air Radio-guided missiles: A nice idea, but it just won't work, the guidance is too tricky and vulnerable, the required performance is a bit too much to hope for, and the control installations will probably be too expensive to field over enough terrain nor maintain view of the engagement.
Umm, and maybe a 4-seat transport version of the observation helicopter? Did that ever get an official nomination?
So there are two-different missile proposals. One has a pilot and is awesome and should get all of the votes and you won't regret it! the other is also awesome but too ambition and will sadly face-plant with no surviving acne. There is a dive-bomber too which sadly is not ambition enough to deal with space-aliens and some sort of helicopter nonsense that will never respond quickly enough to deal with the fact that the enemy can win a battle by just leaving at a moment's notice...
But yes, once again, there aretwo different missile proposals. there seems to be some confusion as to what exactly is involved in each.