Corrected entry: The humans are shown attacking the alien destroyers with AMRAAM air-to air missiles, which are shown both times to do virtually no damage to it. AMRAAMs are designed for fast moving air-to air targets, like the alien fighters. Yet, the humans do not see a need to fit their fighters with more powerful weapons, such as bunker busters, cluster bombs, nuclear bunker busters or tactical nukes, that would easily cripple or outright destroy the alien saucer. Instead, they resort to firing countless AMRAAMs at a 15-mile wide destroyer, which amount to pinpricks and cause needless deaths.
Phixius
27th Jun 2009
Independence Day (1996)
Correction: I believe you are making the assumption that after the Aliens attacked the Military bases, as stated in the film before the city attacks (In a report by General Grey), that there are still a large supply of "bunker busters, cluster bombs, nuclear bunker busters or tactical nukes" available for the planes to have them fitted before the final attack.
Next to that, they probably have the AA missiles loaded primarily to fight the fighters coming at them, not to damage the big ship directly. What else they had planned is never stated though. Perhaps they had hoped killing the mother-ship would make the destroyers retreat and they were simply delaying its attack.
30th May 2008
Independence Day (1996)
Corrected entry: In the scene near the end of the movie when Russell Cates is flying the jet fighter, he says 'Tell my children I love them very much', then proceeds to fly his jet up into the UFO to blow it up. The problem is, in every scene previous to this when the UFO fired its laser beam, it destroyed everything it hit. Why didn't it destroy the jet when it entered the beam?
Correction: The beam hadn't been fired yet. If you watch closely you'll notice that every time a ship fires that particular weapon there's a sort of "two-phase" beam. The first phase sends down an apparently harmless beam of light, while the second phase seems to charge the beam with whatever destructive energy the aliens utilize. Russell flies into the beam during its first phase. By the time the beam is charged, Russell is inside the craft. When the beam blows up his jet, it causes the chain reaction that destroys the ship.
4th Feb 2007
Independence Day (1996)
Corrected entry: When we see the alien spacecraft stop above the Empire State Building, it looks like the very top of the building is not far from the bottom of the ship. How can this be? The WTC buildings were about 1,000 feet high, so to clear those buildings, the bottom of the ship should have been much higher above the ESB. The same thing with the ship over the White House - in order to clear the Washington Monument, it would have had to be higher than it was shown above the White House.
Correction: For one thing, the ships aren't necessarily completely flat on the underbelly; and for another, a race with that kind of technology would have equipped their craft with vertical maneuverability as well as lateral. Simply put: they flew over and/or around the taller structures. Keep in mind that the entire approach is not shown of any one craft.
Correction: The needle of ESB is higher than the roof of WTC. If the ship had hit anything, that would be the antenna at the roof of WTC. Actually, they could have shown the scene of the antenna crashing down from great height and people running away not to be crushed by the antenna.
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Correction: The AMRAAMs do not do "virtually no damage". They do absolutely no damage. The humans don't upgrade their munitions because there's no point to it.
Phixius ★
Missile hitting the armor leave sparks flying, and glowing hot metal. I'm not sure if you would call that missiles doing absolutely no damage.
Still, that sounds like throwing pebbles at an elephant. They can hurt him but cannot kill him.
Actually the missiles do damage the alien ship. Just not serious damage.
The point is they didn't know how much damage they would do. The first time they tried they hit a shield and no damage was done. They had hoped they would do damage. Next to "bunker busters" and any other type of armor piercing warheads (which I doubt can be fitted onto air-to-air missiles) they had little choice in weapons types. Nukes won't work if you are dogfighting alien fighters close to the target, you'd destroy all your own planes, next to that you'd again destroy whatever city you were flying above just like Houston.
lionhead