The Vampire was built after the Piranha, I believe it would make sense to drop the cloaking device, due to its ineffectiveness concerning the nephs.
The Piranha is probably a little older than the Vampire (it is designated F-106 to the Vampire's F-109), but given the ICIS manual's claims that the Prophecy fighters are all built around a new unified (role-oriented) doctrine for fighters they're probably both parts of the same development initiative.
It's NOT brand new in Prophecy, though--we just see it later because Midway's third squadron hadn't arrived yet at the start of the game (both fighters may have already been around for as long as several years). There also isn't time to have the design changed by the Nephilim, either, since Prophecy's story takes place over the course of only one month (even the B and the S variants seen in Secret Ops are probably the result of design changes that entered the pipeline long before the Nephilim showed up).
I don't think we can say they didn't use the Lances in the Nephilim was simply because we don't see it happen in Prophecy and Secret ops. They may or may not have had a limited production but you can be sure that, if they're resurrecting all kinds of decommissioned ships, whatever fancy fighters might happen to be sitting in various hangars aren't going to be sitting around kept out of the action because of the price tag or nostalgia factor.
This leads to two things I've always wondered about the Dragon/Lance:
- How does it (or: does it?) tie in with the 'premeditated' fighter force Confed is putting into place circa Wing Commander Prophecy? It's worth noting that the designation, at least, puts it in the dead series of Wing Commander's "century series": F-105 Tigershark, F-106 Piranha, F-107 Lance, F-108 Panther, F-109 Vampire, F-110 Wasp. I'm thinking these ships were all on the drawing board at the same time.
- Is there a 'normal' version of the fighter? It's possible the "Black Lance" is like the 'Black' ships in Wing Commander Secret Ops... and that there may be an ordinary production model out there somewhere, too. Ie, maybe we flew the F-107S Black Lance and there's also an F-107A Lance that's... 'less', I guess (like how Casey flew the F-110S Black Wasp in Secret Ops versus the regular one that ordinary pilots are using at the same time... the name and concept certainly fit).
I doubt that they would recommission small amounts of fighters that they probably had hardly any spareparts lying around. Even if they did, its a logistical nightmare to go into battle with a ragtag arsenal of a dozen different fighters on a carrier. In a battle of earth scenario probably, but in a war several systems away I doubt it, its much more efficient to deliver production line units than some super fighters that had been lying around that you cant replace or repair.
I believe he's referring to the Broadswords in Wing Commander Arena rather than some kind of ragtag force. The idea was that the Confederation had boneyards full of war surplus Broadswords which could be brought online quickly when the Nephilim invaded... and so production of Broadsword parts and then updated Broadswords resumed to support that force.
