Although BattleMechs and aerospace fighters tend to dominate the battlefields of land, air, and space, conventional fighters have formed the backbone of air defense for far more worlds in the Inner Sphere than most armchair generals tend to credit. With so many worlds possessing the industrial capacity to produce their own conventional fighters, the variety of these craft is quite impressive, with a few universal standards set by the likes of the Guardian, the ’Mechbuster, and the Boeing Jump Bomber. For a time the Free Worlds League's Angel Light Strike Fighter was another of those standards. Andurien AeroTech of Lopez built hundreds of Angels a year for over a century during the Star League era, shipping them from the Free Worlds League to every member state of the Star League until its fall.
         The depredations of the Star League forced most nations to replace the Angel's advanced fusion engine with standard turbines, but even that modification did not completely save the design. Too light to survive the crush of a dogfight, the Angels fell by the hundreds, by the thousands, and in many regions they effectively ceased to exist. In the Draconis Combine though, Wakazashi Enterprises reengineered the Angel into the Suzume ("Sparrow"), which soon became one of the primary AeroFighters of that House.

         Introduced during the height of the First Succession War, the Suzume was an AeroFighter ahead of its time, which explains why it has been so successful. Using a Shinobi turbine, it is easy to maintain for any local technicians. It also carries heavier armor than the older Angel, making it harder to bring down with a random shot. The single change that has made the Suzume successful though is the change that has made it far more survivable than any Angel ever built. The Suzume's main weapon is a LongFire V LRM system that allows it to keep its distance while peppering the enemy. In the handful of times that Suzumes have met Angels in battle, the Suzumes have often defeated ten times their number of Angels simply by shooting them down at long range before the Angels could bring their SRMs into the fight.

         Wakazashi Enterprises licensed production of the Suzume to hundreds of worlds in the Draconis Combine, making it what many consider to be the primary AeroFighter of that realm by the end of the Succession Wars. They have only released yearly software and hardware upgrades in all that time, keeping the Suzume easy to build, easy to fix, and easy to keep flying. Any invasion of any world that has ever belonged to the Combine is almost guaranteed to meet these fighters.