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@dipmonk Mini-mines work too, but you need more of them (which means even more Bombers to deploy them). The only difference between the different kinds of mines is the explosive yield, unless I mis-remember things. I've brought down almost all UFO's encountered (although some into the drink, but that at least provides relations = money), giving up on only a few of them (I count raiding landed craft as bringing them down), and much of the time I've been short on at least some current level component while I've scrambled to update my fleet to be/stay competitive. It didn't help that I've tried to provide my troops with armor and weapons at the same time, so production facilities have run non stop until very late [sometimes stopping due to a lack of money, but with a little foresight it's possible to switch to resource production, such as picking apart enemy soldier armor and weapons, which doesn't consume much money (but does consume a fair bit of time when you've got large piles of them]). I'm probably sporting more soldier teams than what's optimal, which results in a drain on resources and production facilities to equip them, especially since you can teleport them around in a shorter time than it takes aircraft to fly the distance, but on the other hand shipping weapons around cost money too (and re-equipping the soldiers is a pain, as the gear availability isn't uniform, nor is the soldier strengths, so predefined uniforms are of little use except possibly as a starting point: I find constantly correcting the missile loadout on my troops as they're sent out to be a drag).

At least the Lotus and Archelon depend on technology acquired by researching specific terror wrecks (and the Archelon requires material as well). There are many technologies (weapons as well as aircraft) that require you to bring down a particular craft, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. The Contrail was uncovered quite late for me (I think it was a bit into phase 4), at which time the previous interceptor craft really wasn't up to the task. I take down craft escorted by alien interceptor craft by first taking out the escorts with a full wing of repurposed alien interceptor craft (of as late a type as I can muster) and then I send in bomber craft to wear the main craft down (for the cases where the escorts are major craft I use bombers throughout). The human interceptor craft are used exclusively to deal with wings of 3 alien interceptor craft, and I'm still not sure it wouldn't have been better to use repurposed alien craft for that task as well. It can be noted that I find escorts of the very last alien interceptor craft to be very hard to deal with: I haven't been able to take down any of them without losing at least one of my craft. The second last one was a lot easier to deal with, and Hunters should be up to the task [I'm using Short Circuits as their weapons, and used Focus Blast (if I remember the weapon development order correctly) prior to that]). I've never used Firebirds, Merlin, or Night Owl. I unlocked the Lotus early, but the resources to build it were scarce (only terror craft provided the Extreme critical component until phase 4), so my bombers were generally Drakes. It's possible to bring down all the major craft using Drakes, but you need an awful lot of them. About the only good thing about Drakes is that they can be rearmed in a sufficiently short time to make two sorties if attacking from a nearby base, but as many late craft have unavoidable attacks that wear away at craft you may or may not have them in a sufficient shape to actually be able to take off again (or survive the second sortie, for that matter). By the time I unlocked the other bombers I started getting the resources to build Lotus craft. Unfortunately, changing the loadout of craft takes too long to be useful, so you have to equip you craft according to what you think will be the most useful against what may come up in the next wave. This has resulted in me using mines exclusively, as that's the only weapon that can be used against all major craft, while missile usage is suicidal against many of them. Using proper deployment of mines it's possible to wear down all major craft and survive the encounter (although one craft require an annoying special tactic of exiting via a corner of the map or get shot down by an extremely long range missile: it took much frustration to figure out why retreating craft were killed after leaving most of the time and even longer to find a way to avoid it). Each major craft has its own properties, so you need to use different tactics when deploying mines against them. For one I had to make several (ideally 4, I think) close U shaped flybys (exiting the engagement and then return again) to deploy the mines so they'd hit, enabling dropping of mines only in a narrow stretch of the path. In other cases you'd get the craft to chase the bomber while its dropping mines, etc. Since I'm using mines exclusively, it's extremely important to have the latest mine technology. You also need to have a sufficient number of bombers to actually be able to deploy the mines (as well as being in range of the target). If I remember correctly it takes 13 Stealth Mine deployments to bring down a Mothership, so you can do it with 13 Drakes (they'd be in a very poor shape when leaving the engagement, but they'll be repaired by the next wave), or 7 sorties of a craft that's capable of deploying 2 mines at a time, or 5 Archelons (which probably won't happen). Note that bombers without countermeasures are next to useless late in the game, as there are few craft that don't sport missiles. I've got 6 "regular" bases that sport a full wing of interceptor craft (currently Contrail), a full wing of repurposed alien interceptors (currently Alien Interceptors with a small number of Heavy Alien Interceptors), and 3 bombers (Lotus, with some bases having an Archelon), plus a drop ship. In addition to that, I have 3 support bases that have a varying number of somewhat outdated Drake bombers that I don't plan to replace except with Lotus craft that occasionally are replaced by an Archelon on a "real" base. I'm sure there are other ways to deal with enemies, but I've found a way that works for me, and given that resources are scarce, I haven't been in a position to engage in experiments. In my thinking, the important thing for a bomber is the number of mines it can deploy while still being equipped with countermeasures. Sure, faster, nimbler, or more resilient is nice, but getting hit by major craft major weapons tends to be lethal regardless of resilience (there's one craft in particular that's fast enough that it's a bit of a struggle to get away from it once you've deployed the mines. but it's still possible even with a Drake). Edit: It should be made very clear that success for me is very dependent upon save scumming. There are probably people out there who can repeatedly follow a working pattern without making mistakes, but I'm not one of those. Also, it takes a fair number of attempts to figure out how to deal with a new craft (or recall how to deal with a known one at times). I'm playing at the NG level, but without the air game nerfing mod. I'm also not above letting the game auto resolve fights that should be won and save scum when that fails (but there are certain fights that the auto resolve claims have a 0% chance that aren't that hard to win with proper tactics, and, conversely, cases where auto resolve gives you 100% chance when it isn't possible to deal the required amount of damage manually).