Fireflight is an Autobot from the Fall of Cybertron portion of the Aligned continuity family.

"Nice chest you got there, Fireflight."
"Aw, thanks a... Wait, what?"

Fireflight's fascination with the natural beauty of his surroundings causes him to be distracted enough to severely impair his gunnery skills. He makes up for this with copious amounts of flak, hoping that will prevent the enemy from advancing. This tendency to waste most or all of his ammunition left him with no defense against his remaining enemies enough times that Perceptor threw up his hands in exasperation and made him a giant sword.

He still can't hit anything with it.

Fireflight is sometimes known as Air Raid. It's unclear how his fellow Aerialbot Air Raid feels about this.

Fiction

Aligned novels

When the Nemesis caught up with the Ark above Aquatron, Fireflight participated in the initial counterattack along with his Aerialbot buddies, Silverbolt, Skydive, Slingshot, and Air Raid. They combined into Superion and crashed through the bridge before making their way to the hangar area to wreck the engines. The Aerialbots disengaged and were driven off by Megatron before completing their mission, and were seriously injured in the conflict.

By the time Sideswipe was prepared to use the Ark to buzz the Quintesson city Hydratron to rescue Optimus Prime and the others, however, Fireflight and the Aerialbots were back on their feet. They provided cover as the Ark descended on Hydratron, and Superion proved to be a powerful ally against the Sharkticon hordes. The Autobots and Decepticons formed a shaky alliance against the Quintessons, and so the Ark was forced to tow a damaged Nemesis back to orbit. Superion provided the boost necessary to get the clamped ships airborne. Retribution

Games

Transformers: Battle Tactics

Fireflight (FOC) participated in battles against a variety of opponents, both Autobots and Decepticons. Sometimes there were many of him! He was an Epic character who was available to 2500 players in a "Cybertron: Episode 4" event, and can be recruited by collecting 650 units of Cybermetal, 350 units of Transmetal, 150 exclusive cores, and 50 cores of this character. Transformers: Battle Tactics

Toys

Generations

That Autobot sigil on his chest seemed like a good idea at the time, but he forgot to check how it'd look in jet mode.

• Air Raid (Deluxe, 2012)
  • Series / number: 1 / 013
  • Accessories: sword/fuselage, double-barreled gun, sword

• Known designers: Aaron Archer (Hasbro), Takashi Kunihiro (TakaraTomy)

Part of the third wave of 2012 Generations Deluxe Class toys, Fall of Cybertron Air Raid is a redeco and retool of Fall of Cybertron Shockwave, with a new head, chest, and weapons. Transforming into a "Cybertronian mobile artillery" mode, he comes with a small hand-held sword that's based on the one used by Megatron in Fall of Cybertron, which can be mounted onto a 5mm post on top of the jet in vehicle mode. The sword has a 5mm handle, as well as a peg-hole on the hollow side of the hilt.

Additionally, the front center fuselage of the vehicle actually splits into two weapons, with the front "cannon" piece turning into a large sword, and with said weapon being attached to a double-barreled gun. The gun is a retool of Shockwave's triple-barreled gun, replacing the third barrel with a set of slots and grooves that allow the larger sword to be attached as a sort of bayonet. The instructions tell you to mount gun onto the 5mm peg-hole on his back, but it can still be mounted into one of his forearms when either hand is flipped in, giving the appearance of integrated weaponry. Both weapons use 5mm posts, and the large sword features a peg-hole on top.

As a feature that was called out in the packaging, yet not documented in the instructions, both swords can also combine into a "triple blade" sword, with the smaller sword splitting at the blade, and the hilt being pegged into the larger sword's post. While the stock photography depicts all three weapons as being part of this combination, with the smaller sword being pegged into the gun's post, a small tab beside the hilt's peg-hole actually prevents the gun's post from pegging in securely, thus suggesting that this is not the intended configuration. Since the packaging call-out specifically mentions that the swords combine to form this weapon, the photos given only depict the combined form of the swords.

This version of the mold was also used for BotCon 2014 Brimstone.

• More information on Air Raid at TFU.info

Generations (Japan)

• Air Raid (2012)
  • ID number: TG12
  • Accessories: sword/fuselage, double-barreled gun, sword

The TakaraTomy Generations release of Air Raid features different plastic colors and paint more reminiscent of Generation 1 Air Raid, rendering the black plastic a bluer shade while replacing the red plastic with black and the translucent red with pink. The gold paint on his wings is replaced with red for his wings and metallic orange for his torso and gun (also used on his knees and previously silver blade), and he features several entirely new paint details on his face and gun muzzle.

Notes

• Although initially announced as Fireflight, his Generations toy was subsequently revealed at San Diego Comic-Con 2012 to have been renamed Air Raid, due to the loss of the trademark on the former name. This also affected the Kreon Micro-Changer version of the character, who acquired the new name "Firestrike".
• At some point in development, Vicarious Visions had plans to implement Fireflight into the War for Cybertron DS games, as seen in concept art posted to their official Flickr page in 2011.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Air Raid (エアレイド Ea Reido)

Gallery

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  War for Cybertron robot concept

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  War for Cybertron vehicle concept