Stratosphere

Stratosphere is an Autobot from the Revenge of the Fallen franchise in the live-action film continuity family.

Have you seen Jackie?

When a unit of Autobots needs to get somewhere fast, they turn to Stratosphere. His cargo plane mode can transport an entire team half way around the globe and then supply high-altitude covering fire when they get there. In the air, he is virtually unbeatable, and he knows it; Stratosphere thinks he can take on just about any challenge all on his lonesome, and this becomes a distinct problem when the threat is on the ground, where his combat abilities are no great shakes. As a consequence, he doesn't like to spend a lot of time on terra firma, preferring to reign supreme in the sky for as long as possible.

Fiction

Titan Magazines Revenge of the Fallen comics

Hey Strat, what do you think a Chuck Austen/Rob Liefeld comic about Drift and ROTF Wheelie would be like?

During a routine sweep of British Columbia, Stratosphere lost contact with NEST headquarters when he flew through an unanticipated bank of heavy cloud over a mountain range. The cloud bank proved artificial, created by the Decepticons in order to hide their operation to reconstruct Devastator, a truth Stratosphere discovered when the partially-functional behemoth swatted him out the sky. His wings damaged by the blow and his communications nullified by a Decepticon jamming field, Stratosphere hoofed it to the Decepticons' construction site, and single-handedly took out the work-bots in a frenzied frontal assault. Construction supervisor Skywarp proved tougher to handle, and Stratosphere was floored by a single kick from the Decepticon, but luckily, before a killing shot could be delivered, Stratosphere exploited his unusual body shape by spinning over on the ground and smacking Skywarp with his wing. Realizing that he couldn't face this threat down alone, he destroyed the jamming array and radioed in his position to NEST with a request to bring the rain. Undeterred, Skywarp transformed to jet mode and came streaking towards him, but Stratosphere quipped that being brought down to earth had given him a new perspective, and he tilted the device generating the cloud bank upwards, blinding Skywarp with it. Skywarp crashed, and Stratosphere made himself scarce, meeting up with Jolt, Rollbar and Dune Runner just as the air-strike arrived. Watching the massive blast from afar, Jolt wondered if Devastator could have survived, and Stratosphere advocated not waiting around to find out. After all... any landing he could walk away from was a good one! Head in the Clouds

Games

Transformers: Dark of the Moon - The Game

Voice actor: Travis Willingham

Xbox 360/PS3

Stealth Force, bitches!

Stratosphere was stationed in a base located in an icy ravine, there he would receive the MechTech technology that was going to be sent to Optimus Prime, however, Air Raid gave the alert of a Decepticon approaching and took off, while on the move he deployed some jets to take care of Starscream so he could escape, although Starscream was fast enough to catch up with him again, Stratosphere was powerless against him and deployed the Aerialbots to fend him off, but once again Starscream shot all of them down and kept attacking Stratosphere.

Stratosphere was furious and engaged his Stealth Force to finish off Starscream for good, Starscream was unimpressed by his weaponry, saying that he also had tricks on his own and used his guided missiles to destroy Stratosphere's engines, he then got inside him and captured some MechTech guns, while using the remaining ones to destroy Stratosphere from the inside. Dark of the Moon (Xbox 360/PS3)

Toys

Revenge of the Fallen

"What do you mean Powerglide is my sultan?"

• Stratosphere (Voyager, 2009)
  • Japanese ID number: RA-17
  • Accessories: Optimus Prime mini-figure.

Stratosphere transforms into a military transport plane which is an amalgamation of a C130-Hercules for the body, a C-17 Globemaster III for the wings, the cockpit of a C-5 Galaxy and the tail of an Antonov An-225. The little (transforming) Optimus Prime mini-figure fits into the cargo hold in the aft section of the plane, and can deploy from the ramp by rotating his tail fins.

Sadly, Optimus cannot fit in the cargo hold while Stratosphere is in robot mode, so he must be gently held and cradled by Stratosphere like a tiny war machine.

The packaging indicates that his moving internal gears (Mech Alive) feature is located at his chest, but it is in fact located in his arms.

• More information on Stratosphere at TFU.info

Notes

Oh if only....

• Stratosphere was originally going to come with a Space Shuttle accessory that would have plugged into the hole between his plane-mode wings that would serve as his robot-mode weapon. Despite making it all the way to the test shot phase, this was ultimately removed from the final production piece.
• Stratosphere is based upon the same plane that dropped Optimus Prime to attack Demolishor in Revenge of the Fallen, but with liberties taken to differentiate it from the real thing to avoid the need to license the design.
• A NEST plane in the Unite for the Universe story "The Strongest Weapon" is drawn to look like Stratosphere (rather than the C-17 plane NEST usually uses in most fiction), but lacks Stratosphere's distinct colours and is never identified as being the Autobot.