Roy has returned to Pop Hunter's Flying Circus where Admiral Hayes invites him to join a top-secret research mission at Macross Island as a test pilot. To young Rick Hunter's dismay, Roy accepts the invitation and becomes the lead pilot in the mysterious VF-1 test program!
The VF-1 program intensifies as Roy is pushed harder by Lt. Colonel Edwards, with increasingly bizarre scenarios including zero gravity and atmospheric reentry. Anti-Unification strife also heats up, as they've located top-secret Macross Island...and it's up to Roy to save an endangered convoy!