Alien phasefighters used to be considered a joke. At the start, the aliens trotted them out in order to stop mechs from surrounding and whacking their homeships with impunity.
The alien craft performed badly because the humans were not used to fighting with strike craft to such a refined degree.
The primitive alien strike craft doctrines were adequate for the low-level conflicts that they fought between themselves, but proved completely inadequate when fighting against a race that spent four centuries perfecting the use of mechs in multiple levels of warfare!
No one considered alien phasefighters to be a joke now.
While they still possessed similar characteristics as before, their designs had improved considerably.
Their transphasic energy shields turned into more superior azure energy shields.
The native aliens finally began to put more emphasis into training their fighter pilots.