The Hornet was the main Fortian fighter during the Conquest of Georgia and much of the Eastern Seaboard. Designed with USS assistance, the Hornet is directly based on the Housecat. A light and fast aircraft, it's creation was part of the need to phase out the expensive Stabbers still in service with a cheaper aircraft more capable of coping with the Floridian weather. A worthy sucessor to the autogyro, this airplane was nevertheless not quite armed well enough to deal with giant Eastern Seaboard aircraft.

The reason why the USS aided early Fortia was simple: they wanted to use them as a proxy to open up the region and set up a friendly power, but this eventually proved a bad idea: The USS expected Fortia to unite Florida into a USS-dependent slave State that would be easily taken out if they ever decided to turn on their backers. This was not the case, and Fortia quickly proved adept at both forming alliances and fomenting regime changes in their favor, often by siding with would-be aristocrats. This was particularly easy in Florida: much of the population was made up of refugees from the various massacres and purges committed by the God's Marines group in Georgia and their descendants, and this hatred was easily molded into a common front. While the invasion of Georgia was reluctantly supported by the USS, since it meant opening up that coast for trade, it allowed Fortia to become a power on it's own right.