B-Wings outside of the rebellion can be explained in a headcanon pretty easily.

Rebel pilots who knew of the b-wings (either as prototypes or standard ships) defected from the Rebellion, deciding they'd rather live that life than be constantly sent against the Empire.

I think Disney will shift most of the development of the star fighters away from a small handful of on-screen characters, and leave it with regular star fighter manufacturers. It makes more sense that the rebellion would simply buy A Wings and B Wings from existing manufacturers (through dummy corporations, on the pretence of local planetary protection from pirates, purchases from systems not under Imperial rule, etc) rather than develop and build them themselves while on the run.

Just watched the siege of Lothal ep 1 of Rebels season 2. In it we see Phoenix squadron piloting what looks like either an R22s or A-Wings fighting ties as well as a certain Dark Lord of the Sith. My question is; with rebels being set several years before the Battle of Yavin are we seeing a retcon to the A-Wing's development timeline or are these R22s?

Personally I'm not familiar enough with either ship to say conclusively. What's the consensus among the fan base?

They could be R22s, the offical designation for the Phoenix squadron fighters is "Star Fighter." The offical designation fort he A-Wings at Endor is "Interceptor." besides the designations being diffrent the craft llok diffrent And a TIE Advanced was able too utrun the A-Wings seen in Rebels, that wouldnt happen if they were using the A-Wing Interceptors most the time. Nothing is stopping any writters from calling A-Wing Star Fighters "Arrow Heads," or "R22s."

Also if you noticed the A-Wing in the Rebels episode were in the paint scheme of the prototype version.

Actually, the colors are inverted - blue where the classic McQuarrie picture was white and vice versa.

You are not correct.

R-22s were a retcon to start with. Rebels is also set to give the B-wing prototype a new origin.

If anything, I think making the A-wing a KSE starfighter is genius.

EDIT: A bit more digging revealed how the interceptor level A-wings make sense: the new canon has the A-wing as highly modifiable starfighter, much like the Z-95. The Rebel Alliance strips them down, removing most of their armor, which is what makes them so blindingly fast.

Funnily enough, with the same goal of saving weight, they often remove the missile launchers.

How is it genius having the A-Wing Star Fighters origins be linked KSE? Its all ready linked to KSE because of Jan Dodonna. I have to point out that the reason A-Wing Interceptors are faster and deadlier than A-Wing Star Fighters is because of Dodonnas engine designs used on the A-Wing Interceptor as well as its special tactical jammers exclusive to it. Also the cannons. The A-Wings have always been modular.

Well the only reason the R-22s were created was because WEG decided to ignore the fact that the Droids cartoon showed A-Wings despite being set before A New Hope and later many of the PC game designers felt free to ignore WEG stating that the A-Wings were post Yavin designs.

Another interesting thing is that in the Legends continuity the designer of the A-Wing worked for KSE and designed the Delta-7 and Eta-2 classes before going underground in the aftermath of the Empire rising and eventually joining the rebellion, So I wonder if they are keeping the same designer but shifting things so he designed the A-Wing before going undergroynd rather then afterwards.

I would never have used that old rpg book as source material unless its for something not written about in another source book.

Also having B-Wings in Rebes doesnt conflict with Legends since they show the B-Wing existing well before Yavin in the Droids

show.

Also if it bothers you that A-wings (and B-wings) are not in wide use in ANH and TESB then think about Leia's rebels as a separate cell that used different ships than the ones in Rebels and that the big fleet we see in ROTJ is where all the rebels have finally come together, so all the sudden we see huge Mon Cal ships and new fighters, even though these had been part of the alliance for some time.

They were Rebs but not Alliance up till around ROTJ, Mon Cals. Blue Squadron att he Battle of Yavin had a A-Wing A22. Blue and Green squadron were tasked with causing as much damage as they could to the S.L.C. Dish. They failed. Just a side note. Black Squadron was the only Squadron sent out to Intercept Red, Gold, Green, and Blue Squadrons. There two Black Squadron Survivors, two Red, one Gold, one or two Blue, no Green. Black has the highests K/D ratio out of all the squadrons involved, I wouldnt consider them lame since the numbers erre not on their side.

Here we see the ever-present danger of an atrocious art "style".

Also if you noticed the A-Wing in the Rebels episode were in the paint scheme of the prototype version.

Actually, the colors are inverted - blue where the classic McQuarrie picture was white and vice versa.

You are not correct.

There were at least 3 different paint schemes on the Phoenix Squadron A-wings: the one pictured above, another one like that with the blue and white more or less swapped, and one like this one but green instead of blue.