Designed on as a mental exercise by a Seinar engineer, the TIE/ae was placed into limited production for evaluation. A limited number of these potent craft were bought by the Empire for the purpose of evaluation. While pilots who had been stuck with TIE/gt's liked them, as did those assigned to ground bases, the men you make the decisions were once fighter pilots, and more inclined to listen to those squadrons that had had TIE/ln's. The fighter pilots didn't like it very much. Designed for optimized atmospheric performance against combat air speeders, cloud cars and low flying starfighters, it is as fast and almost as nimble in air as the (at the time unborn) Interceptor, this performance comes at the expense of space performance. With only 60% of the forward thrust in space as the TIE/ln, it was being out run by Y-Wings. This is the reason why the /ae was never bought in large quantities.
Using the basic ball from all of the TIEs, it retains the original laser cannons. The solar panels are similar to those that would later be designed for use on the TIE Interceptor, but instead of them having the cutout, they come to points fore and aft (a very sharp, 30 degree in to center, one in the front, and a smoother, 45 degree, one to the back). These are mounted up and in at about a 60 degree angle, much like the prototype TIE/d series or the Hapan Miy'til. When upright, they are 80% as tall as those in the TIE/ln, making the /ae the largest of the TIEs. The undersides of the solar panels are lined with miniaturized, high intensity repulsorlift cells, giving it it's exceptional atmospheric performance. This also allows it to hover a few centimeters above ground, like a landspeeder (although SFS recomends that for long periods of storage, it best to stow the TIE/ae on the standerd racks). This, in addition to the powerful floodlights mounted on the underside of the wing pylon make it a valuble tool for counter-insurgency and riot control operations.
The support spars are reminiscent of the those used on the /ln, but there is only five, as the foremost one has been replaced with a light concussion rocket tube. The magazine for this weapon is mounted on the back of the inside of the panel. Under it, there are a pair of light pylons, making the /ae the be the only TIE-series fighter to have weapons pylons standerd.
Many of these fighters would scrapped, or sold off to subservient powers, but a few (less than a thousand) of them remain in Imperial service, mainly with Army support wings and a small number of Assault Wings. Those that remain require roughly 25% more maintance time, due to the highly minaturized repulsor network. If this time is not recieved, performance quickly degenerates.