The weapons are new, like, they literally only now reverse engineered the ultima tech, the are testing it as we fight them. The airships though, yes, but they are huge and slow, i guess? And dont forget, while our spell might be weak, several dozen of mages combined blow ships from the sky...

Also after middy put out their former flagship they got scared and then the infights happened and all, only recently they got THIS strong but the infights and other stuff prevented from wide spread use.

And dont forget, for the weapons you need a primal to fuel em.