Sorties have varying level of importance to the plot; some are plot critical and thus get the Mission designation, and other, less important ones get the Operation designation. Operation Grey Howl is not quite that important. Then I looked at the course of events, and realized that SALVATION was incoming. Also, uh, I kinda lied about going CKIIish, but this is important enough to go back to the old plan system.
Also, I am beginning to lean towards canonizing the DLC, but I'll still have to wait for the Ten Million Relief Plan to come out before making a final ruling.
The next fifty-four minutes are frantic. To coordinate a wide search Long Caster needs multiple AWACS, and Long Caster needs to be in the mission center to coordinate the far-flung groups. AWACS Star Gazer is woken up at 0023, but AWACS Far Scrier is nowhere to be found. In Far Scrier's absence, the other sections of the plan are completed first.
The search teams are drawn from the squads on Active Duty; the High Alert teams are kept in reserve for a positive contact. Five search teams are arranged: Waltz Team, Rigel Team, Zvezda Team, Druid Team, and Wolf Team. Druid, Wolf, and Zvezda team are assigned to AWACS Far Scrier, or Long Caster, if she can't be found in time. Waltz and Rigel Team are assigned to AWACS Star Gazer. The two AWACS will cover the border region for large concentrations of moving vehicles, and then report back to HQ, who will send out the High Alert teams in response.
Long Caster doesn't like to think about the fact that it took him two precious minutes to come up with the Wolf Team designation.
Pixy, however, is woken up first; as a lone man squadron he doesn't slot in with established doctrine, but his status as one of the most skilled pilots makes him the best candidate to intercept the western contact. His craft will take off at 0300 hours and intercept the unknown craft around the 65th meridian at 0425. In the worst case, that would leave Pixy fighting alone for half an hour without support; however, Pixy is one of the pilots best able to handle that kind of situation.
At 0053, however, AWACS Far Scrier still hasn't been found. The base ripples as people are desperately woken up. First to be woken is people who've worked with her; then anyone who might have a clue is woken. The mission outline is revised again and again. Far Scrier's projected search range keeps moving closer and closer so that Far Scrier can be deployed after Star Gazer. Star Gazer, Rigel, and Waltz Team are slated for an 0700 takeoff team. They will arrive at the northern area at 0830 and loiter onsite for four hours. Far Scrier, or who is increasingly looking like Long Caster, is slated to deploy at 0900 hours. The search region is the western border and arrival time is 1000; Zvezda, Druid, and Wolf teams will loiter onsite for three hours due to the delayed launch.
At 0112 hours, the mission outline is completed. Irwin, Bradford, and Pulford sign off on the plan. Far Scrier is still nowhere to be found.
Contact at 0432 goes smoothly. Siegfried Von Drache, piloting the XFA-31, as he identifies it, requests asylum; Long Caster grants the request, because he sees no reason not to. Both pilots touch down at 0549. Star Gazer, Rigel, and Waltz Team wake up for their own deployment.
Operation Grey Howl is successfully completed.
Far Scrier is still nowhere to be found.
The police department has its landlines ringing off the hook as the police department joins the search for Far Scrier as well; time is running out, and Long Caster grabs a box of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee as he gets himself ready to personally deploy.
At 0642, Far Scrier is found. Mostly because she shows up to the front gates just the slightest bit completely stoned.
Long Caster makes a personal note to both schedule some time to ... discuss matters with Far Scrier at a later date, but right now Far Scrier needs to be prepped on the runway. With her earlier arrival and state, the timetable is moved up to 0730 hours, and the loiter time revised upwards; Waltz and Rigel grumble about it, but it makes the most sense.
At 0712, AWACS Star Gazer's wheels leaves the tarmac. There's a scare with one of the base technicians falling asleep at the final checks, but she was safely dragged to safety and allowed to take a nap. Pops, long since awake, covers her role so that the western survey team can deploy by 0745.
By 0800, AWACS Far Scrier takes off along with the rest of their survey team. The ground crew near unanimously collapses into a heap of exhaustion, choosing to lie out on tarmac and close their eyes. Daniel Snow is the last to fall over, but he makes sure to tell Long Caster to fuck off and let his team take a short nap before he passes out too.
At 0923, the northern group reports positive contact on what appears to be several motorized divisions' worth of irregular vehicles. Zvezda Team is sent in first.
"My god, those are civilians!" Zvezda 2 shouts into the radio.
The inital estimates, written on a literal back of an envelope, project the incoming refugee wave to number at least a hundred thousand. Shen thinks the real number of refugees headed in the direction of Selatapura numbers in the millions. The Selatapuran Council views the refugee wave as a threat, and categorically refuses to host them, while also handing out some choice words about Long Caster's delegation. Daniel Snow blew his top, screamed that the council members ordered their mothers to have intercourse with a team of horses, and the good impressions Long Caster made two days ago evaporates quicker than a sliver of ice left on the hot Selatapuran sidewalks.
Worse, the recon teams actually did find mobile Free Erusean forces, albeit moving at a slower pace than the giant refugee wave was. While one group seemingly gets turned around and splinters apart even further, there's a positive identification on what appears to be a division approaching from the north and a corps of two and a half divisions approaching from the west.
Things are, to put it lightly, a clusterfuck.
🏛 - 🏛 - 🏛 - 🏛 - 🏛
Regional Event: The Million Refugee Relief Plan
Hundreds of thousands of refugees are headed towards Selatapura. At their current rate, the first refugees will arrive in the city in two weeks, and the next waves will continue pouring in for another two weeks after that. Selatapura's City Council wants nothing to do with them; most of XCOM USEA would mutiny if nothing was done about those refugees. Caught between these two pressures, someone needs to come up with a plan. That person, right here, and right now, is Long Caster.
🏛 - 🏛 - 🏛 - 🏛 - 🏛
Long Caster is at 360 Focus. Dr. Shen and his Engineering Team has completed Improved Flight Sims, and is ready to be reassigned. Shen, Snow, and practically the entire Anean contingent of XCOM USEA has dropped into Long Caster's office to threaten to resign on the spot if Long Caster does nothing about the refugee wave. XCOM ANEA's engineering contingent at Stonehenge has not yet been informed.
I will allow write-ins, but I will moderate them. Plan voting will return for this cycle. The most essential categories are:
What should Engineering do? (0 extra Focus required)
-Should the Stonehenge Group be recalled?
-General Engineering Group can assist construction of Refugee Camps, construction of Refugee Housing, and research into housing.
-Should any additional Focus be spent here?
-Write-in.
Logistics (0 extra Focus required)
-Should IC from next week be reserved towards constructing a refugee city?
-Should IC from the Fortress Selatapura funds be reallocated towards refugee housing?
-Should any additional Focus be spent here?
-Write-in.
Council Relations (0 extra Focus required)
-What should Long Caster request from them, if anything?
-Do nothing.
-Write-in.
Operations (0 extra Focus required)
-Launch suppression mission? (25 Focus)
--If so, which squadrons?
-Launch decapitation mission? (50 Focus)
--If so, which squadrons?
-Reassign squadron readiness? (Variable Focus)
-Do nothing.
-Write-in.
Call for Aid (Extra Focus required)
-Request Disaster Relief IC from... (Variable Focus)
-Request Personnel Aid from... (Variable Focus)
I will accept other categories if I find the reasoning is sound.
As much as I dislike double-posting, it's about time for me to post an Omake, lest my backlog of unposted stories overwhelm me. I try not to spam them, lest I annoy my fellow players and/or overwhelm the GM.
This one is a bit of an experiment, and I actually haven't run it by @huhYeahGoodPoint and @Simon_Jester this time, as there's not anything I feel really is questionable, canon-wise (unlike several upcoming ones). This is an anthology of shorter stories with an overall theme, rather than one contiguous story. So, without further ado, here's:
Beasts of Steel
Dr. Grantham Edwards, a respected cryogenics expert and a member of a high-level Gründer R&D team, really needed some whiskey right now. Or bourbon. Or absinthe. Honestly, anything sufficiently alcoholic would do. He'd even settle for paint thinner or raw ethanol at this point.
The reason for this urge to drown his sorrows in alcohol was simple: he'd been in this conference room for over 8 hours, listening to his coworkers arguing. It might not be so bad if they didn't repeat their points ad nauseam. If he wasn't mistaken, the next line would be...
"You can't know that for certain!" shouted Lavinia Robson. Called it, he thought. She continued following her set pattern, and followed up with "We simply don't have the data that would verify that! The Arsenal Bird focused on the enemy's shields during Operation Grey Dawn. Thus, we lack solid data on the effectiveness of lasers against the alien threat. Nor can you possibly know that your solution would be any better. EMLs have yet to be deployed against the Aliens. The idea that they're superior is completely unfounded! We shouldn't be so quick to remove the weapons the Arsenal Bird was originally designed for!"
Robson was the head of of Gründer's particle weaponry department. Having developed the TLS for Gründer, she had been the darling of the weapons' department for years now. The child of an Aurelian immigrant and a native Osean, Robson was undoubtedly an excellent particle physicist. But her "Aurelian pride", as she put it, meant she was heavily biased towards using exotic particle weapons. After all, Aurelia was at the cutting edge of weaponizing such things. As such, she was advocating for improving the main laser, or possibly even all the lasers by hooking them up to a compact synchrotron. By using the unique synchrotron radiation it produced, instead of more normal light, she hoped to do more damage with them.
The synchrotron would be installed inside the Arsenal Bird, reducing the space for storing SAM ammo and drones in the process. Given the weight of the necessary radiation shielding, there would also be some extra strain on the engines, but Robson contended that the self-repair drones were more than capable of handling any breakdowns caused by the increased strain on the engines. Which they likely could, but eating into safety margins like she proposed could have unforeseen negative consequences. Especially for questionable gains in power output.
"You're not fooling anybody, dim-bulb," said her current interlocutor, Torsten Vasilyev. He was an Estovakian engineer who had left Albastru-Electrice after some sort of feud with one of his supervisors. Gründer had immediately snapped him up for his expertise with superconductors. He'd been quietly nursing a grudge over the primacy of particle weaponry in Gründer for a long time now, and he'd taken the opportunity that the aliens had presented to strengthen his own position and gain support for his electromagnetically-propelled projectile weapon designs. He was also incredibly sarcastic and biting in his critique, his comments made somewhat harsher by his accent, though his grammar was excellent. "The data speaks for itself. Your lasers won't do jack sh*t against the aliens. Replacing all those useless lasers with electromagnetic weaponry is the only viable option."
To some extent, Vasilyev was right, in his deliberately inflammatory way. It certainly seemed like EMLs should be more effect against the aliens. But Grantham had seen the proposed designs the Estovakian was pushing, and they were about as bad as what Robson was advocating. Aside from replacing every laser on the Arsenal Bird with railguns, he wanted to install a massive railgun along the centerline of the aircraft to replace the main laser. Which was ludicrous. The ammo storage for it alone was going to eat heavily into the SAM launcher ammo and drone storage space. Not to mention what the recoil from the firing a gun comparable in size to a Stonehenge turret would do to an aircraft in flight. The recoil from some of the other, smaller railguns was a also potential problem. And the engine strain from it would be significantly worse than in Robson's proposal. Neither of them seemed to have heard of the concept of "moderation".
As he was pondering this, Robson had taken the bait, as she had the last dozen times Vasilyev had given her lip. He blocked out her stock responses about his insubordination. This meeting had been the first session of a committee formed to handle the Arsenal Bird refit. The people here were among Gründer's top experts in their fields, all of them leaders of their own R&D teams. Gründer needed this project to stay afloat, given all their current issues. And it was going horribly, mostly because of these two prima donnas and their endless bickering. In addition to himself and the two clowns, the heads of the Drones, Exotic Particle Physics, Aeronautics, and Munitions divisions were all present. Most of them were silent and at least one, the lead drone designer and programmer, was clearly asleep, her cheek flat against the table.
Grantham himself had been brought in to make sure the cooling systems would be able to maintain the necessary operating temperatures for the Arsenal Bird's equipment. The EMLs and the synchrotron were particularly tricky, due to the use of superconductors inntjem. While those newly salvaged Alien Alloys might be room-temperature superconductors, they were heavy enough to be a problem for the Arsenal Bird. So, they still needed to use some pretty advanced cooling systems to keep their superconductors doing their thing. Not that the topic had come up, since Vasilyev and Robson had been monopolizing the conversation.
Robson really was the worst choice for project manager, wasn't she?, Grantham thought to himself, as he watched her continue her pointless pissing contest with Vasilyev. They were currently swapping epithets based on their specialities. The two were pretty much ignoring the entire rest of the room. I guess I'll have to do her job for her. If only so I can escape this hell.
Grantham turned to the sleeping programmer on his right, tapped her on the shoulder a few times, and quietly asked "So, how's the drone AI patch coming along?"
Honoria Martinez pulled her face off the conference table, to which it had become somewhat stuck, and said "It's essentially completed. Might still need some minor tweaking, and we still need to test it in the field. Other than that, I'd say it's looking pretty good. The computers should now take the drone's durability into account when trying to shield other aircraft." The Usean programmer grinned. "I wouldn't be risking taking a nap, if I didn't have everything nailed down on my end."
"Also, before I forget to mention it, one of the boys in my department had an interesting idea for a way to increase the resistance of drones, and other aircraft, to the alien plasma weapons. Heat shielding glazes, like those used in space shuttles, might help dissipate and handle the heat of the plasma. I'm thinking it's worth doing some testing on," she said.
"Eh. Those coatings tend to be fragile," said Devyn Jenkins, head of Aeronautics, who had been listening in. "Could make maintenance more tricky, but it might still be worth considering. After all, the same tends to apply to stealth coatings. We'll figure out some way of managing, if the results are worthwhile. The tricky part is testing them out, since we can't duplicate those plasma shots. We don't even have solid numbers on the temperatures they reach." He shrugged. "I'll see what I can do."
"Thanks for the input, both of you," Grantham said. He checked on his two arguing coworkers. Still arguing and oblivious to the outside world. Ah, yes, they were back to debating hypotheses on the method by which alien ships were taken down. For the 9th time. Lovely. "Cross, Hawkins. You two bring anything interesting to the table?"
Darby Hawkins, head of Munitions, was the first to respond. "Aside from some upgrades to the end-run guidance systems, based on what we learned from the Grenada Plains fight, some of my team have been kicking some ideas around," she told the four other people actually listening. "Namely, they noted that a fair amount of the energy our burst warheads produce takes the form of heat and light, which might," she said quietly, careful to keep her voice down, lest Robson hear her question the effectiveness of light and heat "not be the most optimal choice. They think they've got an idea for how to make to make the energy mostly go into creating a shockwave. It'll take some time for them to get the designs done, much less test them. But it's not like there's a rush. We can swap out the missiles pretty much any time we want to."
"As for my side of things, we have a couple of ideas we're pursuing," Daylon Cross, head of Gründer's Exotic Particle Physics department, known as the father of the APS field, said. "The first one is a new sort of drone that can shape the field, warping it into something other than just a sphere. The drones allow us to stretch the field, or redefine its boundaries. However, the volume will remain fixed and it will tend to prefer to curve, rather than run in straight lines.
"Depending on how many drones we use, we could, in theory, shape the field however we want. In practice, however, the power supply of the Arsenal Bird is a limiting factor. So too is the range limitation on the microwave transmitters the Arsenal Bird used to transfer energy to the drones. We think we can manage to power up to four drones, allowing us to manipulate the field fairly well. Like Hawkins' upgrade, this one could be implemented at any time once we complete the design, simply by swapping out some drones for the new models."
"That's excellent," Grantham said. "The APS is one of our most valuable assets. Being able to alter the shape of the field could be incredibly valuable."
"We're also considering adding an alternative, more aggressive function to the APS emitter to produce a shorter ranged, shorter lived, but more rapidly generated 'pulse' that will destroy everything around the Arsenal Bird. The initial establishing ring should move fast enough not to warn the enemy in time for them to escape. The pulse will also be less energy intensive than the full shield. As such, it might have an additional use as a reactive protective system, pulsing only to intercept incoming attacks. We think we can make the alterations to the generator in time, but we could be incorrect, and the timeframe is tight."
"As always, Cross, you and your team are worth your weight in gold," Grantham said, thoroughly impressed. "I'll see about routing some more manpower towards your team for those modifications, if it'll help."
Martinez raised an eyebrow at that. "I thought Miss Easily Offended over there was the lead on this project?"
"Oh, she is. For now. But if you think the higher-ups aren't watching her-and us-like hawks right now, you clearly don't know our bosses." Grantham pointed to a black plastic hemisphere set into the center of the conference table with his chin. "That records video and audio, and it's cutting edge. It can hear and see everything. You better believe our bosses are either watching us live, or will be going over the footage."
"Uh...since when was that there?" Martinez asked, suddenly nervous.
"Oh, don't worry about it, Honoria. Trust me, our bosses aren't going to be firing you over taking a nap. I expect several of the ones watching did the same. Plus, given all the people quitting for greener pastures, they can't afford to lose any of us. Which means those two bozos are probably going to be sticking around, unfortunately."
"Anyway, that's a new instillation. They mentioned it in a memo this morning. Our new management wants to keep us accountable, and to make sure any useful ideas don't fall through the cracks because of faulty memories." The rest of the table not involved in a prolonged argument looked embarrassed at this revelation. Probably because they didn't read the daily memos. To be fair, most of the company didn't. They were usually dense with useless information. Almost certainly on purpose, so stuff like that camera and mic setup slipped by most peoples' notice.
"In any case, I expect that I'll be made the new project lead, after this sh*t-show from Robson and Vasilyev. I'm thinking we replace about half the point-defense lasers with our own EMLs, reducing the drone and SAM launcher storage by roughly equal amounts for the new ammo reserves. We should also implement some of Robson's less bulky proposed improvements to the main laser, in addition to the stuff you guys mentioned. A balanced approach is probably going to work better than either of their extreme proposals." He sighed. Being project lead meant more paperwork for him.
"Since the five of us have our contributions on the record," Jenkins said, looking pointedly at the camera, "who's up for adjourning for the day and hitting Jerry's Watering Hole? First round's on me."
The agreement from his coworkers, barring the two still arguing, was as unanimous as it was enthusiastic. Vasilyev and Robson didn't notice their absence for another 4 hours.
****
The building around Eoin Sokolov was empty and quiet as he stared into his computer screen, trying to figure out where to start with his report. Unfortunately, he was drawing a blank. He sighed, and leaned back in his chair, eyes staring at the ceiling without really seeing it. I didn't think earning my paycheck would be this hard, he thought to himself.
Eoin was a member of the Yuktobanian Navy's Advanced Ordinance Development Group, before he had been transferred to XCOM VERUSA. Mostly on the warhead end, rather than the propulsion or targeting side of things. His job was thinking about how to do the most damage to whatever they wanted to do damage to. Usually ships, but sometimes people. Not having been on the pointy end himself, the problem was an academic one for him, which he very deliberately turned his emotions off when considering. No need to give himself any nightmares imagining what those rounds he'd designed would do to people.
Given his field of expertise, when his new bosses assigned him to write a report detailing the pros and cons of various sorts of warheads and railgun rounds against the aliens, as well as possible topics for research, he wasn't exactly surprised. His superiors wanted to be sure that the Gullfaxi would make more of a difference against the aliens than the Arsenal Bird had. They might not be actively hostile to one another anymore, but Yuktobania and Osea still engaged in a lot of one-upsmanship, and enough of the leadership of VERUSA was Yuktobanian for that to apply to them too.
Unfortunately, there were more than a few pitfalls when it came to making that assessment. The first problem was that no one was entirely sure how alien ships were being taken down in the first place. Certainly wasn't the armor being penetrated. Sufficient kinetic bombardment (I.E. bullets and missiles) could eventually bring alien fighters down, but no one was quite sure of the details. Worse, even the biology of their opponents was completely unknown. For all he know, these buggers survived off radiation. Scuttlebutt had it that XCOM USEA had managed to find a survivor, but he hadn't heard that they'd learned anything useful yet. Also, they'd likely prefer to keep it alive, rather than testing to see what killed it.
Second, the armor these guy used was made of some pretty insane stuff. It was incredibly hard, a room-temperature superconductor, shed and transferred heat like platinum on steroids, and was denser than anything ever seen before. Well, except perhaps the skulls of most bureaucrats. All of that made trying to do significant damage tricky. The fact that it was very chemically inert was just the cherry on the top. It was made mostly from metallic hydrogen, with a pinch of metals to make the magic happen, according to the reports. They'd never managed to really damage the stuff without a lot of time and energy, so far as he knew, though they still downed the aircraft, somehow. Theories abounded on why.
...Alright, enough stalling. If he was having trouble coming up with new ideas, it was probably best to run through the conventional ideas first. Starting with the railgun...HEAT rounds? Nope. That insane heat transfer rate would ruin that. HESH was probably the best explosive option, at least for the railgun. Assuming kinetic force was a major factor in taking down alien fighters, though, kinetic armor piercing rounds might be the way to go. Like the existing AP, fin-stabilized, discarding sabot rounds. Wasn't likely to penetrate, but the kinetic energy transfer might be enough to do some damage. And, assuming they could reach the point of being able to really work with Alien Alloys, it could make for a good penetrator. Or at least provide a lot of force due to its hardness, weight, and density. Other than that, not a whole lot of innovation to be done.
If he wanted to take the literal nuclear option, and adapt the neutron warhead rounds from the Alicorn-class, that...probably wouldn't actually work. Hydrogen was one of the best elements at reducing the speed of high-energy neutrons without absorbing them, hence why water made a good neutron moderator, and could protect against neutron radiation. A super-dense block of hydrogen was basically impervious to neutron radiation. Hell, that insane density probably meant it stopped high-energy gammas too. And beta and alpha particles weren't any help either. Radiation just wasn't much of an option here. He'd be advising they maximize kinetic force and minimize radiation, if they tried to go the nuclear route. Personally, he didn't see much point.
That was most of the more standard options out of the way. Getting to the more unusual stuff...corrosion was out, that stuff was like platinum or iridium, from what he'd been told. There might be some super-corrosive compound out there that could do the job, but then they'd have to find a way to produce and store the damn stuff. And, of course, clean up any spills. Yeah, best not to mess around with that sort of thing. He'd heard enough horror stories over the years about some bright spark getting the idea to produce tons of some nasty compound to cram into shells, only for the project to become a money pit. Not a great idea.
Given the superconducting nature of the alloy...perhaps some form of EMP, to charge the alloy with too much electricity, and fry something? The capability to take out only electronics was valuable enough that, at his old job, there were quite a few people working on the subject of non-nuclear EMPs, and he'd picked up some knowledge on the subject. An explosively-pumped flux compression generator or an explosive-driven ferromagnetic generator would work decently, assuming they were avoiding nuclear. Or maybe use they could use something piezoelectric, or pre-charged capacitors. There were some designs for that sort of thing for handgun and rifle rounds, and one of them might suitable to be scaled up. That could be worth considering. Though it would be nice to actually try it on a relatively intact target before deploying it on the battlefield. To make sure it actually worked before risking a massively expensive submarine and an untold number of lives on the idea. God, working on weapons to fight a threat you didn't understand was frustrating.
For the ballistic missiles, the existing burst warheads were well-suited for the role, though it might behoove him to think of some improvements. Maybe improve the kinetic effects, like the shockwave. Other than that, there were some bleeding-edge warhead ideas that might perform better, but not many. And most of them were considered pretty out-there by those in the field, himself included. For example, a meson-based, explosive shockwave warhead. On paper, the amount of power it produced was enough to clear the skies in a pretty large radius, with minimal radiation production to boot. Might be worth investigating, though he wasn't entirely sure about that. The idea was entirely hypothetical, unfortunately. No designs had ever been published, and the scientist who came up with the idea had disappeared a while ago. There were a lot of rumors as to why that might be, ranging from kidnapping to him leaving town due to an arrest warrant being put out, but Eoin had no way to verify the rumors, or interest in proving or disproving them.
Well, now he had his ideas. He'd just have to record them, and provide the all the additional data needed to put them into practice. Which was a fair amount of data. It was looking like another all-nighter. He didn't mind, though. Eoin worked best when undisturbed by the sounds of other people working, so he usually took the night shift. He stretched, cracked his knuckles, and got to typing.
****
"Damn, but I'm glad the Estovakians are on our side now," Daniel Pollini, aka "Windhover" said to his companion, as they watched one of the newest additions to XCOM ANEA's arsenal roll into position for its first firing test.
"Honestly, I'm really surprised they managed to build one of these new T-16s so quickly," Talisman responded.
"Partially, that's because Macmillan's production lines are very easily altered, but it's also because they're using a modular platform. It's something Albastru-Electrice came up with recently, at least partially derived from some new designs coming out of Leasath, as well as from their own Black Eagle tanks. They call it the Armata Universal Combat Platform. Seems like we're going to be using it for all of our armored vehicle needs. Apparently, one of the upsides to how they have the turret set up is that swapping to new types of guns is incredibly easy, even if you stick with the main battle tank base."
"Huh. Well, this should be worth seeing," Talisman said, slipping on ear protection as the tank got ready to start firing.
The EML the tank was using was almost identical to the Purgatorio EML that had become an integral part of XCOM USEA's Hammer and Nail deployment doctrine. The main differences were somewhat altered recoil systems and an increase in size. The target was a line of five damaged tanks with a large, angled chunk of Alien Alloy serving as a backstop.
The T-16 finally fired its main cannon, the sound not as deep as your normal tank round, more like cartoon lightning than thunder, but still loud enough that Talisman was glad for the hearing protection. The round went right through the five tanks like they were made of paper, and then hit the backstop hard enough to set it ringing almost as loud as the sound of the gun being fired. It kept ringing for minutes after the impact. The round itself was deflected into the earth beneath, and got buried deep, judging by the amount of displaced earth. The edges of the holes on the target tanks looked like they'd been melted slightly from the friction, and they glowed red.
Talisman stared at the five scrapped tanks, then at the T-16, which was being swarmed by techs, probably to check for damage to the tank or the gun. After a few minutes, one of the techs gave a thumbs-up, to the cheers of the watching soldiers. Pulling off his hearing protection, Talisman looked over at Windhover and grinned. "Yeah, I'm glad they're working for us, too. I really wouldn't want to take a round from that."
"Given the firing rate, it wouldn't be aimed at you, anyway. Too hard to actually land a hit. And if you think that's scary, you should see the mini-Chandler SAM launchers the weapons teams are working on," Windhover said. "Those things are going to make life real interesting for the X-Rays once they're completed. We might not have as much industrial support as the other branches, but we sure as hell have the edge in certain areas. Hopefully, we can leverage that into getting more support. The enemy could clue into the fact that we're the weakest link any day now. We need to fix that, and also beg, borrow, or steal every edge we can get."
Talisman just nodded, eyes still locked the new tank. Hopefully, the Aliens would give them all enough time to prepare some more nasty surprises for them.
----
This was originally born because I had a bunch of ideas for world-building that weren't good enough, I felt, to stand alone, but that might do better with other stuff help prop them up. So, we got this. I may do something like this every once in a while, to clean out any stray ideas lurking around in my brain. Or I might not. I dunno. I ended up scrapping short stories several times, because they either didn't work out for various reasons, or they spiraled into something much larger than I initially thought they would be (which may get separate releases, or end up dying because of various issues). I even ended up redoing the title a couple of times.
The first story was probably the one that shifted the most, though the name of the main character never did. The first two versions were completely unrelated to the final version. The original was actually stand-alone story about a shadow war between the Councilor and Belka, which I realized pretty quickly was on shaky ground canonically. The second draft was basically going to imply that Grantham's boss was a Thin Man, which, while amusing, didn't really work well. Really short, and mostly just fluff.
I was originally trying to showcase a bunch of scientists and techs "at work", one for each major continent. And that version wasn't much of a showcase. But then I decided to go with a "let's showcase cool tech from the sky, land, and sea" approach, and I shifted to Grantham reviewing proposals for a company trying to win the Arsenal Bird refit contract, seeing an opportunity due to Gründer floundering. But it felt way too passive and boring, just reviewing the views of specific "Faction", and my justification for Grantham's role (him being a new hire from Gründer and also not a weapons guy) felt weak. So, I switched things up, and gave the warring factions faces, while outlining some reasons for their biases. I'm rather hoping this version worked out better. Certainly seems a lot more interesting and fun to me.
The second story is the oldest one. I don't think it's changed at all throughout the process of putting this together, conceptually. Took me a lot of time to think up something involving a Verusean and science that I also find interesting. Spent a while walking around the AC wikia. And then I found out that the Alicorn used neutron warheads in its railguns. And that was enough to get me thinking about anti-alien munitions.
There's honestly some echos of my own frustration with both finding a topic and coming up with ideas reflected in this story. It's hard to come up with interesting munitions ideas, honestly. Also, yes, I find the science behind much of the superweapons tech in AC:X really laughable, though the Atmos Ring less than the Shockwave stuff. I'm quite willing to accept that it works, but there really are better ways of making shockwaves than cramming expensive particle accelerators into bombs and missiles.
I also sneakily incorporated an explanation for why we haven't seen some majorly nasty chemical weapon on Strangereal beyond the usual: every attempt to do so ended about as well as the Nazis making chlorine trifluoride. Which was a complete boondoggle that cost them a ton of money with nothing to show for it. The nastier the chemical, the harder it generally is to make and handle. Making the nastiest stuff on mass scales is just not viable. Nukes work despite the nastiness of the uranium refining process because you don't actually need that much fissile material per bomb.
The final story was one I came up with not long before reworking the first one, so this one is the most recently conceived from whole cloth. The story it replaced is actually going to get spun-off into its own, separate thing, so I won't go into it here. It would have involved planes and Anea, though. That itself was a replacement for another story that got spun-off. Which, if canonicity concerns don't kill it off, will probably be my next release. Once I decided on switching my themes, though, I wanted a ground unit segment to round out the list. So, since I had come with the idea of EML tanks in my first Omake, I figured a test-firing of one would be a good idea.
But then I wanted to learn more about what tanks and ground vehicles the Estovakians and other groups in Strangereal used. Which was...more than a bit of a rabbit hole. Honestly, the tanks used in Ace Combat are a touch baffling. I understand why Yuktobania and Estovakia seem to field Russian tanks...but why the f*ck does Leasath have T-90s? Which, according to Some Random on Reddit, the Yuktobanians wouldn't ever develop, because the T-90 was made as a cheaper alternative to their existing tanks after the USSR collapsed. He believed the Yuktobanians would more likely improve on their T-80 designs than develop the T-90. Of which there are basically two branches: the Black Eagle tanks that Estovakia supposedly used (that never really got produced on any major scale IRL) and the T-84 tanks that Ukraine makes.
I basically decided that Yuktobania probably went down the T-84 tech tree, while Estovakia fielded Black Eagles in their war (though there's disagreement on whether that's actually true, from what I saw on the wiki), and I decided Leasath was working on the T-95, since they made T-90s. Probably because they couldn't afford to make T-80s during their civil war. Thus, all the ingredients for the Armata Universal Combat Platform would exist, and Estovakia would be in a good place to actually develop them.
Speaking of which, I like the Armata a lot. It's a pretty neat concept, and I'd be totally down to use it throughout XCOM's ground forces for anything with treads and armor. A highly adaptable, modular armored vehicle system is perfect for our needs, given that our tech is going to be shifting radically as we incorporate new alien technologies. Also, the improved safety measures (the crew not being in the turret, and the ammo being kept further way from the crew compartment) would hopefully help keep any skilled tank operators we might produce alive.
Also, you have no idea how much time I spent trying to find the audio for the EML from AC: 6. Took me way too bloody long. And then, once I did, I found describing it to be a real challenge. It's a lot closer to a lightning/thunder SFX than anything else, including the sound of a real railgun firing.
Edit: Typos fixed, thanks as always to @Icipall for that.
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February 4th-7th: Operation Blue Fang and Dashau Resurgent
[X] Plan: Refugee Crisis
-[X] Engineering
--[X]Should the Stonehenge Group be recalled?
---[X] No
--[X] Assist in construction of refugee camps, refugee housing and research into housing
-[X] Logistics
--[X] Reserving IC from next week to construct a refugee City (5000 IC)
-[X] Council Relations
--[X] Attempt to repair the relations between XCOM and the Selatapura city council (50 Focus)
-[X] Operations
--[X] Broadcast demands to either turn back or halt in place and lay down arms to both approaching Erusean field formations. Inform them that continued approach under arms will be interpreted as an attack. If the forces do not comply...
--[X] Launch decapitation mission? (50 Focus)
---[X] Mobius, Druid, Rigel and Waltz squadrons, and Pixy.
-[X] Call for Aid
--[X] Request Disaster Relief IC from Commonwealth of Usean States (5000 IC), United Kingdoms of North Point (1000 IC) and IUN Refugee Agency (2000 IC) (80 Focus)
--[X] Request Personnel Aid from Commonwealth of Usean States, United Kingdoms of North Point, XCOM and IUN Refugee Agency (40 Focus)
-[X] Other
--[X] Contact Stephen Pulford, Pixy and other XCOM commanders if need be, and work with Selatapura police department to hire/acquire and organize a security force to maintain order in the Refugee City and for internal security in case of infiltration or sabotage. (70 Focus)
Long Caster pulled out his chair. To his left, Daniel Snow impatiently bounced his foot, while Shen tapped his fingers together. Further around the table, Demaya Stevens shuffled her dossier again, and the laptop at the foot of the mess table remained on a screensaver, waiting for Princess Rosa to connect on her end. Across from him, Adam worriedly adjusted his tie for the sixth time. Bradford scrolled through his tablet, dressed in his signature turtleneck; Long Caster didn't understand how Bradford could stand the heat that was starting to stain his armpits, but everyone on his base had eccentricities, apparently.
At least Bradford's didn't extend to smoking a joint on the town.
Finally, Pulford rounded out the set, trying to appear as dignified as he could at the mess hall table.
Adam Khatuna turned to his left.
"Adam, your tie is perfect and has been for the last twenty fucking minutes; stop stressing out about it," Snow snapped.
Adam whipped his head back to Snow.
"While I would not put it in such terms, he is correct," Pulford idly noted. "Incidentally, when we have time, we need to build a more...suitable conference room."
Snow and Demaya both sighed at that, Snow more explosively than Demaya.
"Sure," Snow breezily agreed, "we'll slot it in somewhere between turning a city of millions into a fucking fortress, housing upwards of a million more, and rebuilding eight of the biggest guns on the planet."
Demaya inclined her head in agreement as Pulford rolled his eyes.
"I still remember that you owe me that ground combat doctrine manual, Snow," Pulford said.
"I still remember that I was promised a nice, relaxing vacation day on a tropical Selatapuran beach, but we can't all get what we want, can we?" Snow shot back.
"Snow, stop fighting with your superior officer," Demaya said, exasperatedly. "It hasn't even been a day since you flipped off the whole Selatapuran City Council, and you're already falling back into bad habits," she chided.
Pulford nodded sagely, while Shen did his level best to ignore all of it.
Any further banter was cut off by the screen flickering on, and Princess Rosa sitting in a car appearing on the other end.
"Thank you, everyone, for taking your time to talk with me," she began. "It warms my heart to know that you have all chosen to help Eruseans in their time of need. Would that everyone were so generous," she sighed.
Shen and Snow looked at Pulford out of the corners of their eyes. Pulford tried appearing completely blameless.
Internally, Long Caster wanted to welcome his face with his hands. Ten seconds in and his team was sniping at each other again. Best to get this conversation back on topic.
"We weren't going to ignore a million people needing help," Long Caster said. "It wouldn't sit right with us."
"And I'm glad to hear it," Cossette said, smiling and tilting her head.
"That being said, how are we going to house and feed that many people?" Bradford asked, grimacing as he scrolled through his tablet. "Selatapura just shut down all possibility of helping us with the refugees, and without them, where do we fit a million people?"
"I know of a city that might be able to do so," Rosa responded.
It was somewhat disappointing to discover that neither approaching Erusean force was willing to back off with a warning.
It was much less disappointing to discover that both forces saw a five-ship Mobius squadron and instantly routed.
Mobius One gains 2 XP. 37/50 XP required to advance.
Baker gains 6 XP. 18/20 XP required to advance.
Mobius Three gains 6 XP. 6/10 XP required to advance.
Mobius Four gains 4 XP. 4/10 XP required to advance.
Mobius Five gains 4 XP. 4/10 XP required to advance.
Druid One gains 5 XP. At 5/5 XP required to advance, Druid One advances. 0/5 XP required to advance.
Druid Two gains 3 XP. 3/5 XP required to advance.
Druid Three gains 3 XP. 3/5 XP required to advance.
Druid Four gains 5 XP. At 5/5 XP required to advance, Druid Four advances. 0/5 XP required to advance.
Rigel One gains 4 XP. At 10/10 XP required to advance, Rigel One advances. 0/20 XP required to advance.
Rigel Two gains 4 XP. 4/10 XP required to advance.
Zvezda One gains 4 XP. 4/5 XP required to advance.
Zvezda Two gains 4 XP. 4/5 XP required to advance.
Waltz Two gains 9 XP. At 9/5 XP required to advance, Waltz Two advances. 4/5 XP required to advance.
Azdaha One gains 10 XP. At 10/5 XP required to advance, Azdaha One advances. 5/5 XP required to advance. At 5/5 XP required to advance, Azdaha One advances. 0/10 XP required to advance.
Azdaha Two gains 11 XP. At 11/5 XP required to advance, Azdaha Two advances. 6/5 XP required to advance. At 6/5 XP required to advance, Azdaha Two advances. 1/5 XP required to advance.
Pixy gains 2 XP. 29/35 XP required to advance.
Forged in the flames of battle and shaped in subsequent weeks, Rigel One's star begins to shine.
Rigel One is now S-tier.
Rigel One needs an [ACE] Title!
No fighter can survive alone in the flames of war. Two planes together can overturn the fate of the entire world. Through their joint efforts, Azdaha One and Two reach the limits of peacetime training. Further advancement will require them to accomplish the easiest and most difficult task of all: survive.
Azdaha One is now A-Rank.
Azdaha Two is now A-Rank.
Three days later, Long Caster stands on the roof of what used to be a dilapidated nightclub. Snow, Demaya, and Shen all insisted that he needed to see the view. Long Caster wasn't quite sure why, when he could hear the constant crash of demolitions and whine of construction cranes just as well as he could see it.
"What am I looking at?" Long Caster asked.
"You don't see it?" Snow asked.
"No?" Long Caster hazarded a guess.
Snow laughed long and hard, slight hiccup at the back of his throat. Wiping his eyes with a handkerchief Demaya handed him, Daniel Snow straightened up.
"Then look closer, Long Caster," Daniel Snow said. "What you're seeing, Long Caster, is a city rising from the ashes of what it used to be."
Long Caster cocked his head.
"Look," Daniel Snow said, pointing to the right. "Look at the suburbs of this city, and how they've flourished away from this city." He pointed in front of them, at the band of blighted buildings. "Look at the old extents of this city. Look at how it used to be full." He pointed to the left. "L-look to the left, where it shrunk back too. W-we're..." Daniel Snow said, voice cracking.
"We're rebuilding this city," Demaya quietly said. "Making it greater than it ever was," she asserted. "Forty city blocks at a time."
"Y-yeah," Snow choked out, tears streaming down his smiling face.
Long Caster blinked. Then he looked again, at the individual spots of construction. He stopped short when he realized the number of construction sites was better described as a tide.
"Oh," Long Caster said. "We really are, huh."
The city of Dashau has agreed to assist. Aid comes in fits and starts and needs Long Caster to ring the phone every day, but it comes. Houses are torn down and rebuilt, warehouses filled to capacity with food shipments from the Commonwealth stores, and infrastructure is replenished blocks at a time.
"It's a fucking miracle," Snow tells Long Caster. He's still crying just that little bit, but no one is taking this away from him. After all, arranging food supply for a million people in under a week would be miracle enough, let alone creating housing for an average of one hundred thousand people a day. Yet the XCOM USEA Emergency Refugee Agency, with Snow and Demaya forming the organizational backbone, are accomplishing both miracles.
Less visibly, Long Caster and Pulford quietly talk to the Dashau police force, and send Pixy in as a liason. Other forces will be arriving next week to help the incoming refugees, but the police force on the ground is aware of the situation. Including the potential for infiltrators and saboteurs, distasteful as it sounds.
Million Refugee Relief Plan converted into Dashau Resurgence Plan!
8,000/40,000 IC required to complete!
IUN-PKF-XCOM USEA ERA temporary staffing: Logistics Division, San Miguel, San Francisco, San Martinez, San Colombo, and IUNRA groups.
Unsurprisingly, Selatapura's City Council was significantly cooler to Long Caster's overtures, but they were listening, and agreed to informally apologize for their own conduct. They won't change their decision, but then again, with Dashau's cooperation Long Caster no longer needs them to.
On the subject of "idiots who need a talking to," however...
Long Caster is at 650 Focus for the week. He's feeling a constant pulsing headache, but there are some discussions he needs to have. Arguably, he could delegate to Adam, but Adam is also processing the creation of XCOM USEA's Emergency Refugee Agency along with the continued integration of Zane Consulting team. Finally, he could choose not to address the issue, but...it would mean not addressing the issue.
First; Far Scrier had the gall to be both unreachable and to get stoned on deployment. That has to stop.
[] [Far Scrier] Long Caster handles this personally. (25 Focus)
-[] Aggressively. That behavior is un-fucking-acceptable, and Far Scrier is going to know it.
-[] Authoritatively. That behavior is going to stop. What's happened has happened, but Far Scrier can't keep doing it.
[] [Far Scrier] Delegate to Adam (Larger workload for Adam)
[] [Far Scrier] Save it for next week.
Second; Daniel Snow needs to curb his swearing, especially now that it actually resulted in consequences.
[] [Snow] Long Caster handles this personally. (25 Focus)
-[] Aggressively. That behavior is un-fucking-acceptable, and Daniel Snow is going to know it.
-[] Authoritatively. That behavior is going to stop. What's happened has happened, but Daniel Snow can't keep doing it.
[] [Snow] Delegate to Adam (Larger workload for Adam)
[] [Snow] Save it for next week.
this is turning into a headache and a half...why did we pick ace of aces again? There is no literal mechanic that even helps us besides the QM going "Good Job SV You Win!" or most like "Good Job SV, You lose and heres what happens to humanity as the ethereal's turn you all into Advent and/or commit mass pointless genocide because aliens are stupid about their efficiency"
As a result of selecting Ace of Aces mode, whenever there is a canonical tripup - a.k.a "wait a second things shouldn't've gone that way", I will rule in your favor ten times out of ten. I've actually exercised this perk already with the Razgriz squadron; Wyverns should not have the long range capacity to fly literally all the way around the globe without refueling to get XCOM USEA, but they're here.
Hmm, actually, @huhYeahGoodPoint , how do the alien fighters like to engage? Chasing like terrestrial planes, quickly zooming past while firing, or what? And how far they like to engage with their plasma weaponry?
JASPER RHODES: Alien fighters have shown absolutely no propensity to take potshots outside of knifefighting range where every single weapon is usable. Curiously enough, most alien fighters tend to adopt attack postures like terrestrial aircraft; they'll take shots when they're either head-on to the other aircraft or at their target's rear. They prefer the latter position, much like most of your pilots. That being said, the aces tend to break those rules in fairly spectacular fashion; Alien Ace One and Flowing Guard Unbreakable float to the top of my mind.
We now go live to traffic reporter Susan Jenkins at the scene of an extraordinary incident earlier today that brought highway traffic to a complete standstill.
Thanks Bill! As you can see, I'm at the Mountain View Viaduct, where this afternoon a fighter jet conducted a three mile long reverse powerslide through the whole length of the tunnel. Eyewitnesses report that the event was "fucking insane" and "baller as shit". The only comment from authorities at this point is that "It's plane magic, we don't have to explain it."
Trigger does get one "Baller as Shit" token. What it's good for, eh. Who knows. The time to use it is soon approaching. 174 hours, thirty-five minutes, and twenty four seconds remain.
You did this DM! You let the metastable metallic hydrogen genie out of it's lamp! You opened the Pandora's Box of material science! You made your thermally superconductive bed, and now you get to lie in it!
ALL ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT ENGINE: PROJECT MJOLNIR
XCOM needs a rugged, cheap, high thrust/weight engine if it's to create a fighter craft that can engage Alien fighter craft without the benefit of Ace-rank pilots at the controls.
Figure 1: Green – aerodynamic convergent-divergent nozzle. Blue – inner rotor. Dark blue – inner rotor electric motor. Red – outer rotor. Maroon – outer rotor electric motor. Counter-rotating rotors were chosen in order to reduce overall weight. The inner motor is long because it was designed to occupy the central cavity in the inner rotor and thus uses a radial field configuration which generates the most power with a long armature. The outer rotor motor on the other hand uses an axial-field configuration that is most effective when it's squished into a pancake.
It's fortuitous then that the aliens have provided us with the very materials we need to do so. The MJOLNIR engine is an all-electric turbojet with an order of magnitude reduction in manufactured parts compared to traditional engines.
Fundamentally, the MJOLNIR is essentially the compressor stage of a traditional jet engine, with power coming from a superconducting electric engine rather than a high pressure turbine.
The elimination of afterburners, high pressure turbine, and combustion chamber dramatically cut the amount of required maintenance and the total cost of the engine – as well as the research and development costs associated with those components.
Performance wise, the MJOLNIR is capable of instantaneous throttle response (unlike a tradition jet that must ramp up fuel injection relatively slowly to prevent compressor backflow), and creates no thermal plume owing to its mechanical rather than thermal means of imparting energy to the engine air flow. The rotor's low mass also allows it to act as a regenerative air brake – essentially switching to a turbo-generator when the aircraft is braking and then quickly spinning back up to provide thrust (a major advantage in energy management during dogfights).
From a logistical standpoint, the reduction in components, moving parts, and the use of high pressure air bearings to eliminate material contact during operation leads to an order of magnitude improvement to mechanical reliability, and a commensurate reduction in maintenance requirements.
ALL ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT POWERPLANT: SUPERCONDUCTIVE MAGNETIC ENERGY STORAGE (SMES)
To power next generation electromagnetic weaponry and all-electric aircraft propulsion systems requires a high energy density storage medium.
The simplest and most effective pathways towards this goals arises from the use of superconductive alien alloys to create superconducting toroids that store electrical energy as magnetic pressure.
Electrical current is losslessly circulated through a superconducting solenoid wrapped around a torus. The moving electrical charges give rise to a magnetic field confined to the interior of the solenoid. Total energy stored in the solenoid is a function of the material strength of the superconducting wire and its structural bracing. As Alien Alloys exceed the mechanical strength of any material we can manufacture, the use of further bracing is counterproductive, and total energy stored becomes a function of the material strength of the alien alloy solenoid wire – with energy density figured just under that of conventional jet fuel.
This lower overall energy density however does not translate into a lower effective flight time as the electrical-to-mechanical efficiency of a electromagnetic motors is far in excess of the fuel-to-mechanical conversion efficiency of a conventional jet engine.
Furthermore, SMES systems are capable of discharging and recharging almost instantaneously, negating the need for any on-board capacitors for electric weapons systems such as EMS and PSL – their firing rates become constrained by the heat dissipation capacity of the weapons systems themselves.
I apologize for the double post, but I wanted to post this and hopefully get some discussion going while we wait for an update.
TECHNICAL AND DOCTRINAL PATHWAYS TO AEROSPACE SUPERIORITY OF XCOM FORCES
Opponent Characteristics and Implications for XCOM Counters:
Hyper-maneuverable, non-aerodynamic propulsion system. Full trans-atmospheric operational range from ground level to the vacuum of space with no change in performance characteristics. Lack of thermal plume. Max speed in atmosphere comparable to conventional fighter aircraft.
Hyper-maneuverability required for our aircraft/missiles to keep up/achieve favorable kill probabilities.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in aircraft size and mass.
Pilot/aircraft g-tolerance.
Lack of thermal plume.
Infrared seekers and sensors ineffective.
High altitude, propulsion systems necessary to widen the engagement envelope of XCOM aircraft.
ET Aerospacecraft superstructure impervious to traditional damage mechanisms (laser and particle beam weapons wholly ineffective, kinetics can achieve some success through second order effects).
Weapon systems focused on kinetic damage mechanisms are most effective.
Kinetic-kill missile systems.
Electro-Magnetic Launch canons.
Unknown sensor, communication, and and navigation system, appears not to be based on electromagnetic radiation.
Lack of LIDAR/RADAR capabilities.
Optimize aircraft geometry for aerodynamic performance rather than stealth. (CAUTION: Likelihood of cooperation between ET and Belkan forces considered HIGH. Recommend planning for ET exhibiting greater understanding of atmospheric combat as practiced in Strangereal over time, followed by eventual adoption of local style electromagnetic stealth and counter-measures.)
Lack of ECM/Flares/Chaff
Downgraded tracking software and sensors for XCOM missiles/aircraft in order to secure price reduction in munitions.
Possibility of using remotely piloted fighters against ET forces.
Lack of electromagnetic communications systems.
ECM/ECCM suites and attendant computational mass not important to XCOM aircraft.
Centralized command and control vulnerable to the elimination of AWACS analogue craft. Limited independent strategic decision making ability. Alien forces will prioritize fighters making attack runs on bulb ships over all other targets, to the detriment of their overall battlefield positioning.
Tactical doctrine should prioritize elimination of Bulb ships.
ET Fighter Craft primary armament is a direct fire particle energy weapon, damage potential sufficient to one-hit kill current aircraft. Capable of intercepting missiles in flight. Engagement envelope appears to be limited to knife-fighting rage, unknown if this is due to technical or operational reasons.
Defense must rely on avoiding enemy fire for the foreseeable future.
Increased pilot situational awareness with improved HUD design.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in aircraft size and mass.
Pilot/aircraft g-tolerance.
Missiles must be able to maneuver to avoid enemy fire.
Provide missiles with enemy firing arc data from friendly AWACS for preprogrammed avoidance.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in missile size and mass.
Missile g-tolerance.
Gun combat should be practiced against ET aces.
Electro-Magnetic Launch canons.
Terminally guided cannon shells.
XCOM units should attempt to engage with long range weapons from beyond visual range or from beyond the horizon.
Long range missile bus.
Fire and forget missile hit and run attacks.
Terminally guided Stonehenge shells.
No observed attempts at electromagnetic signature mitigation (stealth), hull construction highly RADAR reflective.
Modify missile tracking and sensors to rely on RADAR.
Orbital basing allows prompt deployment to any theatre on the globe.
Global coverage via strategic basing and high speed intercept necessary to effectively respond to ET incursions.
Super/Hyper-Sonic flight research.
Improved in-flight refueling.
Sub-orbital ballistic flight booster research.
Developmental and Manufacturing Considerations
High refit capacity in order to extend operational lifetime in the face of frequent technological breakthroughs catalyzed by reverse engineering of ET technology.
Pursuit of high impact, low investment technological developments critical for leapfrogging ET capabilities.
Solutions requires an extremely short research and development cycle.
Solutions require rapid production ramp up.
Implications of Developmental and Manufacturing Considerations
Simplified design with high degree of component independence preferable in order to maximize efficiency of parallelized development process.
Standardized components should be emphasized in order to allow for rapid manufacturing scale-up.
Proposed Development Pathway:
COMBINED ARMS AIRFLEET DOCTRINE
The need for reduction in aircraft size and weight while reducing development time lends itself to a breakup of aircraft capabilities from single unit 'super fighters' intro a cooperative distributed network of smaller cheaper unmanned and optionally manned aircraft working in concert.
Through individually less capable, these aircraft will be cheaper to manufacture and develop, and as a network will be more resistant to damage than single unit due to the greater maneuvering capacity of individual components, as well as the need to destroy multiple aircraft in order to inflict the same level of degradation of capabilities.
We propose the following delineation of roles:
TAWACS (Tactical Airborne Warning and Control System) – Fighter sized limited range AWACS unit meant to stand back from a dogfight and feed our fighters and missiles with guidance telemetry, and illuminate alien fighters for missile tracking.
Gun Fighter – Dedicated dog-fighter optimized for maneuverability, situational awareness, and built around a heavy canon. Designed to engage enemy fighters directly and break through enemy antimissile point defense with flat trajectory projectiles.
Missile Fighter – Fighter scale aircraft optimized to carry short range high maneuverability missiles. Designed to hang back and pelt ET fighters while Gun Fighters engage them in melee. Optimized for speed more than maneuverability, in order to maintain range from ET fighters.
Supply Carrier – Transport plane sized aircraft designed to carry long range missiles and act as a fuel tanker for its attendant swarm.
In such a system, a combat engagement would begin with TAWACS racing ahead of the rest of the swarm in order to identify targets and feed targeting data back to the supply carrier, which would then launch a long range missile bus alpha strike and turn away from the battle, racing to safety.
Missile buses would race past the Gun and Missile Fighter squadrons and deliver short ranged high maneuverability missile payloads just outside the range of ET point defense range. The TAWACS would proceed to illuminate the opposing ET forces for the mini-missiles to lock on to.
The attack should be timed such that the mini-missile complete their tasks of damaging the enemy's aerospacecraft just as the Gun Fighters enter their optimal engagement envelope and draw the enemy's attention on them, striking the killing blows with their kinetic weapons while Missile Fighters maintain their range from the dogfights and contribute with well timed missile launches.
Alright. While someone else might have beaten me to reinvigorating the discussion here, I'ma still post my next story, because why the heck not? Thanks to @huhYeahGoodPoint and @Simon_Jester for the feedback on this one. And thanks in advance to @Icipall for pointing put my typos.
---- The Mind of an Ace
"Are you sure this isn't a bit overkill, sir?" Talisman said, as the techs finished the final calibrations of the sensors in his helmet.
"If we want to figure out what makes you an Ace, we need more data," Theodore Thelen, one of the two people in charge of XCOM ANEA's science division, said. "The scans of your brain that we've been doing so far just aren't giving us anything. Your brain seems perfectly normal when you're not in the air. Even during spatial awareness tests, you're not performing as exceptionally well as we might expect."
"Hey! Are you calling me stupid?"
Thelen ignored his interjection, and continued, "That result is consistent with prior research. People have been trying to crack exactly what makes an Ace of your caliber special tick since Cipher turned the Belkan War around. The biggest study was done with the backing of the IUN, back in '07. They managed to get data from the star pilots of every member nation, including Mobius One. They also managed, by offering them a lot of cash, to get a decent number of mercs and ex-mercs, including Phoenix of Scarface Squadron, to give the scientists the chance to get data from them. They gave them all spatial reasoning problems to solve, while the doctors watched their brain activity."
"I...think I might have gone through similar tests, actually, shortly after the war."
Thelen paused at this. "So, Emmeria did their own data gathering? I'll have to put in a request, and take a look at the results myself. If only for the sake of thoroughness." He sighed. "Probably not going to find anything of note. If they had something, they'd have published. What pretty much every study has found was that, while the best Aces like yourself and Mobius One do generally have better results than the rest of the pilots, it's only a few percent above the score of a top-level pilot with less fame or glory. It's edging on margin-for-error territory. Same pattern emerges with reflexes."
"I...have a lot of trouble believing that, sir," Talisman said.
"Oh, you're not alone in feeling that way. Most find it hard to swallow. Still, science sometimes isn't intuitive, and we often need to look past our preconceptions to figure out what's really happening. The general consensus for the past several years has been that, whatever makes an Ace an Ace, it's not going to be found with that sort of testing. Most have concluded it's an amalgamation of traits, in-born and acquired, including combat experience, rather than something that can be isolated. Those traits might not even be universal to all Aces. Still, every couple of years, usually after a war, someone tries out a new sort of cognitive test or some new neuroimaging technique. Nothing ever comes of it."
"However...as aircraft have advanced and become more and more computerized, they've also started gather data on their pilots. Started with basic flight recorders, way back in the day. Now, with all the HUDs and cameras and interfaces we install, tracking things like where your eyes are or what your hands are doing isn't actually hard. So most modern fighters track a pilot's reaction times, their exact actions, what they could see, what their plane's instruments told them at the time, stuff like that. Some of that is for the purpose of making sure errors and other problems with the plane are fixed. Most of it just gets filed away into a database somewhere, to be combined with a ton of other data and run through various algorithms to derive useful data on trends, which then is applied to developing upgrades. Most neurologists are completely unaware of the existence of that data, and wouldn't know how to make sense of the raw data if they did. Most aircraft designers don't bother study to how to work with it on the scale of individual sets of data either, because it's not generalizable in that form, and may contain outliers.
"Still, if you know how, you can look at the data from a plane, and then recreate exactly what it did in its last battle, and get a decent picture of what that piece of the battlefield looked like. Luckily for us, I actually bothered to learn how to decode that raw data. An old friend of mine from college called me up and asked me to help him out with constructing a simulated model of a particular battle from the data of multiple planes, not too long ago. I applied the same programs and analysis techniques to some of the logs available to us, including your own from the war, and those from Mobius One and Trigger's recent fights with the aliens. It indicates that you all have significantly faster reflexes in the air than on the ground, and demonstrate several other talents you don't on the ground. Trigger seems to be preternaturally good at predicting his foes' next action, often with very little data to back his predictions, for instance. This is more than can be accounted for just from the effects of adrenaline rushes, too. No, something about you all changes when you guys are in the cockpit. And, if we want to find out why exactly that is, we need to gather data while you fly. As much of it as we can."
"I guess that makes sense," Talisman conceded, as the techs finally finished adjusting his helmet. "Still not sure I like the electrodes around my head, though. They're a bit uncomfortable.
"Thanks for the feedback. That helmet and suit are still in the prototyping phase. You're basically field-testing them for us, so feel free bring up stuff like that. The suit is similar to a typical g-suit, but it has biofeedback sensors and microactuators to allow it to apply pressure where it's needed most. Basically, it should perform significantly better than a normal g-suit. The helmet is, eventually, supposed to help you control the plane with only your thoughts, but it has some other useful gadgets, like ways to measure your oxygen intake and react to it accordingly, boosting the gas ratios when needed. We'll also be testing some new simulation tech, which works with the helmet and your aircraft's HUD, which will hopeful allow us to get better data, closer to what we'd get from real combat. I'm thinking of giving you a bonus for testing our gear out."
"I appreciate the sentiment, sir, but my paycheck is more than large enough for my tastes." Talisman replied. "How about you just put me near the top of the list for the final product?"
Thelen grinned. "Deal. Now, get out there and get us some data."
----
Hours later, Theodore Thelen stared at the numbers on his screen for a moment, then leaned back in his chair with a sigh. I really need to learn to be careful with what I wish for.
He had been somewhat pessimistic on how this was going to turn out from the start. Cramming the sensors for multiple forms of neuroimaging into a portable helmet had been a real challenge for himself and his designers. In the end, they'd only managed to fit in the sensors for an EEG and near-infrared spectroscopy, though they had managed to get enough sensors for a 3D image in the case of the latter. It was enough to let them monitor both blood-flow and brain activity. The helmet was also closely monitoring the O2/CO2 ratio in Talismans's exhalations, and his total oxygen intake. The suit was tracking pulse, blood pressure, sweat production, and the oils and hormones released through his pores.
But it was far from perfect. NIRS sensors were more portable than an MRI, but couldn't track blood flow in vessels more than than a few centimeters deep. Given the limitations on the NIRS imaging, he wasn't expecting to see much. He really would have preferred to get an MRI reading, but downsizing the apparatus enough to do so was beyond even MHI's scientists. Adding an MEG reading to the mix might have been good too, but that was also just too impracticality large an apparatus for their purposes. Not unless they wanted to design a plane for this sort of experiment from the ground up, anyway.
Even within those limitations, though, Talisman had given them a lot of interesting data. Unfortunately, none of it made a damn bit of sense.
Starting with the EEG readings, according to the tech they had reading the scans, he'd seen less concerning readings when looking at the records of epileptic seizures. Given the amount of intense brain activity recorded, Talisman should, by all rights, be in a coma right now. More interestingly, while the sheer amount of activity made it hard to tell, the most active areas seemed to be those linked to spatial reasoning, logic, and mathematics, which was expected...and the autonomic nervous system, particularly areas associated with emotions and the circulatory system, which wasn't at all expected. The circulatory part made some sense, perhaps indicating an ability to subconsciously compensate for g-forces. But emotions? That was very odd, indeed.
Moreover, while the NIRS couldn't track the blood-flow in deeper parts of the brain, what it could track, shouldn't have been able to support the level of neurological activity the EEG was reading. And his O2 readings backed that, as they were typical for a trained pilot. Either his blood was oxygenated past the normal limits, which they'd have noticed in his exhalation CO2 levels, or Talisman's brain was efficient beyond belief. But only when in the air, because his readings were relatively normal when he was on the ground.
Talisman's heart-rate and other readings were also mostly as expected for trained pilots in the midst of flight. Some oddities in the amount of sweat and hormonal readings, but that could be a sign that the simulation was more convincing than expected. That would be nice, if something in this mess actually worked right.
Of course, this could all be due to the bane of every scientist: human error, or its cousin, sensor malfunction. It could be that one of the sensors wasn't calibrated right, or worse, they had cocked up the design such that their sensors were interfering with one another somehow. Which he'd definitely be checking on. Probably be a good idea to run this whole experiment again with Talisman tomorrow, as well.
Assuming that this data was accurate, though...where should he go from here in investigating it? He had no idea how Talisman was managing any of this, much less how he could possibly engineer it into a clone. This spanned more areas of the brain that he'd originally thought. And he hadn't been confident about modifying spatial reasoning alone, much less all of these other areas. The autonomic nervous system was an especially dangerous place to mess around with. If you screwed up, it could cripple any clone you made for life, saddle them with some chronic illness, or cause them to die an agonizing death. It was even worse if you messed with it in a living person, so augmentation was also out.
Well...as my advisor always said, "when in doubt, get a bigger sample size." I think this might be interesting enough to warrant making a few calls...and I know just who to start with. Theodore grinned, reached for his phone, and dialed in a number he'd only recently gotten.
"Hello, XCOM USEA Skonk Works, inside man Charlie," the voice on the other end of the line said, matter-of-factly.
Thelen stifled a laugh. "Seriously, Burns? You are going to get in so much trouble if someone from management calls and you answer like that."
"Theo, my man. Good to hear from you. I'm not too bothered about the Skonkworks joke. Snow threatens to fire me pretty much daily anyway. Speaking of which, thanks for your help a couple of months back. That flight simulation you helped me construct came in really handy. Now, what can I do for you? It's a bit late here, so hopefully it's not too major."
"Eh, I figured you'd still be working. You always worked long hours, back in grad school. Anyway, I've got some spooky stuff for ya. I did some neuroimaging of Talisman-"
"Seriously? Why would you even try that-"
"While he was flying an actual plane, and going up against simulated opponents," Thelen finished. "Something more like an AR game, than a normal simulation."
"...Okay, that is definitely a new twist. But it can't have been as thorough an image as you'd get on the ground, though."
"Of course not. But even so, the readings are...interesting. I'll be sending you them in a bit. They're interesting enough that, assuming they aren't just a malfunctioning sensor or bad design, I can probably manage to fast-track getting more of the gear made, and get approval to ship you some. I want you to try the same thing with some of your guys, especially Mobius One, Trigger, and that Blaze kid. We may actually have a lead on something important, here, and I want-"
"A bigger sample," Burns said, finishing the sentence for him. "Our advisor would be proud. I'll see what I can do."
"Thanks. I appreciate it. If this works out, you and I may just go down in history for our discoveries. Assuming the aliens don't win and wipe us out, anyway."
----
So...this one was definitely a bit tricky, since the nature of psionics and the link to Aces is still unknown. Heck, pushing us to maybe discover some of the secrets of psionics is one of the reasons why I made this. As such, I thought mostly about what general effects you'd see. Given that it doesn't seem like Trigger, Blaze, or Mobius One display superhuman abilities on the ground, I figure most Aces wouldn't. That would feed into the mystery of the nature of Aces. But I figured there'd be signs of supernatural traits while they're in the air. Given how integrated computers are into modern aircraft, I also figured they'd be gathering useful user data. So of course someone would have suggested that they save and utilize that data to fix problems in their designs. Just makes sense, really.
For those wondering, Thelen's degree is in general engineering, while I'm assuming Burns' is in aerospace. The main reason they shared an advisor was because their college was big on cross-discipline interactions and collaborations, and that included have students from even somewhat overlapping fields sharing advisors. That's part of why Thelen was willing to go Osea to finish his studies, and how he ended up as CTO: he deliberately learned a little about a lot of fields, to better coordinate the actions of many different teams, working in many different fields. This long-standing friendship, combined with Burns' general nature, is the main reason why Burns can get Thelen to actually loosen up a bit, and drop some of his more formal, "corporate" way of speaking.
The networking Thelen did with Osean academics and engineers in college has also come in extremely useful in his chosen line of work, as well. More than one college friend of his has ended up working for MHI, especially after they've lost jobs to downsizing or other circumstances. And Thelen tends to be very willing to do favors for his college friends, within boundaries. Partially because they're friends, partially because he knows he may need to call in favors of his own at some point. Which he's been doing a lot more of lately, to try help ANEA get the advantages he knows they're going to need down the line.
As for what particular battle Charlie Burns might have wanted a precise simulation of...I leave that up to the reader's imagination. Though I'll admit I definitely have an idea of what I think it is. But a bit of implication is sometimes a good idea, when you're already pushing some boundaries of canonicity.
I apologize for the double post, but I wanted to post this and hopefully get some discussion going while we wait for an update.
TECHNICAL AND DOCTRINAL PATHWAYS TO AEROSPACE SUPERIORITY OF XCOM FORCES
Opponent Characteristics and Implications for XCOM Counters:
Hyper-maneuverable, non-aerodynamic propulsion system. Full trans-atmospheric operational range from ground level to the vacuum of space with no change in performance characteristics. Lack of thermal plume. Max speed in atmosphere comparable to conventional fighter aircraft.
Hyper-maneuverability required for our aircraft/missiles to keep up/achieve favorable kill probabilities.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in aircraft size and mass.
Pilot/aircraft g-tolerance.
Lack of thermal plume.
Infrared seekers and sensors ineffective.
High altitude, propulsion systems necessary to widen the engagement envelope of XCOM aircraft.
ET Aerospacecraft superstructure impervious to traditional damage mechanisms (laser and particle beam weapons wholly ineffective, kinetics can achieve some success through second order effects).
Weapon systems focused on kinetic damage mechanisms are most effective.
Kinetic-kill missile systems.
Electro-Magnetic Launch canons.
Unknown sensor, communication, and and navigation system, appears not to be based on electromagnetic radiation.
Lack of LIDAR/RADAR capabilities.
Optimize aircraft geometry for aerodynamic performance rather than stealth. (CAUTION: Likelihood of cooperation between ET and Belkan forces considered HIGH. Recommend planning for ET exhibiting greater understanding of atmospheric combat as practiced in Strangereal over time, followed by eventual adoption of local style electromagnetic stealth and counter-measures.)
Lack of ECM/Flares/Chaff
Downgraded tracking software and sensors for XCOM missiles/aircraft in order to secure price reduction in munitions.
Possibility of using remotely piloted fighters against ET forces.
Lack of electromagnetic communications systems.
ECM/ECCM suites and attendant computational mass not important to XCOM aircraft.
Centralized command and control vulnerable to the elimination of AWACS analogue craft. Limited independent strategic decision making ability. Alien forces will prioritize fighters making attack runs on bulb ships over all other targets, to the detriment of their overall battlefield positioning.
Tactical doctrine should prioritize elimination of Bulb ships.
ET Fighter Craft primary armament is a direct fire particle energy weapon, damage potential sufficient to one-hit kill current aircraft. Capable of intercepting missiles in flight. Engagement envelope appears to be limited to knife-fighting rage, unknown if this is due to technical or operational reasons.
Defense must rely on avoiding enemy fire for the foreseeable future.
Increased pilot situational awareness with improved HUD design.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in aircraft size and mass.
Pilot/aircraft g-tolerance.
Missiles must be able to maneuver to avoid enemy fire.
Provide missiles with enemy firing arc data from friendly AWACS for preprogrammed avoidance.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in missile size and mass.
Missile g-tolerance.
Gun combat should be practiced against ET aces.
Electro-Magnetic Launch canons.
Terminally guided cannon shells.
XCOM units should attempt to engage with long range weapons from beyond visual range or from beyond the horizon.
Long range missile bus.
Fire and forget missile hit and run attacks.
Terminally guided Stonehenge shells.
No observed attempts at electromagnetic signature mitigation (stealth), hull construction highly RADAR reflective.
Modify missile tracking and sensors to rely on RADAR.
Orbital basing allows prompt deployment to any theatre on the globe.
Global coverage via strategic basing and high speed intercept necessary to effectively respond to ET incursions.
Super/Hyper-Sonic flight research.
Improved in-flight refueling.
Sub-orbital ballistic flight booster research.
Developmental and Manufacturing Considerations
High refit capacity in order to extend operational lifetime in the face of frequent technological breakthroughs catalyzed by reverse engineering of ET technology.
Pursuit of high impact, low investment technological developments critical for leapfrogging ET capabilities.
Solutions requires an extremely short research and development cycle.
Solutions require rapid production ramp up.
Implications of Developmental and Manufacturing Considerations
Simplified design with high degree of component independence preferable in order to maximize efficiency of parallelized development process.
Standardized components should be emphasized in order to allow for rapid manufacturing scale-up.
Proposed Development Pathway:
COMBINED ARMS AIRFLEET DOCTRINE
The need for reduction in aircraft size and weight while reducing development time lends itself to a breakup of aircraft capabilities from single unit 'super fighters' intro a cooperative distributed network of smaller cheaper unmanned and optionally manned aircraft working in concert.
Through individually less capable, these aircraft will be cheaper to manufacture and develop, and as a network will be more resistant to damage than single unit due to the greater maneuvering capacity of individual components, as well as the need to destroy multiple aircraft in order to inflict the same level of degradation of capabilities.
We propose the following delineation of roles:
TAWACS (Tactical Airborne Warning and Control System) – Fighter sized limited range AWACS unit meant to stand back from a dogfight and feed our fighters and missiles with guidance telemetry, and illuminate alien fighters for missile tracking.
Gun Fighter – Dedicated dog-fighter optimized for maneuverability, situational awareness, and built around a heavy canon. Designed to engage enemy fighters directly and break through enemy antimissile point defense with flat trajectory projectiles.
Missile Fighter – Fighter scale aircraft optimized to carry short range high maneuverability missiles. Designed to hang back and pelt ET fighters while Gun Fighters engage them in melee. Optimized for speed more than maneuverability, in order to maintain range from ET fighters.
Supply Carrier – Transport plane sized aircraft designed to carry long range missiles and act as a fuel tanker for its attendant swarm.
In such a system, a combat engagement would begin with TAWACS racing ahead of the rest of the swarm in order to identify targets and feed targeting data back to the supply carrier, which would then launch a long range missile bus alpha strike and turn away from the battle, racing to safety.
Missile buses would race past the Gun and Missile Fighter squadrons and deliver short ranged high maneuverability missile payloads just outside the range of ET point defense range. The TAWACS would proceed to illuminate the opposing ET forces for the mini-missiles to lock on to.
The attack should be timed such that the mini-missile complete their tasks of damaging the enemy's aerospacecraft just as the Gun Fighters enter their optimal engagement envelope and draw the enemy's attention on them, striking the killing blows with their kinetic weapons while Missile Fighters maintain their range from the dogfights and contribute with well timed missile launches.
Not bad. Reads like a draft that the Tactics Department would come up with, though, uh, their conclusions are going to point in the exact opposite direction: Aces form the majority of our effective strength so any of our plans must seek to both enhance the effectiveness of our current aces and increase the number of aces we have on call.
Alright. While someone else might have beaten me to reinvigorating the discussion here, I'ma still post my next story, because why the heck not? Thanks to @huhYeahGoodPoint and @Simon_Jester for the feedback on this one. And thanks in advance to @Icipall for pointing put my typos.
---- The Mind of an Ace
"Are you sure this isn't a bit overkill, sir?" Talisman said, as the techs finished the final calibrations of the sensors in his helmet.
"If we want to figure out what makes you an Ace, we need more data," Theodore Thelen, one of the two people in charge of XCOM ANEA's science division, said. "The scans of your brain that we've been doing so far just aren't giving us anything. Your brain seems perfectly normal when you're not in the air. Even during spatial awareness tests, you're not performing as exceptionally well as we might expect."
"Hey! Are you calling me stupid?"
Thelen ignored his interjection, and continued, "That result is consistent with prior research. People have been trying to crack exactly what makes an Ace of your caliber special tick since Cipher turned the Belkan War around. The biggest study was done with the backing of the IUN, back in '07. They managed to get data from the star pilots of every member nation, including Mobius One. They also managed, by offering them a lot of cash, to get a decent number of mercs and ex-mercs, including Phoenix of Scarface Squadron, to give the scientists the chance to get data from them. They gave them all spatial reasoning problems to solve, while the doctors watched their brain activity."
"I...think I might have gone through similar tests, actually, shortly after the war."
Thelen paused at this. "So, Emmeria did their own data gathering? I'll have to put in a request, and take a look at the results myself. If only for the sake of thoroughness." He sighed. "Probably not going to find anything of note. If they had something, they'd have published. What pretty much every study has found was that, while the best Aces like yourself and Mobius One do generally have better results than the rest of the pilots, it's only a few percent above the score of a top-level pilot with less fame or glory. It's edging on margin-for-error territory. Same pattern emerges with reflexes."
"I...have a lot of trouble believing that, sir," Talisman said.
"Oh, you're not alone in feeling that way. Most find it hard to swallow. Still, science sometimes isn't intuitive, and we often need to look past our preconceptions to figure out what's really happening. The general consensus for the past several years has been that, whatever makes an Ace an Ace, it's not going to be found with that sort of testing. Most have concluded it's an amalgamation of traits, in-born and acquired, including combat experience, rather than something that can be isolated. Those traits might not even be universal to all Aces. Still, every couple of years, usually after a war, someone tries out a new sort of cognitive test or some new neuroimaging technique. Nothing ever comes of it."
"However...as aircraft have advanced and become more and more computerized, they've also started gather data on their pilots. Started with basic flight recorders, way back in the day. Now, with all the HUDs and cameras and interfaces we install, tracking things like where your eyes are or what your hands are doing isn't actually hard. So most modern fighters track a pilot's reaction times, their exact actions, what they could see, what their plane's instruments told them at the time, stuff like that. Some of that is for the purpose of making sure errors and other problems with the plane are fixed. Most of it just gets filed away into a database somewhere, to be combined with a ton of other data and run through various algorithms to derive useful data on trends, which then is applied to developing upgrades. Most neurologists are completely unaware of the existence of that data, and wouldn't know how to make sense of the raw data if they did. Most aircraft designers don't bother study to how to work with it on the scale of individual sets of data either, because it's not generalizable in that form, and may contain outliers.
"Still, if you know how, you can look at the data from a plane, and then recreate exactly what it did in its last battle, and get a decent picture of what that piece of the battlefield looked like. Luckily for us, I actually bothered to learn how to decode that raw data. An old friend of mine from college called me up and asked me to help him out with constructing a simulated model of a particular battle from the data of multiple planes, not too long ago. I applied the same programs and analysis techniques to some of the logs available to us, including your own from the war, and those from Mobius One and Trigger's recent fights with the aliens. It indicates that you all have significantly faster reflexes in the air than on the ground, and demonstrate several other talents you don't on the ground. Trigger seems to be preternaturally good at predicting his foes' next action, often with very little data to back his predictions, for instance. This is more than can be accounted for just from the effects of adrenaline rushes, too. No, something about you all changes when you guys are in the cockpit. And, if we want to find out why exactly that is, we need to gather data while you fly. As much of it as we can."
"I guess that makes sense," Talisman conceded, as the techs finally finished adjusting his helmet. "Still not sure I like the electrodes around my head, though. They're a bit uncomfortable.
"Thanks for the feedback. That helmet and suit are still in the prototyping phase. You're basically field-testing them for us, so feel free bring up stuff like that. The suit is similar to a typical g-suit, but it has biofeedback sensors and microactuators to allow it to apply pressure where it's needed most. Basically, it should perform significantly better than a normal g-suit. The helmet is, eventually, supposed to help you control the plane with only your thoughts, but it has some other useful gadgets, like ways to measure your oxygen intake and react to it accordingly, boosting the gas ratios when needed. We'll also be testing some new simulation tech, which works with the helmet and your aircraft's HUD, which will hopeful allow us to get better data, closer to what we'd get from real combat. I'm thinking of giving you a bonus for testing our gear out."
"I appreciate the sentiment, sir, but my paycheck is more than large enough for my tastes." Talisman replied. "How about you just put me near the top of the list for the final product?"
Thelen grinned. "Deal. Now, get out there and get us some data."
----
Hours later, Theodore Thelen stared at the numbers on his screen for a moment, then leaned back in his chair with a sigh. I really need to learn to be careful with what I wish for.
He had been somewhat pessimistic on how this was going to turn out from the start. Cramming the sensors for multiple forms of neuroimaging into a portable helmet had been a real challenge for himself and his designers. In the end, they'd only managed to fit in the sensors for an EEG and near-infrared spectroscopy, though they had managed to get enough sensors for a 3D image in the case of the latter. It was enough to let them monitor both blood-flow and brain activity. The helmet was also closely monitoring the O2/CO2 ratio in Talismans's exhalations, and his total oxygen intake. The suit was tracking pulse, blood pressure, sweat production, and the oils and hormones released through his pores.
But it was far from perfect. NIRS sensors were more portable than an MRI, but couldn't track blood flow in vessels more than than a few centimeters deep. Given the limitations on the NIRS imaging, he wasn't expecting to see much. He really would have preferred to get an MRI reading, but downsizing the apparatus enough to do so was beyond even MHI's scientists. Adding an MEG reading to the mix might have been good too, but that was also just too impracticality large an apparatus for their purposes. Not unless they wanted to design a plane for this sort of experiment from the ground up, anyway.
Even within those limitations, though, Talisman had given them a lot of interesting data. Unfortunately, none of it made a damn bit of sense.
Starting with the EEG readings, according to the tech they had reading the scans, he'd seen less concerning readings when looking at the records of epileptic seizures. Given the amount of intense brain activity recorded, Talisman should, by all rights, be in a coma right now. More interestingly, while the sheer amount of activity made it hard to tell, the most active areas seemed to be those linked to spatial reasoning, logic, and mathematics, which was expected...and the autonomic nervous system, particularly areas associated with emotions and the circulatory system, which wasn't at all expected. The circulatory part made some sense, perhaps indicating an ability to subconsciously compensate for g-forces. But emotions? That was very odd, indeed.
Moreover, while the NIRS couldn't track the blood-flow in deeper parts of the brain, what it could track, shouldn't have been able to support the level of neurological activity the EEG was reading. And his O2 readings backed that, as they were typical for a trained pilot. Either his blood was oxygenated past the normal limits, which they'd have noticed in his exhalation CO2 levels, or Talisman's brain was efficient beyond belief. But only when in the air, because his readings were relatively normal when he was on the ground.
Talisman's heart-rate and other readings were also mostly as expected for trained pilots in the midst of flight. Some oddities in the amount of sweat and hormonal readings, but that could be a sign that the simulation was more convincing than expected. That would be nice, if something in this mess actually worked right.
Of course, this could all be due to the bane of every scientist: human error, or its cousin, sensor malfunction. It could be that one of the sensors wasn't calibrated right, or worse, they had cocked up the design such that their sensors were interfering with one another somehow. Which he'd definitely be checking on. Probably be a good idea to run this whole experiment again with Talisman tomorrow, as well.
Assuming that this data was accurate, though...where should he go from here in investigating it? He had no idea how Talisman was managing any of this, much less how he could possibly engineer it into a clone. This spanned more areas of the brain that he'd originally thought. And he hadn't been confident about modifying spatial reasoning alone, much less all of these other areas. The autonomic nervous system was an especially dangerous place to mess around with. If you screwed up, it could cripple any clone you made for life, saddle them with some chronic illness, or cause them to die an agonizing death. It was even worse if you messed with it in a living person, so augmentation was also out.
Well...as my advisor always said, "when in doubt, get a bigger sample size." I think this might be interesting enough to warrant making a few calls...and I know just who to start with. Theodore grinned, reached for his phone, and dialed in a number he'd only recently gotten.
"Hello, XCOM USEA Skonk Works, inside man Charlie," the voice on the other end of the line said, matter-of-factly.
Thelen stifled a laugh. "Seriously, Burns? You are going to get in so much trouble if someone from management calls and you answer like that."
"Theo, my man. Good to hear from you. I'm not too bothered about the Skonkworks joke. Snow threatens to fire me pretty much daily anyway. Speaking of which, thanks for your help a couple of months back. That flight simulation you helped me construct came in really handy. Now, what can I do for you? It's a bit late here, so hopefully it's not too major."
"Eh, I figured you'd still be working. You always worked long hours, back in grad school. Anyway, I've got some spooky stuff for ya. I did some neuroimaging of Talisman-"
"Seriously? Why would you even try that-"
"While he was flying an actual plane, and going up against simulated opponents," Thelen finished. "Something more like an AR game, than a normal simulation."
"...Okay, that is definitely a new twist. But it can't have been as thorough an image as you'd get on the ground, though."
"Of course not. But even so, the readings are...interesting. I'll be sending you them in a bit. They're interesting enough that, assuming they aren't just a malfunctioning sensor or bad design, I can probably manage to fast-track getting more of the gear made, and get approval to ship you some. I want you to try the same thing with some of your guys, especially Mobius One, Trigger, and that Blaze kid. We may actually have a lead on something important, here, and I want-"
"A bigger sample," Burns said, finishing the sentence for him. "Our advisor would be proud. I'll see what I can do."
"Thanks. I appreciate it. If this works out, you and I may just go down in history for our discoveries. Assuming the aliens don't win and wipe us out, anyway."
----
So...this one was definitely a bit tricky, since the nature of psionics and the link to Aces is still unknown. Heck, pushing us to maybe discover some of the secrets of psionics is one of the reasons why I made this. As such, I thought mostly about what general effects you'd see. Given that it doesn't seem like Trigger, Blaze, or Mobius One display superhuman abilities on the ground, I figure most Aces wouldn't. That would feed into the mystery of the nature of Aces. But I figured there'd be signs of supernatural traits while they're in the air. Given how integrated computers are into modern aircraft, I also figured they'd be gathering useful user data. So of course someone would have suggested that they save and utilize that data to fix problems in their designs. Just makes sense, really.
For those wondering, Thelen's degree is in general engineering, while I'm assuming Burns' is in aerospace. The main reason they shared an advisor was because their college was big on cross-discipline interactions and collaborations, and that included have students from even somewhat overlapping fields sharing advisors. That's part of why Thelen was willing to go Osea to finish his studies, and how he ended up as CTO: he deliberately learned a little about a lot of fields, to better coordinate the actions of many different teams, working in many different fields. This long-standing friendship, combined with Burns' general nature, is the main reason why Burns can get Thelen to actually loosen up a bit, and drop some of his more formal, "corporate" way of speaking.
The networking Thelen did with Osean academics and engineers in college has also come in extremely useful in his chosen line of work, as well. More than one college friend of his has ended up working for MHI, especially after they've lost jobs to downsizing or other circumstances. And Thelen tends to be very willing to do favors for his college friends, within boundaries. Partially because they're friends, partially because he knows he may need to call in favors of his own at some point. Which he's been doing a lot more of lately, to try help ANEA get the advantages he knows they're going to need down the line.
As for what particular battle Charlie Burns might have wanted a precise simulation of...I leave that up to the reader's imagination. Though I'll admit I definitely have an idea of what I think it is. But a bit of implication is sometimes a good idea, when you're already pushing some boundaries of canonicity.
Sure, I'm willing to slap a Canon tag on this. As for what it results in, take a guess.
Anyway, the big moment I've been waiting for months for has finally arrived.
Some content is exempt from rules that should apply to everything.
The Season Pass SP Mission series has completed. After three months of waiting, with one mission a month, it has finished.
A fun piece of the story becomes a liability in the worldbuilding.
I have reviewed the details that are available to me, and can project two ways forward.
Tell me, players. What is the difference between canon information, and noncanon speculation?
Comprising three missions in September of 2019, the SP Mission series would expand the world and the Lighthouse Wars - in ways beneficial and not.
So use your imaginations, my fellow questers!
I was torn about how I should rule on this set of DLC, due to drafting the worldbuilding before the mission came out -
-and then I realized I had the means to end this dispute in a definitive and elegant manner.
Vote, players.
[] [SP] Canon.
[] [SP] Noncanon.
Everything in the DLC will be canon and I will be playing them as canon. Pros:
ACCESSIBLE APS TECH.
More advanced AI work.
Better/Cheaper Submarine Superprojects.
Better Osean/East Osean collaboration. Mixed:
Higher frequency of Singularities, figures that warp the probability of events until their presence makes predictions impossible. A warrior kills to realize a dream. Somebody like you, who kills without meaning, can only be called...monster.
Behold! I have refined my analysis to take int account everyone's points:
TECHNICAL AND DOCTRINAL PATHWAYS TO AEROSPACE SUPERIORITY OF XCOM FORCES V.2
Opponent Characteristics and Implications for XCOM Counters:
Hyper-maneuverable, non-aerodynamic propulsion system. Full trans-atmospheric operational range from ground level to the vacuum of space with no change in performance characteristics. Lack of thermal plume. Max speed in atmosphere comparable to conventional fighter aircraft.
Hyper-maneuverability required for our aircraft/missiles to keep up/achieve favorable kill probabilities.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in aircraft size and mass.
Pilot/aircraft g-tolerance.
Lack of thermal plume.
Infrared seekers and sensors ineffective.
High altitude, propulsion systems necessary to widen the engagement envelope of XCOM aircraft.
Moment of vulnerability after executing tight turns due to aerodynamically incited vibrations precluding the firing of their plasma canon.
Alien fighters should be baited into turning contests on a regular basis.
ET Aerospacecraft superstructure impervious to traditional damage mechanisms (laser and particle beam weapons wholly ineffective, kinetics can achieve some success through second order effects).
Weapon systems focused on kinetic damage mechanisms are most effective.
Kinetic-kill missile systems.
Electro-magnetic accelerator weapons.
Unknown sensor, communication, and and navigation system, appears not to be based on electromagnetic radiation.
Lack of LIDAR/RADAR capabilities.
Optimize aircraft geometry for aerodynamic performance rather than stealth. (CAUTION: Likelihood of cooperation between ET and Belkan forces considered HIGH. Recommend planning for ET exhibiting greater understanding of atmospheric combat as practiced in Strangereal over time, followed by eventual adoption of local style electromagnetic stealth and counter-measures.)
Lack of ECM/Flares/Chaff
Downgraded tracking software and sensors for XCOM missiles/aircraft in order to secure price reduction in munitions.
Possibility of using remotely piloted fighters against ET forces.
Lack of electromagnetic communications systems.
ECM/ECCM suites and attendant computational mass not important to XCOM aircraft.
Centralized command and control vulnerable to the elimination of AWACS analogue craft. Limited independent strategic decision-making ability. Alien forces will prioritize fighters making attack runs on bulb ships over all other targets, to the detriment of their overall battlefield positioning.
Tactical doctrine should prioritize elimination of Bulb ships.
ET Fighter Craft primary armament is a direct fire plasma accelerator capable of one-hit killing current aircraft asn well as intercepting missiles in flight. Engagement envelope appears to be limited to knife-fighting rage, unknown if this is due to technical or operational reasons.
Defense must rely on avoiding enemy fire for the foreseeable future.
Increased pilot situational awareness with improved HUD design.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in aircraft size and mass.
Pilot/aircraft g-tolerance.
Missiles must be able to maneuver to avoid enemy fire.
Provide missiles with enemy firing arc data from friendly AWACS for preprogrammed avoidance.
Post-stall maneuvering/thrust vectoring.
Optimally unstable aerodynamic shaping.
Reduction in missile size and mass.
Missile g-tolerance.
Gun combat should be practiced against ET aces.
Electro-Magnetic Launch canons.
Terminally guided cannon shells.
XCOM units should attempt to engage with long range weapons from beyond visual range or from beyond the horizon.
Long range missile bus.
Fire and forget missile hit and run attacks.
Terminally guided Stonehenge shells.
No observed attempts at electromagnetic signature mitigation (stealth), hull construction highly RADAR reflective.
Modify missile tracking and sensors to rely on RADAR.
Orbital basing allows prompt deployment to any theatre on the globe.
Global coverage via strategic basing and high-speed intercept necessary to effectively respond to ET incursions.
Super/Hyper-Sonic flight research.
Improved in-flight refueling.
Sub-orbital ballistic flight booster research.
Implications of XCOM Experiences with Aerial Engagement of ET Aerospacecraft
High attrition rate of non-Ace pilots: Less experienced pilots do not live long enough to learn the lessons necessary for them to succeed in aerial combat against their alien counterparts due to the extreme performance gap between Alien and conventional aircraft.
Pilot survivability key to development of a fighter force capable of engaging the enemy at a favorable exchange ratio.
Conversely, a high degree of success has been achieved by Ace pilots equipped with high performance conventional fighter aircraft.
Pilot survivability key to maintenance of a fighter force capable of engaging the enemy at a favorable exchange ratio.
CONCLUSION: A small number of high-performance aircraft paired with Ace pilots are much more effective than a larger number of mass-produced aircraft piloted by merely average pilots. XCOM should pivot to deploying as an elite rapid response force, acting as a tremendous concentration of force to break the back of any Alien incursion into Stragereal's atmosphere.
Developmental and Manufacturing Considerations for XCOM Aircraft
High refit capacity in order to extend operational lifetime in the face of frequent technological breakthroughs catalyzed by reverse engineering of ET technology.
Pursuit of high impact, low investment technological developments critical for leapfrogging ET capabilities.
Solutions requires an extremely short research and development cycle.
Solutions require rapid production ramp up.
Implications of Developmental and Manufacturing Considerations
Simplified design with high degree of component independence preferable in order to maximize efficiency of parallelized development process.
Standardized components should be emphasized in order to allow for rapid manufacturing scale-up.
Proposed Development Pathway:
SYNERGISTIC AIRCRAFT FAMILLY
The need for reduction in aircraft size, weight, cost, and development time while increasing maneuverability, power, and armament is a paradox familiar to aircraft designers since the earliest flight experiments.
In the context of the threats currently faced by XCOM, we believe that airframe specialization is key to achieving these goals in a timely and practical manner.
Specializing aircraft to certain types of engagement allows high performance characteristics to be achieved without extended development cycles otherwise necessary in order to optimize a larger number of sub-systems needed for other roles.
We thus propose the following fighter types:
Gun Fighter
Dedicated dogfighter optimized for maneuverability, situational awareness, and built around a heavy autocannon. Designed to engage enemy fighters directly and break through enemy antimissile point defense with flat trajectory projectiles as well as force enemy fighters to focus on them, allowing other XCOM fighters more freedom to operate. This will be the most difficult aircraft to pilot due to the high gee forces sustained, as well as the need to extremely high situational awareness, and should be piloted by our best Aces. (This is the equivalent of the 'Ranger' class in XCOM.)
Missile Fighter
Fighter optimized to carry short range high maneuverability missiles. While capable of dogfighting with its autocannon, its magazines are small. Rather it's designed for defensive maneuvering, keeping itself safe while it lets loose streams of missiles from its cavernous internal bays. Gee loads will be lower than Gun Fighters, but this fighter should still be piloted by experienced Aces. (This is the equivalent of the 'Grenadier' class in XCOM.) Electronic Fighter
A dogfight capable fighter designed to provide Electronic Support Measures (ESM) and Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) to allied fighter aircraft. Their speed and maneuverability are designed to keep them close to the furball in order to keep their allies in range of their ESM, while preventing the enemy from achieving easy kills. The electronic fighter is also designed as a two-seater, with a pilot and electronics operator. The maneuver loads are somewhat lower than the Gun and Missile fighters, but the required situational awareness means it is best piloted by a fledgling Ace. (This is the equivalent of the 'Specialist' class in XCOM.)
Artillery Fighter
A long-range combatant designed to stay on the outskirts of a furball and wait for the right moment to deliver an overwhelming strike with a spinal electromagnetic launcher, aimed at opportunistic fighter kills and anti-ship duty. It's thus equally optimized for speed and maneuverability to allow it to keep the range while maneuvering well enough to line up its shots. Maneuvering and situational awareness loads are expected to be the lowest, making it suitable for experienced non-Aces. (This is the equivalent of the 'Sniper' class in XCOM.)
Prompt Global Transport
The pivot to a highly capable but numerically small air-force leads to the need for global rapid response capability.
While initially many among our analysis group favored an updated Arkbird chassis as the base of a new hypersonic suborbital aircraft transport, citing the well understood aerodynamic flight behavior as well as the development time and cost that could be saved by the use of Metallic Hydrogen Alloys in key subsystems, such a aircraft would still require a intense development process and impose a significant logistical burden on XCOM, in addition to representing a singular point of failure to our deployment strategy.
A more practical approach would be to create a sub-orbital rocket booster that two-fighter aircraft can attach to the sides of, providing aerodynamic maneuvering capability to the combined system.
Such a rocket could be developed quickly by taking advantage of the unique properties of Metallic Hydrogen Alloys: The turbopumps can be significantly simplified by switching to a electrically rather than turbine driven mode of operation, and their mass can be reduced by using MHA reinforcement in the turbo-impellers, allowing smaller pumps to spin faster and provide the required pressures. Power to the turbopumps can be supplied externally from a specialize Lighthouse microwave beam, removing the need for internal energy storage.
Such a system would boost to a suborbital trajectory, follow a ballistic path above the atmosphere, then perform a retrograde burn to reduce the stress of atmospheric reentry on the fighters. The fighters would be jettisoned to dive into the atmosphere, while the rocket use a parachute to slow down before detaching it a short distance from the ground and performing a powered landing.
The rocket could then be refueled in the field and make a short hop to whatever nearby facility could allow its parasite planes to land be re-attached for a second flight back to their home base.
Should the destination be outside of the range of the Lighthouse power distribution network, an airmobile microwave transmitter can be sent to the location to draw energy from a local powerplant.
Edit: In hindsight, XCOM has always been abouot a small elite force decked out to the gills in cutting edge technology, can't believe I missed that stylistic conceit.
Advanced Weapons Analysis Division Report: F-14X Hellcat II
Cutting to the chase, the F-14X Hellcat II (which will henceforth be referred to as the Hellcat) is a superlative air-to-air dog fighter, with both high performance in all relevant aspects and a surprisingly modest cost. While on the surface it is shocking that such a capable design emerged so quickly from a still nascent organization, proper analysis of shows that XCOM simply inherited decades of unofficial and semi-official work that bypassed the traditional firms. In light of the Invader's known capabilities, the Hellcat is incredibly well suited for the current threat environment, and is all but certain to form the bulk of XCOM's roster for the intermediate future.
Development Process
In terms of lineage, the design of the Hellcat shares much in common with the 'Ship of Theseus', with the only remaining original components from the F-14A being the titanium structural framing, which itself has been greatly modified over the years from the initial configuration. Its systems may not be the absolute bleeding edge, they have been used in an extremely intelligent and focused manner, with a far better performance to complexity ratio than nearly all other modern designs. This elegance is the result of years of refinement, nearly all of which had occurred outside of the traditional channels.
While XCOM managed to finalize the design in less than 2 weeks, they had the tremendous advantage of having a tremendous collection of prior efforts to work from. The Tomcat has always had a romantic air to it, which has resulted in many gifted engineers trying their hand at improving the design, resulting in dozens upon dozens of high level design studies and simulations. While these attempts rarely made it to the real world, the effort was considered a labor of love by many, with the body of work being slowly sublimated into being within spitting distance of a proper blueprint. XCOM's role in this was applying cutting edge manufacturing technology to bridge the remaining gaps and to bringing the work to fruition, as well as ironing out whatever flaws creeped up in the real world.
As an aside, the decision to retain the F-14 designation was purely due to the personal preferences of the project lead, Charlie Burns, formerly of Macmillan Heavy Industries. Burns has been noted for being somewhat reckless in terms of safety standards, but a detailed breakdown of the Hellcat shows no particularly notable deviations from modern tolerances. When accounting for the effective pre-installation of what would normally be aftermarket tuning parts, it is actually a cut above most other front-line designs.
Performance
As stated by XCOM's own documentation, the Hellcat is a near peer to the F-22 Raptor. In a direct match up, the Hellcat's lack of stealth and less than cutting edge sensors would leave it at a comparative disadvantage in a long range engagement, but it comes to a dead heat in a dog fight. More importantly, the Invaders have shown no sign of using the electromagnetic spectrum whatsoever, which neatly nullifies this shortfall entirely. Thus, the Hellcat is just as effective as the Raptor in XCOM's primary mission, while having a production cost equal to that of the latest block of F-15s. As the Hellcat is now primarily focused on being a dog fighter rather than a long range interceptor, the RIO position has been removed, allowing for the pilot seat to be modified to be better suited for high-g maneuvers.
Weapons
The primary advantage the Hellcat has over the Raptor, other than cost, is it's far more extensive array of special weapon options. The Raptor's central bay is infamously shallow, making it incapable of storing bulky weapons such as LAAMs, AGMs, and most importantly EMLs. Additionally, despite not currently being certified to mount air-to-ground weapons, this is purely due to a lack of immediate need and available man hours. Should one of the various rouge nations (ie Belka) formally join forces with the Invaders, this shortfall will be rectified quite quickly.
Control Systems
Beyond now using a power-by-wire interface, the Hellcat has a 'take-it-or-leave-it' feature in the form of an enclosed cockpit. Among the aeronautics engineering community, it is believed that the technology is developed enough to be considered reliable, with any event that could cause it to malfunction being just as dangerous for craft with conventional canopies. However, as this conflict currently stands, it's utility is somewhat marginal. The primary advantage of the full enclosure is to protect the pilot from being blinded by high energy weapons (ie Lasers), and Invader's Plasma Beams fall well short of being eye sheering from near misses. A partial enclosure, such as that of the XFA-27, would offer the same advantages in visibility and be less of a maintenance concern, as well as be substantially more familiar to veteran pilots.
Judging from the documentation, the decision to go for a full enclosure was a 'sure-why-not' moment, primarily driven by it being featured in the last 3 major attempts at upgrading the Tomcat. Concerns over its utility were not raised until the first 2 examples had been completed, by which point the Battle of Granada Plains distracted the team from the issue. By the time the subject was raised again, the specter of Belka collaborating with the Invaders had become a distinct possibility, leading to its retention as a hedge against TLS or PLSL armed ZOE drones.
Deployment
Considering its near optimal characteristics, it should come as no surprise that Commander Pulford intends to replace XCOM's various 4th generation craft. While the current doctrine is in a state of flux, the leading branch revolves around the mass use of EMLs, taking advantage of the enemy fighter craft's propensity to suffer catastrophic failure when hit with sufficient kinetic energy. Beyond that, the most credible speculation revolves around Lieutenant Colonel 'Long Caster' and his pronounced focus on force preservation tactics, elevating a smaller cadre of elite pilots above a large mass of less inexperienced ones. Judging from comparative performance figures, he has a very strong argument in his favor, with the OADF and NAF's extreme losses in the initial engagements clearly illustrate.
In the long term, the Hellcat's biggest flaw is its lack of developmental potential. The air frame has been engineered to be within an inch of acceptable stress margins, making it exceedingly unlikely that future upgrades will be able to grant any level of performance increase. This is the price of tuning a 4th generation design to match those of the 5th. Additionally, maximum projected service lives are estimated to be less than 5 years in peacetime, but this is typical of expedient 'war-builds', particularly those that are regularly expected to be pushed to their performance limits. Considering the current threat environment, it is far more likely that Hellcats will be written off within 8 months of production, be it from enemy fire or accident.
Extrapolation
On the geo-political level, the Hellcat is problematic not because of what it is but what it represents. XCOM itself is not the issue, but rather it is the simple fact that such a capable fighter was developed from what is nearly open source documentation. This means that we are fast approaching the tipping point towards the nightmare scenario of arms control. The knowledge and industry needed to design and fabricate effective weapons of war has become so pervasive that it is nearly impossible to regulate without truly draconian measures, the implementation of which would almost certainly result in the sort of civil conflict that they are intended to prevent. The alien invasion can be seen as a minor blessing here, as it buys us time to develop and implement a better solution under the cover of wartime powers.
It's not an Ace Combat game without mass numbers of poor to mediocre craft with dumb pilots on the opposing side, so here's a way for the local belligerents to have enough clay pigeons for us to shoot at.
Advanced Weapons Analysis Division Report: Erusean Remnant Drone Conversions
With the break up of Erusea, the various would-be successor power blocks have experienced a major manpower crunch, with the former recruitment and training network being all but destroyed in its entirety. Thus, pilots have become far more valuable, mandating that they be carefully husbanded in the name of force conservation. Under this logic, if the only aircraft available for use is a bottom tier clunker, you may as well not bother sending it up manned. Thus, drone conversions have become widespread among the remaining 2nd and 3th generation designs, along with select low end 4th gen units. While performance is mediocre at best, they are considered no less effective than a rookie pilot in most situations.
Additionally, several parties have begun to produce aircraft as purpose built combat drones. The MQ-99 and -101 both require a certain degree of advanced industrial infrastructure and resource availability, which have become much harder to come by since the end of the war. Thus, several older designs have been resurrected to serve as substitutes, with modifications to simplify production. Naturally, many corners have been cut in build quality, but their near disposable nature makes their inevitable air frame failure irrelevant.
Mig-21MQ Dronebed
No modern air force would be complete without obsolete 2nd generation craft sprinkled about for no rhyme or reason, and the Fishbed is the undisputed king of nonsensical 21st century aircraft procurement decisions. Replacing the cockpit with a basic fly-by-wire installation and electronics scavenged from damaged MQ-99 production lines, the Dronebed is a menace to unescorted bombers, cargo craft, and inattentive nuggets that should have been washed out. However, against even moderately experienced pilots they are little more than clay pigeons, and are arguably not worth getting a kill mark for. The only thing the Dronebed has going in its favor is its absolute rock bottom production requirements, coming in at less than a 5th of the already budget MQ-99 thanks to the truly massive quantities of factory fresh surplus parts originating from the Varusean continent.
F-5MQ Paper Tiger
The Erusean Restoration Forces had the fortune to be blessed with several previously mothballed F-5E production lines, and promptly cannibalized several other badly damaged facilities to expand them. Thus, the newly designated Paper Tiger costs substantially below the current market rate for its originator, even with several improvements. The twin engines have been consolidated in to a more modern single and the radar/FCS has been upgraded, allowing the Paper Tiger serves as their primary defensive interceptor. The control system was taken from the most modern block of the T-38 Talon Trainer, allowing its drone systems to make better than average use of the air frame's performance characteristics. Its most notable characteristic is its ability to field a limited number of SAAMs, giving it surprising standoff capabilities. It isn't hopeless when pulled into a dogfight, but ERF doctrine is to avoid it if at all possible.
Mirage-2000-MQ 'Dronerage'
At the high end of things, the Dronerage serves as the replacement for the MG-101, who's production on the Usean continent has ceased with loss of support from Gründer Industries. Lacking the agility of its predecessor, the Dronerage focuses on longer range combat, being able to mount SAAMs and 4AAMs. Just as importantly, it can be equipped with a surprising array of ground attack munitions, giving it full multi-role capability and making it unnecessary to expose living pilots to ground fire. The fight programming was borrowed from a similar turn of the millennium EASA project, granting reasonable performance. While little more than a kill mark waiting to happen for Aces, lesser pilots are meaningfully threatened by it, which will almost certainly lead to it being the workhorse of the Erusean successors for years to come.
As the Mirage is a native Erusean design, there are a multitude of production lines scattered across the Kingdom's former territory. The ERF and FER each have a single line, while the Republic of Voslage was surprised to find itself with a pair of them. The Voslagian Air Force uses them as a stop gap measure, buying time to train up new pilots and set up dedicated production facilities for the MiG-29 and Su-30 families. Based what limited sources we have, Voslagia's resource constrains make them unable to run the lines as full tilt. There have been rumors of the excess capacity being employed in a leveraged export scheme, but this is unconfirmed.
Extrapolation
While the Dronebed and Paper Tiger are essentially semi-reusable LAAMs, the Dronerage is much more interesting. Shortening training time is a common occurrence in wars, with nuggets entering the fray with nowhere near the amount of skill and experience of their peacetime predecessors, leading to grossly inflated loss rates. This is often thought of as a callous waste of human life, but is at times necessary to keep force numbers high enough to conduct operations. If UAVs can be used to fill up the ranks with the needed chaff, training can be extended, which would lead to a far larger number of pilots surviving long enough to become Aces.
2nd Gen Conversion: Pilot Skill D, 50 IC
3rd Gen Conversion: Pilot Skill C-, 100 IC
4th Gen Conversion: Pilot Skill B-, 200 IC
Mig-21MQ Dronebed: Pilot Skill D-, ~75 IC due to cheap imports, much higher otherwise
F-5MQ Paper Tiger: Pilot Skill C, ~600 IC for the ERF, unavailable to others
Mirage-2000-MQ 'Dronerage': Pilot Skill B-, ~900 IC
