Ace Combat XCOM: Enemy Skies

[Simon_Jester]

@Nixeu

Possible, but the mindless pursuit of the nearest enemy when they lost C&C doesn't entirely mesh with that idea. If the controlling force of the fighter had brain-in-a-jar behind it, they could give them orders to follow, and they'd continue following those orders after the connection was cut...but they broke off their pursuit and switched targets, IIRC.

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Yeah, but note that their choice of switched target was to attack the pursuing fighters. They were being pelted with XLAA missiles from behind and beaten up with more fighters closing on them. It's quite possible that they weren't "stupidly" breaking off from an important target to attack an unimportant target, but instead "sensibly" breaking off from a target they weren't going to reach without being intercepted to defend themselves.

Also, when I reread that bit, it's not clear to me that the reason they broke off to attack Harpy Squadron and the Razgriz was because they lost bulb ship control. The attacks we see in the narration that destroy bulb ships happen AFTER the alien fighters attacking our AWACS break off to engage the human fighters pursuing them.

 

[Nixeu]

@Nixeu



Yeah, but note that their choice of switched target was to attack the pursuing fighters. They were being pelted with XLAA missiles from behind and beaten up with more fighters closing on them. It's quite possible that they weren't "stupidly" breaking off from an important target to attack an unimportant target, but instead "sensibly" breaking off from a target they weren't going to reach without being intercepted to defend themselves.

Also, when I reread that bit, it's not clear to me that the reason they broke off to attack Harpy Squadron and the Razgriz was because they lost bulb ship control. The attacks we see in the narration that destroy bulb ships happen AFTER the alien fighters attacking our AWACS break off to engage the human fighters pursuing them.

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*considers this for a bit*

*lightbulb appears over head*

Destruction isn't the only reason they'd lose command. Or, rather, those particular ships being destroyed might not be. It's possible that their C&C ships were having control more fighters than they had the capacity for, because they lost Bulb Ships prior to that point. Long Caster was already noticing that the alien's coordination was going to hell in a handbasket in the snippet directly before that point. When exactly they might have lost some, I'm not entirely sure. The massive furball is one possibility, but so is the whole thing with their shields damaging and destroying some of their own craft. Whatever the case, along Caster was already noticing signs of C&C breakdown before the bit I quoted, and before the Bulb Ships going down that you mentioned.

If they were having to control too many ships with too few controllers, though, then it's possible that what happened was that the alien AWACS took a little while to notice their predicament and send them new orders to attack their pursuers. So you might actually be right, and it was a deliberate, sensible move on their part.

Edit: There also this bit:

Blaze

Blaze does his best to shut out the radio transmissions, as green plasma fire brackets him from all sides. He needs to weave between shots that from his six o clock while worry about the attacks from above and below, as all sixteen fighters focus him and Archer at once. He knows that he's more than a match for any one of these fighters one on one, but eight to one odds is starting to make him sweat a little bit.

In the middle of this giant tangle, however, he still has a brief flash where he can score a tag, and then launch the XLAAs at frighteningly close range. But that's precisely what's strange.

Presumably, these sixteen fighters were being sent south to kill both AWACS Long Caster and AWACS Soaring Ostrich. All of them instead get tangled with him, as Pops and Heartbreak One sit back and rain missiles on them from afar. They probably should've split their forces. Why didn't they?

That's as much of a break as he can spare. Green light floods the cockpit from an alien bolt traveling inches from his cockpit, and he gets back to the business of surviving.

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It sounds like they're either only able to act if they're told to (no initiative) or their sensors are highly limited and they can only ever see/consider a small segment of the battlefield. Could be other reasons I'm not thinking of, mind, but those are the first two that come to my mind.

 

[Simon_Jester]

*considers this for a bit*

*lightbulb appears over head*

Destruction isn't the only reason they'd lose command. Or, rather, those particular ships being destroyed might not be. It's possible that their C&C ships were having control more fighters than they had the capacity for, because they lost Bulb Ships prior to that point. Long Caster was already noticing that the alien's coordination was going to hell in a handbasket in the snippet directly before that point. When exactly they might have lost some, I'm not entirely sure. The massive furball is one possibility, but so is the whole thing with their shields damaging and destroying some of their own craft. Whatever the case, along Caster was already noticing signs of C&C breakdown before the bit I quoted, and before the Bulb Ships going down that you mentioned.

If they were having to control too many ships with too few controllers, though, then it's possible that what happened was that the alien AWACS took a little while to notice their predicament and send them new orders to attack their pursuers. So you might actually be right, and it was a deliberate, sensible move on their part.

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That's a conceivable explanation. The catch is, in that case it was a botched command decision- they should have thrown, say, 8-12 fighters at the pursuing squadrons and kept a small force boring in to attack the AWACS.

Then again, their C&C capability being overloaded would be a perfectly adequate explanation for, not only why they didn't get orders to counterattack the pursuing fighters right away, but also why when they did get those orders, the orders were suboptimal.

Edit: There also this bit:

It sounds like they're either only able to act if they're told to (no initiative) or their sensors are highly limited and they can only ever see/consider a small segment of the battlefield. Could be other reasons I'm not thinking of, mind, but those are the first two that come to my mind.

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Hmmmm. Given that their sensors work on some completely alien principle, it's entirely possible that the fighters are effectively blind outside visual range (though that doesn't mean they're using eyesight). They'd almost HAVE to have better sensors than that for combat in deep space, but those sensors may be much reduced in performance when immersed in atmosphere.

One thing we know is that they aren't just using psionics to detect enemy pilots, because they can track missiles and drones just fine.

 

[Simon_Jester]

White Lightning

Recommended Listening: Dark Necessities,
by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Yeah, you don't know my mind
You don't know my kind
Dark necessities are part of my design
Tell the world that I've fallen from the sky...
Dark necessities are part of my design​

You're a bit surprised to see a jet trainer, instead of a utility aircraft, being used to deliver the VIP. A Very Important Person whom the Yuktobanians have declined to identify except as "an Air Force general of great experience and stature." But with a sizeable share of X-COM USEA's early funding having come from the Yukes, you owe them, even if those resources are flowing to X-COM VERUSA now. If they want to send someone to meet you and your pilots in person, without much advance briefing, it is at most a slightly irregular request. So you agreed.

The Razgriz, being curious, a bit bored, and on high alert that stops them from getting too comfortable, come out with you to watch the visitor arrive. Their delta-wing plane is, like quite a few Yuke aircraft, colored white with red stars- but a brighter shade of white than usual. You recognize the matte white antiflash paint of a plane designed to operate around battlefields where burst- or even nuclear- warheads are being thrown around.

Identifying the plane takes you a moment, though. Needle-nosed, delta-winged, obviously a high-Mach interceptor from out of the old days... an Su-15, it must be. The Yukes still use a few of the old trainer variants, you hear.

The jet stops near where you stand on the flight line, with a crew rushing up to tend to the plane. The pilot clambers out easily- but stops, taking off his helmet, and assists them with his passenger. The figure riding in the rear seat of the interceptor is stooped, hunched- small and genderless in a flight suit and oxygen mask. They don't step away from the helping hands of the Selatapura ground crew until the pilot passes them a pair of canes. Then they begin to walk slowly, leaning on the canes, climbing into the cart that brings the Yukes closer.

The oldster takes off their helmet, shaking- her- head and gently patting at the small, tight bun made of her hair.

She looks vaguely familiar to you. Only vaguely. But the Razgriz, all in their own ways, lock eyes on her at once.

Blaze, quiet as ever, just eyes the little babushka with an expression you've seen many times before, in the past year.

The look of eagles, you've heard it called. And she looks back, with the same expression, despite clearly being only a shadow of whatever she once was. Something unspoken passes between them.

Pops' eyebrows rise. And Captain Bartlett sounds, for the first time since you've known him, actually shaken. "Am I imagining things, or did the Yukes send the White Witch?"

Archer, somehow still radiating an aura of greenness despite being over thirty with a kill count that could fill a large bus, turns to the older men. "Wait, who? What's wrong?"

He's never heard of her? But you have, and it clicks into place.

Marina Popova. Molniya One. The woman who tore through the Sounder Bay Crisis fifty years ago in a MiG-17, humiliating Osea's proxies in Leasath and ripping apart the Danern Island separatists, earning the fearful monicker 'White Lightning.'

She went on to carve a similar swath through the Osean Air Force over Kaluga, then became a grim terror for all arms of the Osean forces when the proxy wars started to go hot. The woman in the antiflash white Su-15 wove through the teeth of the Typhon missile defense network, again and again, sinking at least as many Osean warships as the Scinfaxi ever would. Shot down YB-350 Firebird strategic projection aircraft, three times, then destroyed the production line in the first laser-guided bombing attack in history. Crossed swords with the then-legendary Unicorn Squadron three times as well. And once when they were flying Osea's exotic new prototype superplane- the F-16A. Put an end to General Poe's plan to end the Hot War with XM-PLUTO nuclear ramjet missiles, by flying into the tunnels of the abandoned Mesa Plata silver mines and blowing apart the prototypes. The political- and literal- fallout from that had been one of the biggest arguments ever handed to the Osean peace movement.

The war had sputtered out after that, in part because the Osean Navy had grimly warned President Francis that Molniya One could put invasion fleets on the bottom of the Pacific faster than Osea could assemble them.

And come to think of it, Bartlett had joined the Air Force right around the time that trainers would have hit their peak of using "the Wicked Witch of the West" as a boogeywoman to scare nuggets with. Not that you can blame them, having seen the impact someone like Trigger can have in a war zone.

And the mystery surrounding the defense of Cinigrad in the Circum-Pacific War hadn't done anything to reduce the aura of her name. Or the uncertainty about whether she could still fly, after being shot down during the First Continental War in 1998. She might not look remotely fit for a dogfight as she is now, but something in the DNA of your Osean military training stirs, quietly, and can't help but wonder.

Maybe this will be how Eruseans look at Mobius One or Trigger when they're eighty years old.

She smiles and nods to you. "Long Caster, I presume…" Her eyes narrow. "And these are the Razgriz." The words are not a question.

Awkward. Yuktobania's greatest ace in living memory- who is still rumored to have been flying the Salyut planes, somehow. Though that rumor raises questions about how she survived a Salyut fighter crashing and going up in a fireball during her second engagement with Cyclops Squadron.

Blaze speaks calmly. "We are." Again, something unspoken passes between him and General Popova.

She leans on her canes a little harder. "...That war was a frightful waste."

And all the Razgriz nod, their leader again managing to be expressive with a mere two syllables.

"It was."

"A lot of my trainees didn't make it." She smiles sadly, and shakes her head. "Is…" she fumbles for the word. "Occupational hazard. I know. Have been there. Little Svetlana, at least, made it through the war."

Blaze remains, as always, calculating. Pops and Bartlett are older, too close to the days of her terror to speak to Popova without thinking. For once, it's Archer who doesn't hesitate.

"Svetlana?"

She smiles, looking genuinely proud. "My great-niece. With Wisna Squadron. Cruik Fortress- and Sudentor."

"I- remember her."

"She remembers you!" And there is a wicked humor in her eyes, suddenly, something that calls out to you, I may be old and toothless, but oh, what times I've had! "But so rude of me, to ignore your commander!"

Her apologies, in the following moments, aren't fulsome- but are gracious, and she certainly seems interested in the base, and your operations. The questions come fast, though the silent pilot at her elbow gently ushers her back into the cart to sit back down. Archer interjects a few times, Blaze twice, Pops once. Bartlett still seems to be calming back down.

"You have Pixy and the Three Strikes here, da?" She cackles, switching the cane in her right hand to her left and gesturing. "I would like to shake his hand."

"He's on leave right now, actually."

"Bold of you to put him there. Confident. I like that. Hmm… I wonder if I can stay long enough to see him. But Pixy! Good man! Just had to learn not to steal my colors." She smiles, waving a hand widely, a bit more vigorously than you'd expect when you first saw him. "Only met him in person the once, years ago! I hope he still likes his nickname! And also, wanted to ask… Cyclops Squadron is with you, but Wiseman, not on your roster. Where is he?"

You feel a still-fresh spike of pain, and force out the words. "Killed in the war."

She makes a wordless sound. "I'm sorry. He was very good." She shakes her head. "Who?"

"Shilage."

Her hand tightens on her cane, pale knuckles whitening a shade. "Ah-ha. Well, at least your boy is avenged, then." Her smile is like something off a shark, now, and you can tell that she's thinking at least as much of her own history as of Wiseman. Not that you blame her.

She turns- to Blaze, with the look of eagles spreading first on her face, then on his.

"You know. War is fucking shit-" she drops the curses as casually as Daniel would- "and you are always dancing with the Devil. But if you are very good- you make the Devil let you lead." And again the wicked smile, and for one of the few times you can remember, Blaze smiles back.

 

[GAWR]

[X] [Far Scrier] Long Caster handles this personally. (25 Focus)
-[X] Authoritatively. That behavior is going to stop.

What's happened has happened, but Far Scrier can't keep doing it.
[X] [Snow] Save it for next week.

[X] Rigel One [ACE] title
--[X] Nine Lives​

 

[Icipall]

Needle-nosed, delta-winged, obviously a high-Mach interceptor from out of the old days... an Su-15, it must be.

Click to shrink...

I'd like to call that a fossil, but just during the Lighthouse War we saw people still flying Phantoms.

Pops' eyebrows rise. And Captain Bartlett sounds, for the first time since you've known him, actually shaken. "Am I imagining things, or did the Yukes send the White Witch?"

Click to shrink...

Hah.

And come to think of it, Bartlett had joined the Air Force right around the time that trainers would have hit their peak of using "the Wicked Witch of the West" as a boogeywoman to scare nuggets with.

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I wonder what Strangereal version of the Wizard of Oz would be like.

Awkward. Yuktobania's greatest ace in living memory- who is still rumored to have been flying the Salyut planes, somehow. Though that rumor raises questions about how she survived a Salyut fighter crashing and going up in a fireball during her second engagement with Cyclops Squadron.

Click to shrink...

Well, Mihaly survived his plane going up in a fireball high in the air.

"Only met him in person the once, years ago! I hope he still likes his nickname! And also, wanted to ask… Cyclops Squadron is with you, but Wiseman, not on your roster. Where is he?"

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Aha, so it was the same Cyclops.

And unnecessary 'the'.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I'd like to call that a fossil, but just during the Lighthouse War we saw people still flying Phantoms.

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Moreover, this is a trainer and not intended for combat duties. This specific airframe was manufactured in the mid-1970s, so it's old, but not ridiculously so.

On a side note, the story that could be gamified as Ace Combat Negative One: The Hot War is calibrated to somewhat different expectations of what constitutes a starter plane (say, the Yak-23 you'd fly in Mission One, Wild Sow), what constitutes a satisfactory aircraft for the majority of the campaign (as noted, the Su-15, which is basically the Soviet equivalent of the F-102 or F-106), and what constitutes an exotic super prototype unlockable plane with outside context capabilities (as noted, the F-16A).

Well, Mihaly survived his plane going up in a fireball high in the air.

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There is a specific explanation for what happened at Cinigrad, not just a "meh, whatever," but this is true.

Aha, so it was the same Cyclops.

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Well, it was one of the same Cyclops pilots. Wiseman, in my own version, was not the squadron lead at the time. They had a very difficult little adventure over Cinigrad.

And unnecessary 'the'.

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Yes. That was deliberate. Among the many many many things Marina Popova has murdered, you will find "English grammar."

 

[Nixeu]

And unnecessary 'the'.

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Unnecessary, but a valid usage, particularly in speech/dialog.

Yes. That was deliberate. Among the many many many things Marina Popova has murdered, you will find "English grammar."

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Yeah, that's not actually true here. "The once" is...not quite a phrase, but is a valid usage. I think it's somewhat dialect/accent based, but I could be wrong about that.

 

[Icipall]

Unnecessary, but a valid usage, particularly in speech/dialog.

Yeah, that's not actually true here. "The once" is...not quite a phrase, but is a valid usage. I think it's somewhat dialect/accent based, but I could be wrong about that.

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If it is, I've never seen it used like that and considering that 'once' already indicates a one specific situation, grammatically speaking it is unnecessary.

 

[Nixeu]

If it is, I've never seen it used like that and considering that 'once' already indicates a one specific situation, grammatically speaking it is unnecessary.

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It's using it as a noun rather than as an adverb, the same as in the phrase "just this once". Like I said, I think usage is more common in speech and dialog, and it's something of a dialect thing.

There are certain turns-of-phrase that are technically "grammatically unnecessary" (a phrase I have a slight problem with, because it implies there is a single correct way to communicate an idea), that are used to differentiate speakers from one another. It's not uncommon to give individual characters different ways of talking so that you can recognize a character just by how they speak. Or even how a passage written in third-person limited from their point-of-view is phrased, with some works. Technically, yeah, it uses more words convey the idea. But that doesn't mean it doesn't serve a purpose.

Edit: I actually tend to employ this in how I phrase things in written communication online. I don't use the same phrasing when writing a paper as I do when I'm communicating in more causal settings. I will deliberately use words like "ain't", for example, to sound more like I would when I speak, rather than the more strictly grammatically correct phrasing I use when I write a paper.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@Icipall
@Nixeu

The entire question is completely moot, because it was a deliberate choice to speak in the voice of a character whose command of the English language is shaky.

It was not, @Icipall , a case of me ignorantly inserting an unnecessary word or being careless in my writing. In future, I would like to politely ask that you leave proofreading of my stories to me, since the ability to distinguish between typographical errors and deliberate artistic choices is kind of important.

And it was not, @Nixeu , a case of me attempting to write a character whose dialect includes that usage- and you're right about it being a known and documented usage.

I was trying to combine poor English grammar and (importantly) poetic language at the same time.

Please don't make me regret writing this story.

 

[Icipall]

@Icipall
@Nixeu

The entire question is completely moot, because it was a deliberate choice to speak in the voice of a character whose command of the English language is shaky.

It was not, @Icipall , a case of me ignorantly inserting an unnecessary word or being careless in my writing. In future, I would like to politely ask that you leave proofreading of my stories to me, since the ability to distinguish between typographical errors and deliberate artistic choices is kind of important.

And it was not, @Nixeu , a case of me attempting to write a character whose dialect includes that usage- and you're right about it being a known and documented usage.

I was trying to combine poor English grammar and (importantly) poetic language at the same time.

Please don't make me regret writing this story.

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I'm sorry. It is often hard to tell if character is speaking with an accent or with broken/shaky dialect if it isn't mentioned in the description, or blatant in the text itself. No slight was meant.

 

[Vehrec]

She makes a wordless sound. "I'm sorry. He was very good." She shakes her head. "Who?"

"Shilage."

Her hand tightens on her cane, pale knuckles whitening a shade. "Ah-ha. Well, at least your boy is avenged, then." Her smile is like something off a shark, now, and you can tell that she's thinking at least as much of her own history as of Wiseman. Not that you blame her.

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I take it Mihaly is about as popular with the older generation as he is with Count. Someone who claims to have 'felled every last one of them' when talking about his rivals and peers doesn't exactly collect friends.

Well, at least there is that nebulous radiation damage that's ravaged his body-what flavor of cancer do you reckon he has? Leukemia? That would directly attack his piloting ability by lowering his body's ability to perform at lower oxygen levels. Lung cancer would do the same, more directly by impacting breathing functionality, which we know he has trouble with. Whatever he's got, I'll bet he forwent treatment because the chemo would temporarily lower his ability to fly, the maniac. If Ionela has dragged him into treatment, good for her. Preserve your crotchety old grandpa, even if you have to destroy his beard to do it.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I take it Mihaly is about as popular with the older generation as he is with Count. Someone who claims to have 'felled every last one of them' when talking about his rivals and peers doesn't exactly collect friends.

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[Reply replaced, defiantly and proudly stupid. Edit made. So there. - SJ]

It is known fact that Colonel Popova participated in an expedition to Usea during the 1998 First Continental War, that was aimed at securing various Yuktobanian interests on the continent from the fighting going on elsewhere. It is further known that...

Popova and Shilage an Erusean pilot who was officially totally not Shilage threatening to go AWOL and join a mercenary company if not given a chance to take the field against first-class opposition, no Shilage was on vacation that week and it just so happens that nobody saw him...

...had a protracted dogfight during one of those air actions, which she lost.

It is rumored that injuries Popova sustained while ejecting from her MiG-29 left her unable to fly as a combat pilot. The Yuktobanians never officially confirmed this, but there are also no confirmed cases of air battles post-1998 where it was definitely Popova flying the plane. Su-57s flying with her trademark antiflash white colors fought in the defense of Cinigrad, never more than one at a time, and the voice heard over the city's public address network and communications during their missions was definitely hers.

But it has not been proven that she was flying the plane and the Yuktobanians tend to grin evilly when asked.

 

[CyberFemme]

To bring this linguistics debate to a halt, let's refocus our attention on the next bit of wacky super-science I've through of:

Spoiler

Commander, the nearly miraculous properties of Metallic Hydrogen Alloys have unique application to the development of a fighter scale airborne nuclear reactor that could let us exploit the order of magnitude higher energy density of nuclear reactions for practical and safe aircraft propulsion for the first time.

While the use of nuclear energy for aircraft propulsion is not a new concept, explored to the level of non-propulsive airborne tests, issues with thrust/weight ratio and safety considerations have led to even behemoths like Estokavia's Aigaion airborne aircraft carrier to use conventional petrochemical fuel as their primary energy source.

In this context, MHA has several qualities that make it ideal for use as part of a compact, lightweight airborne nuclear reactor. It is highly resistant to mechanical damage, possesses high corrosion resistance, and it's melting temperature is well in excess of our ability to even test. Most importantly however is that it is an ideal moderator for nuclear reactions with it's combination of high density and light atom construction.

In a nuclear reactor, fission reactions produce high energy 'fast' neutrons which have a low chance of striking other fuel atoms and catalyzing further fission reactions. Reactors 'thermalize' these neutrons, reducing the neutron velocity through atomic collisions with light weight atoms or molecules such as water or graphite which can efficiently absorb the kinetic energy of the fast neutrons without absorbing them. MHA is even more effective at thermalizing fast neutrons due to it's high density ensuring any neutrons passing through will strike a hydrogen atom, and as the hydrogen nucleus is comparable in mass to the impinging fast neutron, the neutron's momentum will be efficiently absorbed (in inelastic collisions, momentum absorbed is inversely proportional to difference in relative mass between the objects involved).
Furthermore MHA also function as a perfect form of radiation shielding for the same reasons listed above, being both a hyper dense material that fast neutrons cannot break out of, as well as being very efficient at reflecting them back.


A - Reaction chamber, B - MHA backplate, C - Boron-carbide accordion, D - Control screw, E - MHA thermal whisker, F - Corrosion resistant radiator vane, G - Thermal insulation protecting electric screw actuator, H - MHA outer reactor vessel case, I - Electric screw motor, K - Motor control electronics.

With that in mind, we propose the development of a pressurized liquid fueled reactor that can be used as the thermal source for an electrically coupled turbojet. The reactor is an MHA pressure vessel containing an electro-mechanically actuated accordion of perforated boron-carbide disks tapped by a perforated MHA disk. In it's idle configuration, the accordion is fully expanded and the solution of fissile material dissolved in water is prevented from reaching criticality by the close spacing of the boron-carbide disks absorbing the majority of neutrons emitted. As more power output is desired, the accordion can be collapsed incrementally by a electrically actuated screw, forcing the fissile solution into an unlined reaction chamber surrounded by MHA. The MHA will have a moderating effect, thermalizing fast neutrons that otherwise would escape, efficiently inducing a critical mass and starting a chain reaction. The heat generated will be evenly spread over the outside of the fuel chamber and can be routed through a heat exchanger to achieve the same role as combustor on a more traditional engine.

Passive safety is achieved by the melting of the boron accordion and reaction chamber piston backing which will allow liquefied boron neutron poison to mix evenly with the fissile solution, bringing the nuclear chain reaction to a standstill. Furthermore, the solid MHA construction of the fuel chamber should easily survive a fall from operational altitude in case the aircraft is critically damaged - the only concern the design team has about the integrity of the fuel chamber comes from the alien plasma weapons themselves. We are not yet certain if a direct hit from a plasma weapon would rupture the fuel chamber, and a such propose the reactor be fitted with an ejection mechanism set to go off in case the on-board computer detects an imminent plasma strike against the aircraft. The reactor can then parachute to the ground where it can be recovered and refurbished.

No numbers on performance yet, I'm going to try coming up with a stat block for MHA this weekend and importing it into CoaDE to demo up a reactor in its design space.

 

[Vehrec]

It is known fact that Colonel Popova participated in an expedition to Usea during the 1998 First Continental War, that was aimed at securing various Yuktobanian interests on the continent from the fighting going on elsewhere. It is further known that Shilage and Popova had a protracted dogfight during one of those air actions, which she lost.

It is rumored that injuries Popova sustained while ejecting from her MiG-29 left her unable to fly as a combat pilot. The Yuktobanians never officially confirmed this, but there are also no confirmed cases of air battles post-1998 where it was definitely Popova flying the plane. Su-57s flying with her trademark antiflash white colors fought in the defense of Cinigrad, never more than one at a time, and the voice heard over the city's public address network and communications during their missions was definitely hers.

But it has not been proven that she was flying the plane and the Yuktobanians tend to grin evilly when asked.

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Cute, but sadly, that's in direct conflict with the source material. AC7 specifies that the Lighthouse war is the first time in 28 years Mihaly has flown in combat, making his last Combat performance 1991-this is stated by a character who has reason to be authoritative on this matter. Either the guy who was in charge of the whole program based around A. Shilage was wrong about when he last flew into combat, or for some reason this dogfight between the two didn't count for some reason. ETA: Or you can shift the fight back seven years or so, that wouldn't matter too much.
On the flipside, that 'last flown' date does let us put up a few brackets around Mihaly's age, since King or Archange, or whatever TAC name he uses, must have been pulled from the cockpit as late as possible given his own nature, so 45 seems a reasonable ball-parkish figure for his age at that time. Which would make him about 73-4 in the current timeframe, plus or minus five years in either direction. Given that his granddaughters are 15 and 10, that's not unreasonable, especially if he put off romance for flying and his progeny were similarly late-blooming.

 

[Nixeu]

@Icipall
@Nixeu

The entire question is completely moot, because it was a deliberate choice to speak in the voice of a character whose command of the English language is shaky.

It was not, @Icipall , a case of me ignorantly inserting an unnecessary word or being careless in my writing. In future, I would like to politely ask that you leave proofreading of my stories to me, since the ability to distinguish between typographical errors and deliberate artistic choices is kind of important.

And it was not, @Nixeu , a case of me attempting to write a character whose dialect includes that usage- and you're right about it being a known and documented usage.

I was trying to combine poor English grammar and (importantly) poetic language at the same time.

Please don't make me regret writing this story.

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Apologies. I will point out that what you did still kinda falls into the category of "not strictly following grammatical rules" regardless. But I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the link by-the-by, helped me figure out a likely reason for why I recognize the usage: I watched a heck of a lot of British programming (comedies, mostly) when I was younger.

To bring this linguistics debate to a halt, let's refocus our attention on the next bit of wacky super-science I've through of:

Spoiler

Commander, the nearly miraculous properties of Metallic Hydrogen Alloys have unique application to the development of a fighter scale airborne nuclear reactor that could let us exploit the order of magnitude higher energy density of nuclear reactions for practical and safe aircraft propulsion for the first time.

While the use of nuclear energy for aircraft propulsion is not a new concept, explored to the level of non-propulsive airborne tests, issues with thrust/weight ratio and safety considerations have led to even behemoths like Estokavia's Aigaion airborne aircraft carrier to use conventional petrochemical fuel as their primary energy source.

In this context, MHA has several qualities that make it ideal for use as part of a compact, lightweight airborne nuclear reactor. It is highly resistant to mechanical damage, possesses high corrosion resistance, and it's melting temperature is well in excess of our ability to even test. Most importantly however is that it is an ideal moderator for nuclear reactions with it's combination of high density and light atom construction.

In a nuclear reactor, fission reactions produce high energy 'fast' neutrons which have a low chance of striking other fuel atoms and catalyzing further fission reactions. Reactors 'thermalize' these neutrons, reducing the neutron velocity through atomic collisions with light weight atoms or molecules such as water or graphite which can efficiently absorb the kinetic energy of the fast neutrons without absorbing them. MHA is even more effective at thermalizing fast neutrons due to it's high density ensuring any neutrons passing through will strike a hydrogen atom, and as the hydrogen nucleus is comparable in mass to the impinging fast neutron, the neutron's momentum will be efficiently absorbed (in inelastic collisions, momentum absorbed is inversely proportional to difference in relative mass between the objects involved).
Furthermore MHA also function as a perfect form of radiation shielding for the same reasons listed above, being both a hyper dense material that fast neutrons cannot break out of, as well as being very efficient at reflecting them back.


A - Reaction chamber, B - MHA backplate, C - Boron-carbide accordion, D - Control screw, E - MHA thermal whisker, F - Corrosion resistant radiator vane, G - Thermal insulation protecting electric screw actuator, H - MHA outer reactor vessel case, I - Electric screw motor, K - Motor control electronics.

With that in mind, we propose the development of a pressurized liquid fueled reactor that can be used as the thermal source for an electrically coupled turbojet. The reactor is an MHA pressure vessel containing an electro-mechanically actuated accordion of perforated boron-carbide disks tapped by a perforated MHA disk. In it's idle configuration, the accordion is fully expanded and the solution of fissile material dissolved in water is prevented from reaching criticality by the close spacing of the boron-carbide disks absorbing the majority of neutrons emitted. As more power output is desired, the accordion can be collapsed incrementally by a electrically actuated screw, forcing the fissile solution into an unlined reaction chamber surrounded by MHA. The MHA will have a moderating effect, thermalizing fast neutrons that otherwise would escape, efficiently inducing a critical mass and starting a chain reaction. The heat generated will be evenly spread over the outside of the fuel chamber and can be routed through a heat exchanger to achieve the same role as combustor on a more traditional engine.

Passive safety is achieved by the melting of the boron accordion and reaction chamber piston backing which will allow liquefied boron neutron poison to mix evenly with the fissile solution, bringing the nuclear chain reaction to a standstill. Furthermore, the solid MHA construction of the fuel chamber should easily survive a fall from operational altitude in case the aircraft is critically damaged - the only concern the design team has about the integrity of the fuel chamber comes from the alien plasma weapons themselves. We are not yet certain if a direct hit from a plasma weapon would rupture the fuel chamber, and a such propose the reactor be fitted with an ejection mechanism set to go off in case the on-board computer detects an imminent plasma strike against the aircraft. The reactor can then parachute to the ground where it can be recovered and refurbished.

No numbers on performance yet, I'm going to try coming up with a stat block for MHA this weekend and importing it into CoaDE to demo up a reactor in its design space.

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If you're using water as the solvent, then that's going to be the primary moderator. The casing will also help quite a bit, but I don't know if that backstop would do much. You'd need more of them distributed throughout to really have a major impact. That doesn't really affect the efficacy of the design, however. And there's always the option to use a different solvent.

Even if it was handling the moderating, I'm not entirely sure how responsive the accordion "throttle" would be. Though it would likely be more responsive than other reactor types, it still takes time for the temperature of a system to change. If the goal was to have the throttling of the reactor throttle the engine, I don't think that would work too well. Perhaps a better method of throttling would be to control the intake of air?

Relatively small issues aside, this is actually a pretty good idea for a reactor. Overall, I think it holds up. And the accordion is a pretty interesting twist. It should allow you to control the rate of the reaction pretty precisely. Just not rapidly.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Cute, but sadly, that's in direct conflict with the source material. AC7 specifies that the Lighthouse war is the first time in 28 years Mihaly has flown in combat, making his last Combat performance 1991-this is stated by a character who has reason to be authoritative on this matter.

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...Cute.

Cute.

You know what? Forget this. I give up.

I'm just dropping the thing. This isn't fun anymore.

[For reference, telling people their idea is cute but obviously wrong because [snip specific single quotation] is a great way to convince them they never want to express an idea where you can hear it again]

 

[Vehrec]

Damnit Simon, that's not what I meant-don't let my Badbrain and your Badbrain team up to take you down! I was trying to help-I even suggested that you could just move the duel back seven years, and it would fix it!

 

[CyberFemme]

If you're using water as the solvent, then that's going to be the primary moderator. The casing will also help quite a bit, but I don't know if that backstop would do much. You'd need more of them distributed throughout to really have a major impact. That doesn't really affect the efficacy of the design, however. And there's always the option to use a different solvent.

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The fuel is indeed subject to change, through MHA has a much higher density than water, and it also acts as an ideal neutron reflector, so the backstop is there to prevent neutrons from the reaction chamber from getting into the accordion and being absorbed.

Even if it was handling the moderating, I'm not entirely sure how responsive the accordion "throttle" would be. Though it would likely be more responsive than other reactor types, it still takes time for the temperature of a system to change. If the goal was to have the throttling of the reactor throttle the engine, I don't think that would work too well. Perhaps a better method of throttling would be to control the intake of air?

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From what people have been saying on the CoaDE forum, reactor response is usually down to issues with thermal expansion, which isn't really an issue here. Whether the reactor can be throttled fast enough to act ass the throttle for a turbine engine is an interesting academic question(since real jet engine also have a relatively slow throttle response compared to turboprops), but ultimately not important since this thing is meant to be used in an electrically coupled turbojet (write-up in progress) where a lag in reactor response can be covered by a SMES buffer.

Relatively small issues aside, this is actually a pretty good idea for a reactor. Overall, I think it holds up. And the accordion is a pretty interesting twist. It should allow you to control the rate of the reaction pretty precisely. Just not rapidly.

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Again, throttling the reactor to control engine thrust is academic, but most nuclear reactors don't need to be throttled fast enough to matter, so rapid response for them is actually undesirable from a safety standpoint (plus, the aforementioned thermal stress). Having said that, if one wanted to, once could engineer a reactor to depend on a more on prompt neutrons rather than delayed neutrons, with the exact ratio of prompt to delayed neutrons giving you whatever throttle response you wanted to (you would hit the limits of your machinery's response time before you'd hit the limits of the chain reaction's responsiveness).

 

[Nixeu]

The fuel is indeed subject to change, through MHA has a much higher density than water, and it also acts as an ideal neutron reflector, so the backstop is there to prevent neutrons from the reaction chamber from getting into the accordion and being absorbed.

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Uranyl nitrate is likely your best bet. Uranyl sulfate and uranium sulfate have issues with corrosion, as is common with sulfate compounds. There's actually a type of reactor that uses a similar fuel: the aqueous homogenous reactor, which is really damn cool and I need to thank you for setting me up to find out about it. It played a very important role in the Manhattan Project, as several versions of the reactor were used for data gathering on the properties of fissile material. The first versions used sulfates, but they switched over to nitrate in later models due to the corrosion problems. Uranyl nitrate is soluble in a few different compounds beyond water. Water's probably the safest, though, since the rest are things like ethanol and acetone.

One other issue you might encounter is that, based on the AHR, the nuclear fission reactions will cause radiolysis to occur, producing oxygen and hydrogen from splitting the bonds of the water. I'm not entirely clear on what would happen if the water was kept under pressure in an effectively unbreakable container, but the dissolved water and hydrogen would probably recombine to some extent. Dunno where the equilibrium would be reached, or how much pressure would be produced, though I might be able to find out. Can't be that bad though, since Oak Ridge managed to create a reactor that kept the fuel in a pressurized core chamber and run it for some time. There are also groups considering ways to harvest or utilize that hydrogen and oxygen somehow (since AHRs are regaining some popularity as cheap and easy low-power reactors to produce certain isotopes).

From what people have been saying on the CoaDE forum, reactor response is usually down to issues with thermal expansion, which isn't really an issue here. Whether the reactor can be throttled fast enough to act ass the throttle for a turbine engine is an interesting academic question(since real jet engine also have a relatively slow throttle response compared to turboprops), but ultimately not important since this thing is meant to be used in an electrically coupled turbojet (write-up in progress) where a lag in reactor response can be covered by a SMES buffer.

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Wouldn't you still have the issue of excess heat, though, if you're trying to control the heat output of the reactor to match the engine output? That's fairly easily dealt with, admittedly, but it would still be a concern.

Again, throttling the reactor to control engine thrust is academic, but most nuclear reactors don't need to be throttled fast enough to matter, so rapid response for them is actually undesirable from a safety standpoint (plus, the aforementioned thermal stress). Having said that, if one wanted to, once could engineer a reactor to depend on a more on prompt neutrons rather than delayed neutrons, with the exact ratio of prompt to delayed neutrons giving you whatever throttle response you wanted to (you would hit the limits of your machinery's response time before you'd hit the limits of the chain reaction's responsiveness).

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In a fast reactor, you mean? I guess you could, in principle. In practice, keeping those ratios consistent might be a problem as time goes on. Maybe. Not a nuclear engineer, just interested in the tech.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Damnit Simon, that's not what I meant-don't let my Badbrain and your Badbrain team up to take you down! I was trying to help-I even suggested that you could just move the duel back seven years, and it would fix it!

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OK, well leading with 'cute' combined with getting my chops busted over a grammatically unnecessary 'the' that was a deliberate artistic choice felt like a little much.

I'd rather come up with a justification for Shilage having made an exception to his "no frontline service" than move the date of the duel, if only because that would push it back before the Belkan War and also force me to ignore the canon date of when Pixy got his nickname.

I mean. Someone had to have been the one to shoot his wing off.

 

[Nixeu]

I mean. Someone had to have been the one to shoot his wing off.

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...I had been wondering what she meant by that. Since "Pixy" isn't his real name either, I thought she was talking about that. Well played.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

And given that Mihaly not only likes to fly, but likes to fight, at least against genuinely talented opposition, a shot at the White Witch would be a very difficult thing for him to pass up. I can see it now:

Yellow 13 Sol 2: "Sol 1, please respond. What's your status?"

Archange: "My status? This is getting exciting."

Molniya 1: "Come on, Sunshine, time to dance with the Devil."

Of course, Col. Popova's choice of evocative language might be seen as unfortunate, given the mythical allusions and the origins of the name 'Mihaly.'

 

[CyberFemme]

Here's the followup on the airborne nuclear reactor proposed earlier:

​

Spoiler: Nuclear-Electric Turbojet

Commander, to transform the prodigious output of the Compact Airborne Nuclear Reactor previously proposed into propulsive force and electrical energy for an aircraft's on-board systems, we propose the use of a relatively traditional turbojet architecture - in fact the high energy density of the fission fuel renders the turbojet's low fuel efficiency a moot point and allows the aircraft to spent time at supersonic velocities without severely curtailing its engagement time. This engine is composed of five parts: the intake, compressor, heat exchanger, turbine, and nozzle.

The intake is responsible for delivering a smooth subsonic flow of air to the rest of the engine. To save on development costs we recommend the re-use of the X-02 Wyvern's scoop intake, which has already been optimized for both subsonic dogfighting performance, as well as supersonic sprint at Mach 2.5.


1 - Variable inlet guide vanes, 2 - Rim driven compressor spool & support structure, 3 - Outer compressor spool axial field electric motor, 4 - Inner compressor spool radial field electric motor, 5 - Turbulent flow 'onion' heat exchanger, 6 - Compact airborne nuclear reactor, 7 - High pressure turbine axial field generator, 8 - High pressure rim driving turbine, 9 - High pressure turbine stator vanes, 10 - Variable pitch inner compressor blade actuation mechanisms.

A two spool counter-rotating electrical compressor compresses incoming air from the intake in order to boost the efficiency of the heat addition process (while the nuclear reactor provides a prodigious amount of heat on demand, increasing the efficiency of its conversion into thrust allows use a comparatively lighter reactor, with immediate benefits to maneuverability).
The use of counter-rotating compressor spool eliminates the stator vanes of a traditional compressor. This allows a reduction in the mass of the compressor by 50% compared to a traditional arrangement. This reduction in weight would have been overshadowed by the increased mechanical complexity if we were limited to conventional techniques, however the use of MHA superconducting electric motors has greatly expanded the design space of the engine. In this case, the outer rotor spool is driven by an axial field electric motor based, while the inner spools are driven by a radial field electric motor, both completely mechanically decoupled from the turbine, allowing each part of the system greater freedom to operate nearer their optimal design points.
The electric motors act as magnetic bearings, preventing metal on metal contact between the compressor spools and the rest of the engine, greatly reducing maintenance requirements and increasing reliability. Cost is further reduced by the use of ceramic compressor blades rather than metallic super-alloys for the high pressure area of the compressor. The outer spool blades are subject to compressible stress when in operation, which ceramics are far more tolerant of than the tensile stresses that a shaft driven compressor foil would experience. The inner compressor blades on the other hand use a more traditional Incoloy construction due t being sjjected to tension lads.
Compressor stall in such a design would typically be of some concern considering the relatively high pressure ratios involved, however a combination of bleed air and variable pitch vanes in the inner spool high pressure zone of the compressor (made possible due to the robust MHA actuators that can be mounted on a rotating spool) mitigate this risk to acceptable levels while keeping weight low.

The compressed high temperature air is then funneled through a corrosion resistant turbulent flow solid state heat exchanger which uses radially arranged steel 'onion layers' with MHA whisker cores connected to the surface of the nuclear reactor. Thus the use of heavy MHA is minimized and heat is efficiently transferred to the dense air passing through the heat exchanger.

The exhaust is then passed through a two single high pressure axial turbo generator, in what is essentially a reversed and truncated version of the high pressure compressor stage before being exhausted through a convergent divergent nozzle.

The use of temperature resistant materials, bleed air cooling, and magnetic bearings eliminates the oil and fuel handling subsystems of a traditional jet engine entirely, increasing reliability and decreasing weight. The use of a lightweight nuclear reactor also eliminates the need for any fuel storage - a savings of more than 8 tonnes if mounted-on the F-22 (the MHA pressure vessel f the reactor will eat into this mass savings, but not enough to reverse it). The operational consequences of such a drastic redesign of an aircraft's propulsion system are myriad but essentially boil down to better tactical and logistical performance.

edit: I forgot to include the bottom part of the radial generator (7), derp derp. And yes, it's a stubby little thing, that's what happens when you can cut the compressor length in half, but it's still narrower than any turbofan, which makes it great for supersonic flight because of the smaller cross sectional area.