HA-230 Skavanger Spearman

Type: Supercruise Capable High Altitude Escort Fighter

Manufacturer: North Shore - Ratworks

Used by: UCC Mafia Air Fleet In service: 22 PGW - Ongoing

Airframe Cost: 22 Billion UCC Rand (440 million USD)

Dimensions:

Length: 96 Feet 0 Inches - (29.25m)

Wingspan: 66 Feet 7 Inches (20.3m)

Height: 18 Feet 8 Inches - (5.68m)

Height (Gear Deployed): 22 Feet 8 Inches - (6.90m)

Gear Track: 12 Feet 9 Inches - (3.88m)

Gear Wheelbase: 34 Feet 7 Inches - (12.82m)

Stance: -1 Degree Dry Weight: 52,900lbs - (24,000kg)

Maximum Fuel Oxidizer Payload: 44,500lbs - (20,200kg)

Maximum Weapon Payload: 15,875lbs - (7,200kg)

Maximum Takeoff Weight: 91,271lbs - (41,400kg)

Powerplant: 2x 240kN PD-20 “Progress I” Afterburning Turbofans w/ total bypass scramjet

Performance:

Stall Speed: 170 Knots

Cruise Speed: 1,300 knots - (Mach 2.0)

Maximum Speed: 2,600+ knots - (Mach 4.5+)

Maximum Range: 1,350 Nautical Miles - (2,500km)

Combat range: 1,000 Nautical Miles - (1,850km)

Ferry range: 2,000 Nautical Miles - (3,700km) with External Fuel Tanks)

Service ceiling: 95,000 Feet - (29,000m) with Oxidizer Augmentation

Absolute ceiling: 180,500 feet - (55,000m with Rocket Assist)

Standard Climb Rate: 30,000 feet/min - (152m/s)

Standard Rocket Climb Rate: 60,000 feet/min - (305m/s)

Maximum Climb Rate: 85,000 feet/min - (430m/s with Rocket Assist)

Thrust/weight: 1.05 (50% fuel load)

Crew: -1x Pilot -1x Stealth System Operator

Hardpoints:

-6x Low profile weapon mounting stations

-2x Dedicated wingtip Electronic Warfare Mounting Stations

Weapons:

**-**4x 30mm NS-30-6 Gas driven rotary cannons - 450 rounds per gun, 1800 rounds total

-6x MP-24G Sapphire Long Range Air-to-Air Missiles

-2x FNW-1 4Mt parachute retarded, rocket assisted nuclear bombs (w/ optional salting jacket)

Description

The HA-230 Scavenger Spearmen is a postwar-era High-Performance Escort Fighter designed by the National Entanglement Laboratory’s Petroleum Recycling Initiative and manufactured by the Ratworks division of North Shore Aviation systems. The jet was commissioned by the UCC Mafia In response to the Union's withdrawal from the Post War Airspace Neutrality Treaty of 2pgw. Discontent with their disproportionately high population density and lack of access to suitable farm land, the Union began asserting control outside of its internationally accepted borders. The primary mode of antagonism was the capture or destruction of civilian aircraft that passed through the international airspace above their “Dome of agreed sovereignty”, above 50,000 feet asl. Although not a physically large country the Union was situated directly under one of the most important air traffic corridors used by the Fixed Wing Rapid Transportation System internationally. To protect their civilian air traffic and prevent the chilling of the fragile and newly established international economy the UCC mafia decided to field an advanced, ECM equipped combat escort that could fly with regular air traffic to provide protection.

The Fixed Wing Rapid Transportation System (FWRT) Is a network of high altitude supersonic flight corridors and refueling points designed to facilitate efficient high speed transportation between nations. Inorder to keep up with the civilian aircraft the Scavenger Spearmen not only had to match the civilian supersonic aircraft in speed and endurance. It had to do so while carrying a weapons payload, ECM payload, and two crew. It also had to maintain some level of plausible deniability about its weapons capability as to not overtly run afoul of the Post War Airspace Neutrality Treaty.

Supersonic aircraft consume staggering quantities of fuel. The Skavanger Spearman operates all missions starting from full tanks -a staggering 44,500lbs internally. Aircraft sent over the union will carry an additional 18,000lbs of fuel in external tanks. This allows the aircraft to refuel only twice during a typical 3 hour operation.

Although more sleek, civilian Fixed Wing Rapid Transit aircraft still require at least one refueling every 3 hours. This makes tankers the backbone of not only modern military capabilities, but also the economic lifeline connects nations isolated by thousands of kilometers of hostile wasteland.

The Skavanger program operates a total of 118 near hypersonic fighters but this is only a third of the programs entire fleet. With an additional 165 tankers making up the bulk of the skavanger programs flying mass. During combat each opperational Skavanger requires a minimum of 1.5 tankers avilable to support it. Meaning the primary logistics bottle neck is not fighters, but tankers.

In the immediate aftermath of nuclear war, the survivors' primary concern is food and shelter. While the initial poisons produced by the bomb are devastating, they're also temporary and claim their victims fairly quickly. Food becomes a primary concern, but once starvation has been warded off on a local scale, the true detritus of war makes itself apparent; fresh threats linger in every chemical plant, every abandoned nuclear reactor and every spent fuel pond abandoned with haste when it became clear the sirens were not just another drill.

Many of these facilities themselves were primary strategic targets. Slamming a nuclear-tipped ICBM into an atomic generating station or pesticide plant may be a little cold-hearted, but it ensures your enemy will suffer the most for each weapon you expend -it is war after all.- Each facility struck spewed its own variation of hell across the land; dioxins, trichloroethylene, arsenic, mercury, lead, uranium, plutonium and all the invisible but nonetheless eldritch horrors that escaped from ruptured bio-labs and abandoned research facilities.

Society ended on the day the bombs dropped, but Senvar itself was only mortally wounded. Left untended, untreated, the scars of the war would fester and consume what little life remained. The planet itself would die.

Luckily there were survivors; more than just the cockroaches. These survivors saw the wounds they had inflicted upon the world, and knew left untreated they would prove fatal not only to themselves but to life on Senvar in its entirety. This was unacceptable, and from the ashes countless men and women would rise up together, industrialize, rebuild society, and in the process set to work cleansing the world of its wounds.

The equipment in the above picture are iconic objects associated with the UCC's CivSci wasteland recovery teams. A Biological wasteland recovery uniform patch as well as a personal shaving kit (Razor, Shaving Soap, and shaving brush) used to remove fur, so workers don't bring contamination home with them at the end of a project.