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SentientAberration β A.C.X. Weapon Ref - METEOR
#aircraft #battery #battleship #carrier #concept #flying #hypersonic #weapon #dreadought
Published: 2011-06-21 01:31:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 3696; Favourites: 25; Downloads: 53
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METEOR | Hypersonic Airborne Aircraft Carrier_____________________________________________
Moving out of scraps despite its age, as people are still finding this and faving it even in 2021. This needs an overhaul, but that will be sometime in the future.
Old Design - New one without background graphic:Β fav.me/d7xcta9 - Posted: 30 August, 2014. (Seems like more people prefer this one, though)
Download to see all details. Image is large.
The 1,800 foot-long carrier was armed with top and bottom-mounted railgun batteries and fleet of expendable Kamikaze-bomb drones.
The carrier employs a devastating hit-and-run strategy; after it has jumped into Hyper Cruise, it re-enters over the target, releases drones, and jumps back into Hyper Cruise in as little as five minutes. It then re-enters somewhere else on the planet minutes later to set up another attack to take place nearly simultaneously. As many as three attacks can be mounted/managed within two hours anywhere in the world. Complete chaos before anyone even knew what hit them.
For more focused, longer offensives, the carrier will begin re-entry, launch a salvo of missiles that will release a "chaff storm" over the target area ahead of its arrival. It then launches as many as five of its "Warbler" Electronic warfare planes that will set up a perimeter as much as 100 miles from the mothership and provide additional telemetry and targeting data in the case that METEOR must use its RADISK assembly for jamming. When jamming is active, all weapons and drones make use of SONAR and LASER targeting for their weapons. Drones will use other drones' lasers for targeting, and even relay the targeting info back to the mothership's railgun and CIWS batteries.
METEOR's CIWS and flak batteries create an impenetrable kill-zone around the carrier that not even missiles can break through. The weapons are so precise, that landings can be safely carried out during a full barrage.
METEOR also carries a nose-mounted standoff missile system that can wipe out as many as 100 separate targets simultaneously as far as 200 nautical miles away. In addition, it carries a countermeasure system that includes a compact EMP generator weapon meant for aiding in escape.
The carrier's nose-mounted chemical laser is relatively weak, and used as an anti-satellite weapon, and for damaging aircraft. However, its primary use is targeting up to five separate targets close-range for other weapons to lock-on to.
METEOR gets its name from its appearance in its re-entry phase, which decelerates it from MACH 20 to just below Mach 1.
The Carrier's single experimental XR-50 Reaper UCAV has proven to be a deadly asset, typically sanitizing the airspace shortly before it's slightly vulnerable jump to Hyper Cruise.
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The airframe itself is loosely-based off of real-world technology and plans: www.nasa.gov/missions/research⦠| www.llnl.gov/str/Carter.html
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Comments: 52
It is weakest from the inside (mutiny, infiltration, hacking). It is also possible to damage its underside hypercruise heat shields with railgun batteries of a similar caliber to what is onboard the carrier, (e.g. ones their own ships carry) effectively preventing it from jumping into hypercruise and escaping (or if it does, causing it to sustain heavy damage mid-flight and have to land). Once this has been done, it is possible to simply battle it and let it run out of ammunition or fuel in combat... which I would expect to still result in a lot of losses.
Grounding it via running it out of fuel isn't entirely effective if there is deep enough ocean waters in its operating zone. It is designed to land on the water, and would effectively become a massive conventional carrier with weapons and aircraft that still function. You can force it down over land, hypothetically, but only if it flies far enough inland. Shutting down eight of its sixteen trans-sonic flight jet engines (minimum needed to stay aloft) would be next on the list, though they are well-recessed into the fuselage behind shutters and cooling ducts (hard to reach).
In short, yes. But it is a tough nut to crack. That armor is meant to take meteor strikes in the upper atmosphere and shield the craft from near-reentry heat.
(And this reminds me that this ref is actually really out of date)
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*sigh* the bad guys always seem to get the coolest stuff.Β
P.s. this craft is quite similar to Ace Combat 5's Arkbird , so maybe a fighter pilot could do some significant damage to it or even completely destroy it?
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The storyline this belongs to sees this being practically 'stolen' as a last-ditch escape plan by protagonists, actually. It is later used against the bad guys (or at least that is the planned plot liNE so far).
Design-wise, Arkbird is generally the same sort of craft; meant to skip on the Earth's upper atmosphere (admittedly, Meteor's outermost wing control surfaces were inspired by Arkbird's). As far as one or a few fighters approaching, it would have to be caught completely off guard. The CIWS that it carries creates a 5 mile diameter kill zone capable of stopping anything larger than a large bird traveling below Mach 7.
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Don't get me wrong, it looks awesome 
I remember it being described at one point as a wing with 8 engines, immediately bringing to mind a boomerang shape, like a stealth bomber I guess.
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This CD player thing... Who started that? Does it really not resemble the AWACS Radar assembly it is supposed to be? Y'all guys be trollin, yo.
It's the same basic shape and size of Night Raven, but with a single-wing design. I just keep redesigning it to look less like Night Raven.. Because the resemblance was uncanny.
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Single-wing? I have no clue what that means.
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Have you ever seen Night Raven? It is a bi-wing fighter, similar in shape to my single-wing design. I'll be flat-out honest and tell you now that my design is inspired by the wing shape of Night Raven and its TLS. Ace combat continues to use that bi-wing design even to today; Spiridus, Aigaion, Kottos, and Gyges all mimic the design... especially Spiridus, from Ace Combat X2/Joint Assault.
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But that's over-wing not under isn't it? Meteor doesn't look like an over-wing.
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Are we talking about the XR-50, or the Meteor here? I guess I forgot that I told you about that early design for it that I did. I got confused somewhere.
METEOR is a lifting-body TSTO craft meant for optimal lift at speeds exceeding Mach 5. It is also partially designed like a re-entry vehicle.
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Oh, wait, it is under-wing. I was looking at it wrong.
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At least I thought AWACS when I saw the disk. The white stripe makes it look even more AWACSey.
The Reaper's old name was even more uncanny.
X-50 Black Phoenix
X-49 Night Raven
Having Phoenix in its name also simply felt wrong.
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The squadron you questioned earlier is called "Thanatos". It's not unusual for them to use the reaper theming. The Reaper's laser is codenamed "scythe", but it is never mentioned in the text of the story.
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Ahh, the ones who later upgrade to using XE-05 Zeros.
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I had a VERY different idea of what it looked like, but this works.
The UCAV in the bottom right-hand corner is the closest to what I thought it would look like top-down.
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What, Meteor? You must not have seen the one I had up last year... It was practically the same thing, but with too many design flaws.
I would not make the Meteor look like a wing, after Ace Combat 6 (for obvious reasons... ). Though, I'll admit, a 2006 design I had WAS a bi-wing fortress. I really didn't like it... It was a conventional, un-stealthy design, and it didn't look like it could fly at Mach 20.
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Well, when Meteor first came into the story at the end of that massive aerial battle my first impression was the Deathstar, but it didn't fit with the 'wing' description. I started making sketches of what I thought it might look like to give myself a visual reference but only one really seemed plausible and fit with its function.
It had the basic shape of an old-fashioned stealth bomber; an arrowhead shape with 4 engines on each wing and the cockpit (or rather, the bridge) in the center at the nose.
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Do you still have sketches of this thing?
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Not on the computer; I did it on a notebook. The inspiration for the design (at least, my interpretation) was the ending to the story. It just seemed perfect for that scene, though now that I think about it it might be a tad too wide.
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I'm redesigning that mass-driver launch unit to make use of an extinct lava tube extending from beneath the sea level to the volcano adjacent to the base... It's a really bizarre, but cool redesign.
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A mass driver could send it to Mars with one miscalculation. Too much unneccesary power, too many risks, way too many things that could go wrong.
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A conventional Mass Driver can't even put a mundane load like a satellite into space without a small rocket booster attached to the payload vehicle. It would be a modern miracle for one to get a 1/3 mile long carrier simply into the air fast enough to stay airborne. What kind of mass-driver technology are you looking at? The one I'm buying into is only LIM-powered :/
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Oh, I was thinking of a MAC gun (mass accelarator cannon). It's way too complicated for me to remember the specifics, but it uses a series of coils to accelarate slugs at high speeds at a target. In First Strike they used the coils to replace the damaged ones in a plasma turret.
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You're thinking of a full-scale railgun. The kind with a mile-long barrel.
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They were smaller in WWII.
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Actually, the thing I'm thinking of more closely resembles a giant multistage coilgun, a concept that has only been around since the 60's or 70's.
Railguns in WWII...? I'm going to have to check that.
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Yeah, that's when the term 'railgun' came about. The guns were so big they could only be transported by railroad, thus the name 'railgun'. In Medal of Honor: European Assault there's a mission in Stalingrad where you have to sabotage a Nazi railgun in the middle of the city.
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Lol, you've gotten two very similar terms confused. Today, they call those railway guns, as to not confuse them with modern railguns. Railguns actually have functional parts called rails that electromagnetic impulses travel through to accelerate the projectile it fires. The two guns in question here are not at all related, unless you put an electromagnetic railgun in a railway car
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I'm positive it was called a railgun in the game, not a railway gun; must've been a typo or something. Were they originally called railguns, then the term was changed to railway guns?
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They can call it a railgun because it is on train rails; that does not mean it is an electromagnetic railgun. We're talking apples and oranges here... The things from your game are conventional artillery that require railroad for transport, I guarantee you.
Like I said earlier, the term *today* is railway gun. The game is not really incorrect for calling them railguns, because back then there were no electromagnetic railguns to disambiguate them from. Heck, if you search the term on Wikipedia, it even has to clear up the confusion at the top of the article
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Well, you also said the first modern 'railgun' was made in the '60's. Most likely it was built as a threat to Russia, that much firepower. Definitely a part of the Arms Race, that's for sure.
The gun alone was the length of about 2 train cars and the barrel itself nearly matched that length. However, it wasn't very high; most of its size came from its length. 6 feet, maybe 7 from the wheels (or whatever they're called) to the bottom of the barrel. Packed one helluva punch, though; the Germans were using it to flatten towns suspected of housing Partisans.
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I believe it was a DARPA job, but I don't know much outside of that. I believe it was designed as a ship-mounted weapon, and is currently in use. Damned thing probably needs almost a nuclear reactor to work.
METEOR absorbs energy from mere friction with the atmosphere... Turn this system off, and the massive craft would be inherently prone to causing surface-to-ship lightning strikes. Add in the factor of re-entry heat, and there is no need for a nuclear reactor on the METEOR. It recharges just by flying.
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Here's a clip involving one of the first railgun prototypes from a programme I've seen that was first shown in 2007.
[link]
Apparently they managed to successfully test fire a 33 MJ railgun a few months ago.
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I don't know where I heard this, but this was supposedly and successfully used on targets in Iraq/Afghanistan last year. The model used was much smaller, and I know nothing of the power of the unit. Though I think we can assume whatever the military shows us is already very old technology (at least 1980's and back).
METEOR's flak cannons do very much like what those fragmenting projectiles do in that clip, but at MUCH closer range.
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So Meteor does have a weakness...not much and certainly not easy to exploit but if it could be used...
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Attacking it while it is in the water is the best bet... As long as it does not submerge.
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You're thinking of a full-scale railgun. The kind with a mile-long barrel.
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You're thinking of a full-scale railgun. The kind with a mile-long barrel.
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You're thinking of a full-scale railgun. The kind with a mile-long barrel.
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I KNOW. And it only plays DU HASST by Rammstein
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WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOA!!!
SO... MUCH... AWESOMENESS... TOO... EUPHORIC... CAN'T... BREATHE... 
Wow! This is even better than I was expecting, it's worth the wait. You've got a whole air fleet here, I'm especially loving the Warbler and Reaper. Wow, the Seraph missiles are embedded in the fuselage as well. Eight HF-32s, ace squadron maybe? And the Meteor itself has railgun flak cannons, I've now got the mental image of a Battlestar Galactica-style flak-barrage around it. This fleet's going to be near-impossible to take down, Hydraforce has done excellent work in developing it.
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This is what happens in a world where corporate corruption allows technology pirates to buy-out key investors and ideas... Eventually, someone takes advantage of the corruption, and this is the result.
A few details that I did not fit into the lengthy description: The FLAK cannons on the underside can fire on targets on the ground, leaving an entire city a shredded wasteland. And the craft itself can use the shock wave from the sonic boom alone to level a city while jumping to Hyper Cruise. The liquid-fuel booster tanks are also rigged as FAE weapons, and can be released like bombs to create nearly 1-megaton blasts... This would be a last resort weapon, as it would prevent the carrier from escaping like it normally would.
The eight HF-32s do hint at a squad of ace pilots (5 ship formation, three backup planes), but they never get to use them. It's more of a subtle nuance; these were the general fighters before I added the drones into the mix. But this squad will become an issue before the end of the third story, so it really doesn't matter much.
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1-MEGAton blasts from a non-nuclear weapon! That's overkill.
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Using 600-foot liquid fuel tanks for rocket boosters as a FAE weapon... It's sort of like a slightly underpowered, but mega-sized MOAB or FOAB device. It's theoretical... I have done no research on how a device based on H2/O2 liquid rocket fuel would work, or what it would yield... Or if it would work at all.
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I definitely wouldn't have thought that it would have a yield in the megaton range. According to wikipedia, the FOAB has a yield of only 0.044 kilotons or 0.000044 megatons, so I think that a 1-megaton blast from such a weapon sounds ridiculous. A yield of no more than a few kilotons would be much more plausible.
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I see. I should have done my reading before hand. I'll edit it later. Thanks for the correction.
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