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TheCentipede
— Oskoreia Light Fighter Zips Along
by-nc-sa
Published:
2014-07-18 19:43:17 +0000 UTC
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Description
Developed in 3019, the Oskoreia was TME Industries' first attempt at a light aerospace fighter. As a first attempt, it does more closely resemble the anti-aerodynamic philosophies common to the rest of the Inner Sphere than later TME Industries model lines, but it still showed some of the aerodynamic sleekness that would exemplify TME Industries aerospace fighters of later decades. While it would not particularly stand out on any randomly-selected flight line in the Inner Sphere of the late thirty-teens, a few of its details also presaged how later Industrialists would tend to consider unconventional solutions to conventional problems.
At its most basic, the Oskoreia was a conventional high-wing monoplane with a blended fuselage and twin vertical stabilizers. The wings carried a distinctive anhedral to decrease the fighter's stability--and thus increase its maneuverability--owing to the fact that it tended to be stabilized by its thrust-centric flight modes, which were forced by the drag of the twin two-tube short range missile 'canard' pods in the front. Broadly similar to the Sparrowhawk, the barrel of its large laser made up its 'nose' with the rest of the weapon, oversized like most large lasers of the period, continuing along the ventral centerline of the aircraft. Its nose-specific armament distinctly limited the fighter's off-bore targeting capability yet gave it a distinctive punch for a thirty-ton aerospace fighter; in terms of air wings, the Oskoreia was intended to fulfill the sort of 'light heavy cavalry' role; its BattleMech equivalent would have been the Valkyrie. To achieve this end it emphasized maneuverability over armor, carrying a lighter-than-average five tons of armor while its 210-rated fusion engine could accelerate it up to seven gravities at emergency power.
The Oskoreia's less conventional aspects consist mostly with detailed solutions to particular problems. To reduce the fighter's side profile, Industrialist engineers wanted it to have a relatively stubby fuselage rather than a long, thin one like a Transit or a Cheetah. This reduced the volume available for large laser components and their integration into the fusion engine's power and coolant systems. To make the most efficient use of space, all of this support subsystem equipment was packed into the port side of the fuselage while the cockpit was limited to the starboard side. The aerodynamic impact of the asymmetrical cockpit was accounted for by slight differences in the planforms of the port and starboard vertical stabilizers to prevent the necessity for vectored thrust to correct it. The Oskoreia's flight control system--particularly its engine-controlling FADEC--was more complex than many contemporary and legacy aerospace fighters due to the fact that turbulent air thrown off by the missile-launcher canards had a tendency to 'dirty' the airflow entering the atmospheric turbine intakes and thus flame out the engine. The FADEC would therefore, upon detecting the beginning of a flame-out, automatically transition the turbine into fusion rocket mode and then back once the fighter returned to a safe flight envelope. To make this transition as seamless as possible, the Oskoreia eschewed the usual deployable armored intake covers in favor of more mechanically simple and reliable valves that could stop up the intake and channel it back to bleed air with solenoid action. The sound of these solenoids snapping open and shut in flight often earned the Oskoreia the nickname "Clicker."
Operationally, the Oskoreia served well in its tactical niche but did suffer some logistic consequences for the choices made in its design. Its compact nature made it dense and comparatively difficult to maintain, since the Industrialists had not quite universalized their attitude towards palletized systems bays by that time. The slightly different port and starboard vertical stabilizers meant that part commonality between them was limited, and this increased the fighter's logistic footprint with regards to spares. Over long campaigns, the Oskoreia was distinctly less fuel-efficient in the atmosphere than other comparable aerospace fighters due to its reliance on its fusion rocket mode as a semi-standard propulsion system.
When Helm Memory Core technology lead to redesigns across the Inner Sphere, the Oskoreia saw a more fundamental redevelopment effort. The fuselage was extended almost to the tip of the large laser barrel--now an extended range model--and the more streamlined missile canards--now mounting a single dual-tube Streak-type launcher between them--moved up to match. This made additional room for palletized systems and the more voluminous extra-light engine. The cockpit was centered and the vertical stabilizers rationalized for parts commonality. The intakes were redesigned to avoid turbulence from the canards and thus reduce the rate of 'clicking,' though the solenoid-driven valves were retained. The thin wings, always prone to some degree of flutter, gained stabilizing pods in the middle of their span to carry a single medium laser on each wing for off-bore protection. The armored skin of the fighter increased by a very healthy sixty percent, and its fuel tankage increased from three tons to five. The fully redesigned Oskoreia-A of 3050 was, effectively, an entirely new aircraft compared to its predecessor and generally only detail parts were interchangable between them. This reduced the rate of operators upgrading to the -A model, many instead opting for jury-rigged and custom modifications to -A standards. As such theOskoreia-"A" fleet of the mid-to-late 3050s included a population of production-line -As and a wide variety of field variants with the same capability on paper but wildly different details in terms of blisters and pods.
3068 saw the development and release of the Oskoreia-B which took the -A's basic airframe and replaced the Streak missile system with a five-tube multi-missile launcher at the expense of a ton of fuel and half a ton of armor. Its general similarity to the -A made switch-up tactics popular among operators and lead opponents to be distinctly cautious around Oskoreiasquadrons. In 3092, over seventy years of service establishing the Oskoreia line as a workhorse led it to be converted into an OmniFighter with the -CO production variant. The use of the next variant letter came about primarily due to the structural changes necessary to make the nose and wing bays universal and to include provisions for under-wing pods carrying additional 'integrated' weapons while not reducing the fighter's capability for carrying external stores.
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