ANN News Desk

From Alliance News HQ in Vancouver

August 11, 2197

Alliance Navy Chooses F-86 as New Fighter

By Amita Quita

VANCOUVER, EARTH- Alliance Navy Aerospace Classification Board announced the results of the Advance Carrier Fighter (ACF) competition as the F-66 Crossbow. Shinsei Heavy Industries developed the new fighter from their previous successful design, the F-61 Trident. In a press release the board gave several reasons why it chose the F-66 over its rival, the F-68:

The F-66 has over 80% commonality in parts with the F-61. The board projected a 29% savings over its competition due to shared manufacturing facilities/methods, compatible logistics and ease of transitional training for service/flight crews.

The F-68 new direct cybernetic interface did not offer a marked advantage over the advanced VI assisted organic-machine interface employed in the F-66 and it failed to account for the increase wait provided by the addition of external store packs.

The F-68 Shadow Active Stealth System (SASS) failed to meet its goals or exceed the performance of current generation ECM (Electronic Countermeasures) packages except in very limited situations.

The lower costs of the F-66 mitigated the increase costs of the OSJ (One-Shot Jump FTL module) and FAST (Fuel and Sensor Tactical) packs. The board noted that the use of FAST packs doubled the missile/torpedo armament on both designs and increased the survivability and firepower of the new designs by 30%/50% accordingly.

Critics of the Navy's choice claimed that while the F-66 is 23% larger than then F-61, it has very little room to grow and that the Navy will be looking for an alternative in the near future which will negate any savings from the adoption of the new fighter. A spokesperson for Cord-Hislop Aerospace stated that they presented a proposal to the board for a long range strike/interdiction fighter based on the F-68 design. There was no word about the the Navy's response at the time of publication.

Report filed by Amita Quita from ANN News HQ.