F-61 Trident SX3 Fighter/Interceptor
Overview
The F-61 Trident SX3 Fighter/Interceptor is the third generation of single-occupant deepspace fighter in service with the Systems Alliance Navy.
The development of kinetic barriers revolutionised space combat. Turning battles from shot, vicious bloodbaths to long, drown out slugging matches fought at extreme ranges. Only a Dreadnought's main gun could penetrate the kinetic barriers of an opposing dreadnought. This changed with the development of the mass disruptor torpedo. Armed with an eezo warhead, disruptor torpedoes generate rapidly shifting unstable mass increasing fields designed to tear apart their targets (typically kinetic barrier emitters) on impact. The mass increasing fields make them too heavy to be blocked by kinetic barriers, allowing them to pass through unimpeded.
The downside is that the mass increasing fields give them a sluggish acceleration, making them easy targets for ship-based GARDIAN defense fire. No ship, not even a frigate, can get close enough to an enemy vessel in order to actually use this anti-shield weapon.
A a result, in 2156, Earth-based aerospace industrial giant, Heed Industries, developed the F-61 Trident as a single-occupant spacecraft to serve as a delivery system for disruptor torpedoes. Utilising ablative armour plating and heat-shielding, Tridents could get up close to enemy ships and fire their torpedo payloads in ripple-fire waves from within the point-defence grid at ranges too close for the point-defence system to shoot down every torpedo launched. Tridents often coordinate closely with frigates. Once a Trident disables an enemy ships shield emitters, the ship is swarmed by frigate.
Though the Trident was designed primarily as a deepspace fighter/Interceptor meant to operate alongside naval vessels, it also possesses transatmospheric capabilities and the ability to operate in atmosphere in support of the A-61 Mantis.
The F-61 Trident SX3 entered service in 2186, a few months before the start of the Reaper War.
Dimensions
The SX3 measures 15.4 meters in length, with a wingspan of 7.1 meters and a hight of 2.4 meters, not including it's landing gear. With a mass of 8 metric tonnes.
Hull/Fuselage
The Trident's name is derived from it's three-pronged appearance. With it's cockpit flanked on each side by the elongated thruster modules, which extend beyond the front of the cockpit to accommodate the long barrels of the internally mounted rapid-fire mass accelerators that run along their length. Foldable wings are mounted on each side of the thruster modules that are extended for atmospheric flight.
The hull is covered in layered ablative ceramic composite armour plating that dicipated heat by boiling away when heated. This acts as a form of heat shielding. It not only allows the Trident to take considerable amounts of punishment from laser-based point-defence systems, but also protects it from the immense heat of atmospheric reentry.
The cockpit is also environmentally sealed with inertial dampeners and artificial gravity to counteract the intense G-forces of combat, however, power and heat management issues often require such systems to be shut off during combat in order to prioritize more important systems. As such, G-suits are standard issue for all Alliance fighter pilots.
The Trident does not have wheels, but rather lands vertically on retractable landing struts.
Power and Propulsion
The powerpack for the Trident is located behind the cockpit and includes an environmentally sealed hydrogen-oxygen power cell and an oversized element zero drive core.
A power cell consists of two electrodes, a negative electrode (or anode) and a positive electrode (or cathode), sandwiched around an electrolyte. Hydrogen is fed to the anode, and oxygen is fed to the cathode. A catalyst at the anode separates hydrogen molecules into protons and electrons, which take different paths to the cathode. The electrons go through an external circuit, creating a flow of electricity. The protons migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where they unite with oxygen and the electrons to produce water and heat. This engine design is standard with most air and ground based vehicles in the Alliance, having replaced fossil-fuel engines over 70 years ago.
The Trident's Eezo drive consist of a core of element zero. An electric current from the power cell is run through the element zero to generate mass effect fields capable of altering the mass of a bubble of space-time. Due to their small size, Tridents can be economically fitted with proportionally large eezo drives. The eezo core is response for powering the shields, weapons inertial dampeners and most importantly, the Trident's mass reducing field. During flight, a Trident can reduce it's mass considerably, however, during combat, this is limited by the force of weapon recoil and enemy fire.
Due to the immense distances of space combat, Tridents also possess a limited FTL capability, allowing them to close on the enemy as fast as possible. However, Fighters can not perform an FTL jump while under fire. Accelerating to FTL necessitates that a fighter reduce it's mass to levels unsafe for combat.
The primary method of sublight propulsion for the Trident are two large antiproton thruster nacelles with vectored exhausts mounted aft of the thruster modules, which inject antiprotons into a reaction chamber filled with hydrogen. The matter-antimatter annihilation provides unmatched motive power. The drawback is fuel production. antiprotons must be manufactured one particle at a time.
Though thrust vectoring is the primary method of steering on a Trident, the fighter also operates an array of liquid hydrogen-oxygen RCS thrusters on each end of both thruster modules, with the largest of these being mounted on the ventral side of the cockpit for it's VTOL capabilities.
Heed Industries has also been experimenting with metastable metallic hydrogen as an RCS propellant for next gen fighters. Though more costly and difficult to produce than traditional liquid H2/O2, metastable metallic hydrogen would be more powerful and efficient.
Shields
The Trident features a kinetic barrier array linked to a Model 5 kinetic barrier shield generator.
The exterior layer of the hull is covered in tiny emitters spaced evenly across the armour plates. An object with mass traveling above a certain velocity trigged the barrier's reflex system, generating a localised repulsive mass effect field around the point of impact, deflecting it.
This is not without risk, however. The emitters themselves can only repel objects up to a limit. Sufficiently massive objects traveling at a high enough velocity can pass through the barriers unimpeded. Additionally, the kinetic barrier generator takes power from the vehicle's mass effect drive. Even if the projectiles do not penetrate, consistent impacts can put strain on the generator, this strain in turn is carried back to the drive. To prevent potential drive failure, the drive is designed to temporarily shutdown power to the shields until the field stabilises once again. The sudden, abrupt shutdown of the generator causes all emitters to discharge residual energy build-up. Triggering the characteristics "shattering" effect.
This allows the craft to withstand impacts from kinetic-based weapons, but doesn't do anything against Directed Energy Weapons such as lasers.
The strength of the kinetic barrier depends on the size of the mass effect drive, the amount of element zero used and overall design of the drive and generator. The more powerful the mass effect fields the drive generates, the more powerful the shields can be.
Armament
The primary anti-fighter weapon used by the Trident are two M-392 rapid-fire micro-scale mass accelerator cannons mounted internally along the thruster modules and running approximately half the fighter's total length. Stored behind each cannon is a 3 kg block of ferric titanium alloy. The VI calculates the mass needed to reach the target based on distance, gravity, and atmospheric pressure, then shears off an appropriately sized slug from the block. The slug is accelerated to 130 km/s with a fire rate of 1,200 rounds per minute. A single block could can supply roughly 7,000 rounds.
There are three magnetic hardpoints on each wing that can mount a variaty of heavy weapons based on the role the Trident is meant to fill. Traditionally, these would be equipped with disruptor torpedo tubes, but they could also be equipped with anti-fighter missiles, air-to-surface missiles and more. Prior to the Reaper War, the Alliance was experimenting with fighter mounted thanix cannons that would give the Trident firepower on par with that of a corvette or light frigate.
