NationStates Jolt Archive

Commander Killos Bresk watched the unloading process critically, it had been a good few weeks since the floating docks had been installed, and he still didn’t trust it with some of the heavier loads, especially with the amount of traffic it had seen since its construction. Day in, day out, Leminsk transport subs had been coming and going in a constant stream delivering all manner of raw materials from ferrocrete to office supplies.
The Commander sighed; it was still all go, after the decision to convert this peninsular to a massive ordinance testing range, to be used by all of the Greenfields Region, work had commenced swiftly, the erection of the docks had allowed material for additional construction to flow freely, and already there was a sizeable town of grey ferrocrete buildings.

“Sir?”

The Commanders Aid knocked at his door and peered in

“Yes Terrence? What is it?”

“Just thought you’d like to know, the base layer for the Airbase as gone down, they are ready to start major construction work..”

“Excellent, Oh, Terrance, see if you can hurry up the construction crew down at the docks, I’m a little unhappy that we’ve not got the permanent dock up and running yet.”

“Very good Sir”

Commander Bresk crossed his legs and looked over the file his aid had just handed him, not only did it detail the Airbases construction, a massive affair, made to house multitudes of aircraft, with five runways, it also detailed the construction of the secure munitions area, thousands of meters of tunnels, warehouses and workshops that were burrowed deep into a colossal granite cliff face that stretched several miles in a crescent, pointing away from the base. Beyond them, was wild country, a varied wilderness perfect for testing munitions in varied environments.

“Well, this isn’t going to hurry up developments, “

The Commander touched his intercom and called for his hover car, as he wondered down the stairs from his office, he idly considered how the other Nations compound would be put together.

Senior Colonel Schiller settled into his seat in his command helicopter for the tour of the Daistallian compound just north of the ANA compound. The trip out to inspect the progress of the special ordinance facility had been delayed for too long. General Min was ready to insure that the ordinance secured in Daistallia's orbiting battle stations was as effective as promised. Sr. Col. Schiller expected everything to be ready for the first tests.

Doctor Hollands Pattel was a Scientist, not just any scientist, he was what was politely referred to as a 'Mover and a Shaker' in other words, he had a tendency to pick other scientists up by the scruff of the neck and get them actually working together on something, instead of endless days of theorising. This of course made him unpopular with the scientist community, but the military types loved him.

He however, did not love them, his suspicions had started to grow when he had been taken on a tour of the first Deep Bunker complex to be completed, he was quite impressed with it, even though it was just a network of bare tunnels and rooms that had as yet not been furnished, he saw its potential. Now he sat just outside the Deep Bunker One entrance, cross-legged on a rock, already the workers had started to refer in affectionate terms to the massive pink granite crescent cliff, under which all the Deep Bunkers would be built, as 'The Pink Moon'. He shook his head and went back to examining the sheet of paper that Commander Bresk had given him, outlining the current ANA projects to be developed at Pink Moon.

"Damn it, I'm doing it to.."

He muttered angrily, it was not like him to attach names like that.

Glancing through the sheet, it simply outlined ANA's need for a surface capable fighting force, as yet, all they had were power armoured troops and limited air force, they had been beneath the waves for far to long. Hollands chuckled; even he was feeling uncomfortable under so much open sky, but the work shift leaders had assured him that would pass within a week.

"Now, lets see, a simple list, simple they say, do they realise how much work is involved??"

He ticked the list off one by one in his mind, making a mental note about how much resources and man power would be needed to develop this simple list.

"Hmm, The best idea would be to develop a range of weapon systems around which the vehicles will be developed, that way re-supply and repair will be easier.. ok then.. lets see.."

And Doctor Pattel started to make his own list..


Light Machine gun (10mm - Railgun?)
Heavy Machine Gun (15mm - Railgun?)
Point defence weapons system
25mm rapid fire gatling cannon.
35mm - 40mm Cannon
80mm Cannon (Railgun?)
80mm Mortar or equivalent (Electromag Munitions Delivery Weapon?)
50mm Mortar or equivalent (Electromag Munitions Delivery Weapon?)
Main MBT weapon (120mm - 150mm Rail gun?)
200mm-250mm Artillery Cannon (Railgun?)

Disposable Light Anti Armour Weapon (guided / unguided missile?)
20 shot 50mm rocket pod. (multi munitions capable)
Man Portable Anti Aircraft System (guided hypervelocity?)
Man Portable Anti Tank System (Light Guided Missile)
Medium weight Anti Aircraft system (medium guided missile)
Medium Weight Guided Anti Tank System (Medium Guided missile)
Artillery Area Denial Munitions (MLRS?)
Long Range Precision Smart Weapon (Heavy Guided Missile)

All vehicles are to have an integrated modular fire control system that
is adaptable to serve most of the above weapons, if they are fitted through
the use of a universal mounting system.

A few hours later, with the evening growing dark, Holland flagged down a passing air jeep and directed the driver to Commander Bresks office, eager to put down his fledgling proposal.

It was several days later, and the engineers had moved most of the heavy equipment into the Pink Moon facility , Fac 1. Doctor Pattel had overseen the majority of the installation, while at the same time having some major fits over the handling of delicate equipment.

Still, his job became easier, as the research scientists he requested started filtering in from ANA and before long they were scratching out a development plan.

Most of it centred around re machining existing ANA weapons to fill the rolls specified by Pattel in his original draft, which would give them a quick fill group of weapons to work off, while the proper items were being developed.

Meanwhile, Doctor Pattel would take a smal lgroup of scientists and start the development of the senso and electronics packages for the vehicles.

Having insured that the site was adequately prepared, Sr. Col. Schiller returned to the command and communications bunker complex. He notifed his HQ that the site was indeed ready.
All that awaited was the final adjustments to the orbital test station.

It had been several weeks and the weapons development team had come up trumps, taking the basic firing mechanism of the Slasher 40mm SuperCav cannon, mounted on several of the ANA subs, they had constructed a surface varient Railgun.

Pattel mentaly shook himself for the fith time that hour.

"Coil Gun, its a Coil Gun.. I know Railgun sounds better.. but.."

He muttered to himself as he inspected the test rig at one of the Pink Moon firing ranges, something caught his eye, a small, football sized ..disco ball, is all he could call it, shiney faceted surface, covered in what looked like hundred of tiny little buttons, rotating slowely atop its plinth, he had asked before, but all he got other than they were an important part of the tests, was their name, 'SSHAM Balls'.

Once more he looked over the cannon on its mounted, grimacing as he spied the ad-hoc sensor unit clamped on top, even though the weapons team had got the cannon made, his sensor team had yet to make a operating basic sensor suite.

"Well, it can't be helped.."

He whistled up to the watched tower and circled his forefinger in a big circle over his head, indicating the test could commence, then quickly he made his way behind one of the several thick concrete blast screens and donned the ear guards a assistant handed him, just int time, because the first loud cracking report of the cannons firing made the shelter vibrate.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/40mmtest.jpg

Doctor Pattel sat at his desk, going over the notes of the past few days tests on the 40mm Railgun, gently he massaged his forehead and mumbled the statistics, almost like a mantra.

"Maximum effective range, about 5000 meters, 0.25 meter grouping at 1000 meters, 2080 meters per second muzzle velocity, and the rate of fire was, lets see..."

Pattel frowned and looked down at his laptop notepad, the rate of fire had been taken up to 800 rounds per minute, however it had started suffering major overheating problems, and the scientists had cycled the ROF back in stages to find the safest rate, they had eventually settled on 400 rounds per minute. This was well within the design parameters that had been set, and Pattel was satisfied, of course the other scientists being the types they were, had suggested a variant with a massive cooling system built into it to allow for the higher rate of fire.
However the criteria had been filled, and the good Doctor Pattel did not want them becoming bogged down in the endless meanderings most scientists get into, and he had moved them onto other projects, already the groupings were becoming apparent, some showing abilities in guidance, others in ballistics and many more, mentally he started grouping them to best facilitate the designing process for multiple projects.

After a good hour of playing with schedules on his laptop, he grimaced and turned back to a more immediate problem, the basic sensor suite..

Doctors Ford and Gregor stood around the drinks dispenser in one of the many staff relaxation rooms in the colossal underground development facility at Pink Moon, chatting indifferently about various projects, when both stopped, a sound from outside in the corridor, the sound of humming. What startled both even more was the sight of Doctor Pattel walking past with a decided bounce in his step.
Normally this would not warrant attention, but with Doctor Pattel it was ground breaking news.

Indeed Pattel was happy, finally his group had finished the basic sensor suite that will be fitted in most AFV's and the units were currently out in the testing range being synchronized with the 40mm cannon that would act as part of the testbed.

Once he exited the facility and headed on a short hover car trip to the test range, he found he was still humming, and noticed how disturbed the other scientists around him were getting, he shrugged to himself and smiled, let them, it does good to keep them on their toes.

Reaching the testbed area he gave the sensor package a once over and nodded, the units were good, but the multiple redundancy optical computers lacked a decent surface world operating system, currently they were using one hodge podged from sub fighters, it was doing the job, but not as well as it could do..

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/Sensors1.jpg
From left to right, front row, UHF scrambled radio system and main tight beam laser dome, Optical computer core, Geomag positioning and navigation system.
In the rear, the Multi Sensor Cluster Turret, (IR, Low Light, Extendable MAD sensor probe with small camera and secondary tight beam laser, Biological Sensor, Chemical Sensor and Rangefinder Unit.

(General announcement)
Daistallian Defence Forces Space Command (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/daistallia/DDFSC/index.html) has made it's preparations. MEAP 1 and the prototype satellites are now online and ready to begin testing.

(And just for grins, here's something I knocked together for this:

The Black Sands Test Range (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/daistallia/facilities/blacksands.html)
The Black Sands Test Site (BSTS) is a massive outdoor laboratory and remote experimental site. The site' s is over 12,500 square kilometers. It consists of a flight testing range, an explosives and ordinance facility, a Critical Assembly Zone, High Explosive Test Zone, a Research, Test, and Experiment Zone, a Reserved Zone, and an Orbital Weaponry Test Zone.
The Flight Test Range (FTR) complex is Daistallia's main flight testing range. It consists of 4 large multi-environmental test areas, and 6 smaller testing areas. North Range is the main experemental flight testing range. Range Three is the main precision bombing test range. Range Seven is the main instrumentation range. Target Range is used primarily for dropping dummies, parachutes, capsules, tip-tanks, drone vehicles and other stores when recovery of the item is required. The other ranges are multi use and can be configured for numerous types of testing, depending on the necessary instrumentation. Range capabilities include radar, telemetry, radio, television, and timing instrumentation. The range is located in the southeast portion of the Black Sands Test Range and covers approximately 500 square kilometers.
The UEX facility is an underground experimental complex. The complex supports routine test site activities in which high explosives are detonated to test the readiness of equipment, communications, procedures, and personnel. The complex is located in the of the . The complex consists of horizontal tunnels mined at the base of a vertical shaft approximately 500 meters beneath the surface. The vertical shaft is equipped with a mechanical hoist for personnel and equipment access while another vertical shaft about 500 meters away provides cross ventilation, instrumentation, utility access, and emergency egress. On the surface, there are several temporary buildings and instrumentation trailers.
The High Explosive Test Zone area is designated for additional underground and aboveground high-explosive tests or experiments.
The Research, Test, and Experiment Zone area is designated for small-scale research, development projects, pilot projects, and outdoor tests and experiments for the development, quality assurance, or reliability of materials and equipment under controlled conditions.
The Critical Assembly Zone area is used for assembly, disassembly or modification, staging, repair, and retrofitof sensitive and classified systems.
The Reserved Zone area is currently unused.
The Orbital Weaponry Test Zone are is used for testing orbital weapon systems. It is the second largest zone after the reserved zone, and covers 5,000 square kilometers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/Daistallia/facilities/blacksands.jpg

BSTR

Sr. Col. Schiller was relieved. The preparations in space had been delayed for far to long. He was certain that someone would be answering for the string of minor problems that had delayed the Lighting Strike series of orbital strike tests for several weeks. But the problems had been solved and the target range awaited the first impacts from far above.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/Daistallia/space/meap2.jpg

MEAP-1 (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/daistallia/DDFSC/meap.html)
Aboard MEAP-1 in geosynchronous orbit, the command crew was ready in the primary Command and Control Module of MEAP-1. Thousands of kilometers lower, in low Earth orbit, the prototype TAKEW satellite, TAKEW-1 was at it's firing point.

Captain Jaek, the satellite monitor turned and spoke.
"Major Pak, the capacitors are charged and projectile 1 has been properly loaded. All systems are go."
Major Pak spoke into a mic. "BSTR, this is Major Pak. We are ready to begin Lightning Strike."
The radio answered back "Major Pak, this is Black Sands. Fire at will."
The major touched an icon on the OLED screen in front of him. "Penetrator 1 away!" he announced.
Captain Jaek monitored the firing. "We have a clean shot - approximate velocity is 2320 m/s."


Minutes later, in the Orbital Weaponry Test Zone, a tungsten penetratror impacted. The old decommissioned T-1 model DMI tank, which was serving as the primary target, remained untouched. The targeting modules were clearly still not properly synchronised.

Sr. Col. Schiller swore. "Damn, I thought those jackasses in targeting had that system fixed!"

Meanwhile at the Pink Moon Test range several tens of kilometres away, the techs in their uniforms were doing a double take, their heads looking at the Prototype 120mm Railgun on its test bed, then down range to where an old armoured vehicle, one of a job lot bought from a scrap merchant for testing had just disintegrated. Where the tank once stood a massive 20 meter deep crater was now apparent, the super heated metal vapour, all that was left of the vehicle, had fused the sand in a radius of 50 meters to glass.

Slowly the techs edged away from the Railgun as it hummed lightly on the test bed, eying it suspiciously.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/120mmtest.jpg

Pattel however, calmly leaned against one of the concrete casemates, flicked a cigarette into his mouth and lit it with an old fashioned flip lighter. While he took a long drag and lounged casually against the concrete wall, his half lidded eyes peered down range to the crater two kilometres away, transferring the cigarette to his off hand he pulled out his Digicom and flicked it open, dialling the Base Operator.

"Put me through to Dastilia Base Command please.."

Sr. Col. Schiller had just finished chewing out the technician in orbit who's ham and cheese sandwich debris had managed to get into the targeting computer. An orderly knocked and apprehensively stuck his head in the door. "Sir, you have a call from Doctor Pattel, over at Pink Moon."
Schiller picked up the phone.

*Recieving Sr. Col. Schiller on the phone, Pattel stubbed out the cigarette on the casemate*

Ah! Colonel! Id just like to congradulate you on a superior weapon, truely remarkable, etc, etc....

*He takes a breath and looks at the crater downrange*

But I beleive you might have a fault, not with targeting, oh no, that seems to work wonders.. but with target aquisition, I mean, thats all I can think it is, a problem with your sensors, I'd never want to believe you DELIBERATELY opened fire on ANA equipment..

*Pattel thanked God that the sensor system being tested with the gun had screamed out a threat indicator warning a micro second before the target had vapourized... still going to have to tone down the sensetivity on that, its still saw birds above a certain size as threats..*

Anyway Colonel, its good to talk to you! and, since you are up in space, i was wondering, would it be possible for you to release several target drones for us? we have some ground to orbit testing we'd like to do..

*Schiller was taken aback. The Penetrator had impacted within the confines of the Orbital Weaponry Test Zone.*

Excuse me, did you say an orbital weapon impacted at Pink Moom as well?

*Typing on the OLED touch screen, he called up the exact coordinates of the impact crater. Yes, it was 500m NE of the target.*

*Pattel leveled his gaze at the crater, a deep foreboding was creeping into his thoughts, while the Colonel was checking up on his targeting data, he orded the techs to shut down the weapon system and clear the test range, putting the impact site into quarantine.*

I assure you Colonel, we registered a firing from your station, and local sensors picked up a high velocity impact here, generated from orbit...

I assure you Doctor Pattel, the impact at Pink Moon was not part of the Lightning Strike test. Lightning Strike impacted 500 m northeast of the target.

*As he spoke, Schiller pulled up the latest ISIN (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/daistallia/tech/military/bcn.html) intelligence data on Pink Moon*

Doctor, our satellites are detecting a radiation signature at your test site that is inconsistent with a Lightning Strike impact. I am sending you a data packet now.

*He pulled up Pattel's icon on the computer, touched the screen in the appropriate places, and the data from the sensors at the Orbital Weaponry Test Zone and the ISIN were on the way.*

*Pattel was becoming annoyed, he was not having a good day*

Thank you Colonel, I've recived the packet, oh, if you could, I would appreciate you considering launching a few drones for us? we do have some testing needs.. we have yet to test the ANM-2-SLAAM SpearFish system..

*As Pattel skimmed the data scan he swore under his breath and thanked God he was behind a major concrete casemate, immeadiately he issued a wide band commlink warning everyone else away from the crater, it was almost glowing hot with leathal radiation.*

Er, thank you Colonel, I'll call you back...

*Pattel started to formulate plans for the cleaning operation for this monumental screw up..*


Screw up yes.. but on whoms behalf..

*Pattel pinched his nose ridge as he thought*

Pattel was so wrapped up in the cleanup operation, and finding out what had happened, he completely missed Doctor Gregor making a completely successful test of the Infantry Light Anti Armour Weapon.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/LAWfire.jpg

A one shot tube with contoured rubberised material padding, it was designed to withstand high shock and rugged use, the targeting system and trigger mechanism folded out, making the whole weapon streamlined and easily portable, especially for the Power Suited Infantry The targeting system was designed to make use of the P suits HUD systems, but had a manual for non HUD equipped troopers.

The missile itself was designed to be an all aspect, fire and forget missile, with a simple guidance package, it used a basic Infra Red or silhouette homing system that controlled a ring of high pressure manoeuvring verniers, the controls could be gyrostabiliser 'locked' for a simple dumb fire mode. The warhead was a self forging penetrator wrapped in a fragmentation blanket, to give an additional blast effect at point of detonation.

Overall, the missile could engage targets out to 900 meters and was good for both ground targets and slow moving airborne targets.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/LAW.jpg

The cleanup operation had gone well, but still people were a bit hesitant about using the large main testing range, which is why Pattel found himself in the tree line watching some of the bases security forces in cammoed Dargonfish armour playing soldier.

He shuddered as they crawled through mud, scrub and filth in general, testing out the portability and ruggedness of the 10mm and 15mm heavy machine guns respectively. After two days of such testing , the weapons had shown themselves capable of taking the required bumps and knocks, Pattel and his respective ballistics team, headed by Doctor Ford were happy with the results, however Commander Bresk had asked the teams to treble the testing time and amount, not because of any worries over the weapons, but because it was keeping the base military personnel on their toes.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/10mm15mm.jpg

Doctor Pattel grimaced and stubbed out his cigarette on a tree, the soldier boys were having the time of their lives, he didn't think they'd even notice if the observation personnel had returned to base, turning to his assistant he gave some instructions.

"Give them a thousand rounds for each weapon respectively, and set them loose on the LAB 1 Test Range next.. now call me my hover jeep, I’m heading back.."

His assistant a small lady with round glasses seemingly to big for her petite face nodded and jotted on her palm top.

"Oh Doctor" she said "One more thing, the investigative team came up trumps, they traced the people, or man, that he test wrecks cam from.

Pattel nodded and smiled, at last they were getting somewhere with the accident investigation, and he had something to get his teeth into..

On his way to the communications level, Doctor Paettel poked his head in on his pet project ,the Modular Universal Sensor and Computer Package
(MUSCP), where they were testing out the Command Core, the heart of the system, an array of powerful Optical computers, data boards and holotables, all designed to bring up to date information to the Commander and allow him to make quick descisions with all the facts and data at his finger tips.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/CNC.jpg

Though it looked good, and all the systems worked perfectly, even Pattel could see some of the glitches. .still ,they had not got a decent Operating Systems for the computers.

Doctor Pattel sighed and moved on, at least they were completing the units, if not the programming.

Doctor Pattel sat in a simple metal folding chair, his fingers steepled in front of him, elbows on the bare table beneath him, behind him two soldiers stood, both in Dragonfish PEA armour, coloured dark grey and deep blue, the colours of Shadow Corp, needless to say, the man sitting across the table from him was nervous, sweating nervous in fact.

"So, Mr Traymond, you sold us faulty test wrecks that nearly got a lot of my men killed."

Pattel neither blinked nor changed his features.

"You sold us quite a large amount of scrap, some of which contained dangerous devices.. Do you not check your items upon receiving them for sale?"


Frank Traymond shivered a little, even though the room was warm, his shaking hands reached for the pen in front of him and started playing with it nervously.

"N..No.. You should have in your c..contract, it says, you accept res.. responsibility for all purchases... There is no fault to what we did. Y. Your people should have been a bit more careful..."

Frank, placed the pen on the desk again, he was dressed in work clothes, which for a scrap merchant wasn't anything special, and here he was sat across from a crisp dressed gentleman and being loomed at by two special forces power armours.

"We r.r. run a basic chemical and bio scan on everything that passes through, making sure there are no contaminants.."

He winced ever so slightly, his mind wandering to the somewhat hurried efforts at the yard, the Pink Moon contract had netted them millions, but they had to let something slip to keep up with supply.

Pattel noticed the wince and smiled, a smile devoid of humour.

"Tell me Mr Traymond, what is ANA's stance on nuclear materials?"

Frank looked up at him, caught off guard

"well, for possession of nuclear material is life incarceration, for actual detonation or, causing death and possible death, is termination by chemical injection.. Why?"

Franks face suddenly turned very white as he looked at Pattel, he felt like being sick.

Pattel smiled and nodded.

"Yes Mr Traymond, I think you are beginning to grasp what happened.."

Pattel leaned in, a softer smile on his face, his eyes however still looked like they were out for blood.

"Now then Mr Traymond, it is possible you had no knowledge of what happened, so, if you were to tell us where you got the scrap vehicles from..."


Meanwhile elsewhere in the facility, several techs were scratching their heads over crates labelled, 'Prometheus Corp Technologies, handle with care.'

Inside the crates were several working prototypes of two different point defence systems, the PCT-wb-Persuader and the PCT-wb-Metalstorm (20mm)
Both systems were turreted , the Persuader was a snub nosed automatic Shot coilgun in a small fast tracking turret, firing a mixture of AP and flechette, slaved to its own dedicated sensor system.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/PursuaderPDW.jpg

The other was a much larger system, a dome turret, once more with its own sensor cluster, but the weapon itself looked like a collection of several barrels, almost flush with the turret, each one was a sizeable 20mm across.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/MetStorm20mm.jpg

One tech stopped scratching his head and turned to another.

"Hey, I've heard of the Persuader system.. isn't that the chin turret mounted on those experimental hover bikes the military are testing out for the Scout Corp?"

The other tech looked at him and shrugged, then they both turned around and looked at two big crates behind them, also with the Prometheus logo on them, the tech with the PDA touched one of the icons in the order manifest and sent a 3D image spinning, which he showed to the other.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/SHOKBike.jpg

"Is that what you are talking about?"

"Wow..."

"The first full vehicle for testing..."

Pattel leaned back in his chair, a look of contemplation on his face, they had tracked the wreck vehicle to one of a lot that had been left over after a war fifty or so years ago, lost in action on some far away continent. It looked like it had been an experimental vehicle of some sort, a miniature nuclear power plant, weighing barely two tons had been fitted into a MBT, which had in turn been lost in a tropical quagmire and abandoned.

Pattel sighed and looked at his monitoring screen, The big test range was back in operation, already the sounds of thundering fire from three test artillery pieces echoed across Pink Moon.

Briefly distracted he picked up the datapad on the new coilgun units.

“Hmm, lets see.. first up is the 80mm General Purpose Cannon, The Crossbow,”
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/Crossbow80mmGPCannon.jpg

Maximum range, 21 km, variable round capability, autoload system, twelve rounds a minute..
The doctor raised his eyebrow contemplating it, but the name struck him.
Pattel smiled, already a naming convention had slipped in, medieval weapons. Projectile weapons were named after archery or ranged weapons, and missiles were named after melee weapons.

He blinked and looked down the list, second was the 160mm Longbow artillery piece.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/Longbow160mmArtTest.jpg

Maximum range, 110km, eight rounds a minute, variable payload capacity..
Pattel nodded as he read through the statistics.

Outside a loud thundering sound made him blink in surprise, and his eyes dropped to the third projectile weapon being tested that day.

The 250mm Mangonel Artillery piece.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/Mangonel250ArtTest.jpg
Pattel chuckled as he looked the monster over, capable of deliver most types of shells out to a range of 180km, with a rate of fire of 6 shells a minute.

His eyes travelled down the list, it seemed several missile systems were being tested to.

The Javelin shoulder launched anti aircraft weapon.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/EstocShoulderAntiAir.jpg
Capable of hitting an airborn target out to a range of 6km, and travelling at a speed of mach 4. It had a multi puck warhead, where the seeker head homed on in the silhouette of the vehicle using millimetre wave lidar, then 50 meters away three ‘SFW pucks’ were fragmented from the missile, each firing a hypervelocity self forging warhead into a critical point of the target ( the hit location being chosen by the seeker head moments before the pucks separate) and just incase, the warheads were wrapped in a fragmentation blanket.
Pattel chuckled, the warhead development team really had come up trumps and were pushing their self forging warhead program.

Next on the list was the Bolt 50mm multi purpose rocket system.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/Javelin50mmRocket.jpg
Effectively a dumb fire rocket that comes in packs of four, but each pack could be clipped together to make a battery of as many as you wanted. The warhead was modular, loading with such things as AP, flare, Mine dispenser, and whatever R&D wanted to stuff in one.
A side note indicated some of the warheads were interchangeable with the 50mm electromag mortar.

Next was a man portable weapon, the Warsword Anti Tank Missile.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/WarSwordAntiTankmed.jpg
It is a fire and forget weapon, that could hit a tank out to 5.5 km, using advanced threat evasion techniques as well as terrain following systems, making it hard to detect and intercept. Like the Estoc, it used a millimetre wave lidar silhouette recognition and infra red to home in on its target, then launching four large Self forging warheads, each targeted at a different critical part of the vehicle.

The next weapon was a modified long range Air to Air missile, originally called the Avenger, this new missile was called the Long Spear.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/LongSpearLareSAntiAirMis.jpg
Featuring a boosterpack for added range and speed, as well as larger guidance fins to aid in manouvering, travelling at mach 4.3 it could reach a target 12 km away, and hit it with a single large self forging penetrator, as well as a large amount of deadly shrapnel.

Doctor Pattel looked at the pad, it appeared some space had been cleared on the smaller ranges, to test two smaller units, the 50mm Recurve and 80mm Composite Mortars.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/CompositeRecurveBowmortars.jpg
The smaller 50mm troop portable unit could be used for a variety of purposes out to a range of 2km, the larger 80mm support unit had a range of 5km.

Placing the datapad back on the desk Pattel walked to the window and looked over the underground terrarium his office overlooked, ‘maybe’ he thought ‘It is time I checked on the sensor systems.’

Turning he tossed the accident report pad onto his desk, and with a rueful smile thought about possibilities lost,

"If only we had a complete vehicle."
“We could be well on our way to developing a fighter sized fusion reactor..”

With a disgusted sound he shook his head and walked out,

“No point in dwelling on ‘Might have beens”

Meanwhile, preparations are underway at one of BSTR's muti-use flight ranges for flight testing for the new FATHIM (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/daistallia/DMI/fathim/fathim.html) missiles.
That evening, under the cover of darkness, at the Flight Test Range, the sleak new airframe of a DASI F/A-1 Vespid (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/daistallia/DASI/combataircraft/dasifa1.html) exits it's hanger for a test flight.

It had been several months since any major breakthroughs had been made, and Doctor Pattel found himself in the adaptive workshop killing time overseeing not so much break throughs but the adaptation of some of ANA's already existing technology to surface world system.

What he had before him was one of the most important systems, integral to most subfighters and capitol ships, it was the Thru-Vision system.

In this system a series of micro sensors transmits a real-time view of the outside world onto the motion tracked HUD of any pilot or crewman that was linked into the unit, but since the view is ghosted, it does not interfere with his view of the vehicles interior and controls. Effectively where ever the crewman looks he gets that view of the outside world, over this is layered targeting and sensor information. The vehicles weapons systems can be linked into the Thru-Vision system as well ,allowing a full 360 degree 'look down, shoot down' capability.

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/totalrandom/ThruVision.jpg