Exoraider Space Bomber
Built by Boeing Interstellar at least two decades before it became known as Boeing Interstellar, the Exoraider is one of the first dedicated spaceborn anti-ship platforms ever created, and filled the role of heavy fighter and attack craft (such as it was) for the young Terran Alliance Navy for over a century.
Though at best mediocre by modern standards, for its day the Exoraider was considered quite nimble and durable, able to outmaneuver any expected opponent, as well as shrugging off fire from the light weapons of the day. On the offensive, the Exoraider's primary armament was a rack of kinetic munitions. These munitions were relatively small and possessed only a limited guidance package, and would be released at close range in the path of the target vessel, relying on inertia to carry them the distance (or alternately carry the target to them) and only using their small chemical motors for a last nudge into the target. Though a simple concept in theory, practical application was a bit trickier, and thus a single Exoraider would carry dozens of these charges, releasing them all at once in a large cloud in order to increase the rate of impact.
[Editor's note: As would be later demonstrated during the Outer Reaches Rebellion, these munitions could also be placed in an area in advance for the enemy to blunder into. This use would long outlast their original design role, and thus these munitions and others like them are now commonly known as space mines.]
The first military deployment of the Exoraider came shortly after its introduction, when a pair of brand new craft were deployed along side a fleet patrol ship to recover the Martian research vessel Whatney (though it turned out the Whatney was involved in an impromptu rescue operation rather than an act of space piracy). They first used their weapons in anger in 2107, when Exoraiders were used to cripple a merchant ship commandeered by Anti-Alliance separatists. For most of their career this engagement was the exception rather than the rule, and for most encounters the threat of an Exoraider strike proved enough to defuse a crisis or compel a surrender.
The Exoraider's last campaign in Terran service, as well as its most bloody, was during the Outer Reaches rebellion. Deployed from assault carriers (actually militarized transport jumpships equipped to carry and support a group of bombers and landing craft), the Exoraider provided additional support to the Alliance marine forces in securing the space around rebel held worlds. Though they performed their job fairly well against the lightly armed rebels in space, the Exoraider was clearly showing its age against the new technologies that has appeared since its introduction. Even more, the Exoraiders were virtually useless in supporting the ground operations that followed. Its specialized munitions rack could not be used to any affect against ground targets, and efforts to refit Exoraiders on site with either an internal bomb bay or racks of unguided rockets proved unsatisfactory. Worse yet, the Exoraider handled especially badly in the atmosphere (as it was designed for spaceborn combat), making those Exoraiders that were pressed into ground support easy prey for the rebels' atmospheric fighters.
Following the disastrous end of the Outer Reaches Rebellion and the subsequent sweeping of the isolationist Liberal party to power on Terra, the Alliance Global Militia underwent a massive re-alignment. The Exoraider, due to its relatively poor performance during the rebellion, was one of the first victims of these programs, with the last of them removed from service by 2250 to be replaced by newer craft and the first generations of aerospace fighters. Hundreds of Exoraiders would persist among the now independent colony worlds, either captured from the Terran marines or later purchased as military surplus, and they would continue to see action during some of mankind's earliest interstellar conflicts, but even in this use, they would gradually fade away, with the last craft taken out of service some time in the early 24th century.
Design Quirks: Atmospheric flight instability
Type: Primitive Aerodyne Small Craft (2100)
Mass: 150 tons
Propulsion: 89 tons
Thrust: 4/6
Fuel: 10 tons (363 points, 4.05 tons per burn day)
Pumps: 0.5 tons
Structure: 6 tons
Integrity: 8
Control Systems: 2.5 tons
Crew: 4, 20 tons
Heat Sinks: 1
Armor: 14 tons primitive (168 points)
fwd:55, lw/rw:41 aft:31
Equipment:
1 ton of cargo
Weapons:
Fwd
4 Machine guns, 200 shots ammunition, 3 tons
Aft
1 Space Mine Dispenser, 10 tons
Upgrade Notes:
*After 2151, the Exoradier recieves a second space mine dispenser mounted aft and 4.5 tons of additional cargo capacity. Fuel points increase to 421 and tons per burn day decreases to 3.50 .
*After 2201, thrust increases to 5/8. Two machine guns, half a ton of ammunition, and two tons of fuel are removed (fuel points become 376, tons per burn day become 3.13). The second mine dispenser from the previous upgrade is retained.
*During the Outer Reaches Rebellion, three variants were created for ground support. The first and simpler removes both mine dispensers for a twenty ton cargo bay and receives the Internal Bomb Bay quirk. The second also removes the mine dispensers, but replaces them with eight primitive rocket launcher 10s (four per wing), an additional gunner, and eleven additional heatsinks. The third trades one of the mine dispensers for ten additional machine guns (five per wing), and an additional gunner.
*After 2251, the Exoraider was long out of production, however existing examples would occasionally see additional refits. These craft retain the stats of the baseline 2201 refit, save that they remove the machine guns completely and add two nose mounted AC-5s (20 rounds ammunition), an additional heat sink, return to ten tons of fuel (533 points, 2.76 tons per burn day), and add an additional half ton of cargo space. Some go even further by adding the refits first developed during the outer reaches rebellion.
