The Republic of Crossroad inherited SDS hardware, technical and theoretical data related to combat AI, and even some basic technological know among certain technicians from its Star League Exodus Fleet heritage, an origin it shares with the Clans despite the two society's wildly divergent paths.
Firefly UAAV (2842)
Mass: 5 tons
Chassis: Unknown
Power Plant: 25 ICE
Armor: Primitive Fighter
Armament:
1 Machine Gun
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 2842
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-F-F-F
Cost: 66,454 C-bills
Mass: 5 tons
Frame: Unknown
Power Plant: 25 ICE
Armor: Primitive Fighter
Armament:
1 Machine Gun
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 2842
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-F-F-F
Cost: 66,454 C-bills
Type: Firefly UAAV
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Tonnage: 5
Battle Value: 16
Equipment Mass
Engine 25 ICE 1.5
Safe Thrust: 5
Max Thrust: 8
Structural Integrity: 0
VSTOL Equipment: 0.5
Heat Sinks: 10 0
Fuel: 160 1
Cockpit: 0.5
Armor Factor (Primitive Fighter): 5 0.5
Armor
Value
Nose 2
Wings 1/1
Aft 1
Weapons
and Ammo Location Tonnage Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV
Machine Gun NOS 0.5 0 2 0 0 0
Smart Robotic Control System FSLG 0 - - - - -
Half Machine Gun Ammo (100) FSLG 0.5 - - - - -The Firefly is Crossroad's oldest natively designed UAAV (Unmanned Autonomous Aerial Vehicle).
Background
The Firefly has its origins in the Crossroad-Skaret War (2832-2836). The Skaret Empire, one of the most largest bandit kingdoms in human history- and the largest in the Vela Corridor- raided and then invaded the Crossroadian worlds of Serenity and Tranquility, beginning a war of desperate survival for the young stat that had not quite reached its official 10-year anniversary (though colonists had been in the region since 2786 as the Star League In Exile: Vela Administration (SLEVA)).
The Crossroadians had access to old Star League-era equipment and experienced personnel, some of whom were veterans of the Liberation of Terra (including Crossroad's elderly General of the Armies, Aaron DeChavilier). They provided fierce resistance, but after some years of fighting it was becoming clear that the Skarians would win a war of attrition, forcing them to strike at the Skaret Empire's capital of New Alborg in 2835 in Operation RUBICON.
The task force, led by Gen. McEvedy and Adm. McNeil, consisted of some of the best trained volunteers equipped with as much working Star League era equipment as could be afforded, and was timed for a concurrent Skaret invasion attempt of Serenity and Tranquility so that New Alborg would be less heavily guarded, hopefully ensuring the best chance of Operation RUBICON's success.
Part way through Operation RUBICON, the task forces encountered a paramilitary group of planetary natives, the Ellisberg Liberation Front (ELF). They shared the Crossroadian's goal of kicking out the occupiers that had conquered their planet and joined the Crossroadian's war efforts. The ELF openly declared independence from the Skaret Empire shortly after, opening up more fronts and complicating the New Alborg's defensive efforts.
While the Ellisbergians were very ill-equipped, initially armed mostly with primitive small arms and the rare infantry-mobile anti-tank weapon, they were resourceful and fanatical to a degree exceeding even that of the ex-Wolverines. Civilian vehicles that the ELF couldn't turn into technicals were usually converted into car bombs. They were usually remote detonated as part of ambushes to Skaret Imperial infantry and the occasional unlucky Skaret Battlemech, but the most zealous of the ELF would personally drive them straight into Imperial outposts in an attempt to kill platoons worth or even more of Skaret bandits.
The ELF's resourcefulness shined whenever they managed to get their hands on batches of small civilian aircraft, mostly private jets taken from Skaret elites and the occasional civilian airliner. Frequent "combat" modifications made to these support craft mainly included underslung rocket launchers, attached machine guns (sometimes fired by hand from the cockpit thanks to fire control limitations), makeshift hardpoints for external store usage such as bombs, conversion of the passenger section of passenger liners into massive bomb bays (reportedly a massive headache for Crossroadian fighters to keep alive), and even one case of a "gunship conversion" of a cargo plane with its side section being installed with a Thumper artillery piece.
The conversion with the most merit (according to Crossroadian observers) was a common ELF conversion to a twin-engined, 15-ton Duke-class private jet. Unlike most of the other ELF technicals, the resulting Rebel-class Light Attack Fighter had a remote drone operating system, a machinegun, and one external hardpoint installed, allowing the operator to fly missions up to 80km away from the fighter itself. While little more than a bomb truck, the Duke jets they were based off of were ubiquitous and the Rebel conversions turned out to be more effective over most of the other ELF's aerial technicals, mainly because the pilots didn't die when they got shot down and thus could learn from their mistakes and become more effective in the next flights.
By 2836, the Crossroadian-ELF joint forces had captured enough Imperial depots that a significant amount of the ELF forces were mechanized, with a lucky ELF battalion even equipped with "Battlemechs" (Converted Industrialmechs), though the ELF's air force still consisted of technicals. The combined forces struck at New Albion's capital city, where massed Rebel-class fighters played a crucial war in softening the Skarian defenses, allowing the Crossroadian forces to capture the city and kill Emperor Ragnvald in his Highlander HGN-732.
The war was technically over by this point. The Skaret Empire had lost its leadership and its most important industries and central control bases, and the Skaret invaders had been routed at both Serenity and Tranquility. The aging Gen. DeChavilier resigned, feeling his job was done, leaving Adm. McNeil as the highest ranking military leader in the Crossroadian Armed Forces.
But there was still work to be done: The Skaret Empire was done as a political power for now, but a Skaret remnant existed across dozens of worlds, leaving the risk that the bandit kingdom might reform under a new emperor and restart hostilities. Adm. McNeil, with the cooperation of the incoming President and Congress, formed the Republican Aerospace Force as a new branch of the Crossroadian military as a specialized anti-piracy (and especially anti-Skaret) force. The RAF took a few of the Battlemechs and fast Warships, but also most of Crossroad's Aerospace Fighter Fleet for a follow-up operation to totally obliterate what was left of the Skaret Empire in Operation SILVER PHANTOM.
This created concern in the Crossroadian Navy, and especially the Crossroadian Army, which were suddenly deprived of the Aerospace forces needed to perform the combined arms operations as required by their doctrine. The Skaret Remnant wasn't the only potential threat: The Mechani Alliance to the east, while currently friendly, still might sour in future administrations and attempt a takeover, while the recently-discovered Gumerian Diktat to the south was a totally unknown quantity.
Gen. McEvedy sought a short-term solution to the "fighter gap" that the Army was currently experiencing. Crossroadian engineers, inspired by the Rebel-class conventional fighter conversions, developed a basic remote-controlled drone fighter later that year, the Firefly (2837), that could easily be produced in large quantities even with Crossroad's currently limited industrial capacity, which immediately entered production. Though fairly satisfied with the new drone fighter, the development team felt they could do even better: They hired AI experts to assist with developments, producing prototypes of a mostly-autonomous fighter craft in 3840, pre-production models in 3841, and full production models in 3842.
Capabilities
The Firefly is a cheap, unmanned air support drone in all its variants. The ultra-light frame's wings fold near the wing root for storage purposes, allowing potentially hundreds of Fireflies to be folded and stored within Dropships for use. A dozen or more can also be stored in Small Craft cargo bays, allowing Firefly drone groups to potentially be quickly and flexibly deployed planetside wherever they're needed.
The cheap 25 ICE turbine is VSTOL capable and provides sufficient, if underwhelming, thrust for a conventional fighter of its size. Though early versions were powered by aircraft-grade diesel, all Firefly engines were converted to run on Hydrogen fuel: This gave them the advantage of working off the same fuel supplies used to power Aerospace fighters and Battlemechs, preventing battlegroups that used Firefly drones from having to manage and track two different types of fuel at the same time.
Armament consisted of a single machine gun and a single external hardpoint. The machine gun, intended to be used against infantry squads, turned out to be nearly useless: The Firefly was so poorly armored that well-equipped infantry with conventional MANPADs would easily be able to down the drone, and reportedly knocked down strafing drones with mere rifle fire on several occasions. The main draw of the drone was its external hardpoint, which was usually outfitted with some flavor of bomb, but could sometimes be re-equipped with a recon camera instead to improve a formation's situational awareness. While the drones were not especially accurate individually, groups of drones were usually sent to attack one target, which usually ensured that at least one bomb struck.
As the Firefly drones were cheap, light, and plentiful, they were treated as disposable. Though it was nice if the Firefly drones survived and arrived back at base for another round, they were expected to fly to the target, drop their bomb, and die. When anti-aircraft systems more sophisticated than infantrymen firing wildly into the air were present on the battlefield, this is usually exactly what happened: Drone attrition rates varied anywhere from 50% to 90% depending on exactly the type of anti-aircraft capabilities encountered. An individual Firefly drone that managed to survive five sorties was so unusual that they would often be retired from service and granted the title of "Robo-Ace" by the drone operation company fielding them, whether or not that drone ever actually hit anything in its career.
There were several limitations with the Firefly UAAV that became apparent after its reveal. For one, despite Dropships being able to fit hundreds of drones in a relatively compact space, the number of UAAVs that army formations could actually field at one time was rather limited: A specialized UAAV deployment company could be expected to put roughly 6 to 12 drones in the air at any one time, with only the very best being able to approach 18. In effect this meant that the UAAVs couldn't in practice blot the skies with hundreds of fighters making a single devastating pass. Another limitation was that the design was too light to be meaningfully upgraded with improvements in technology; there simply was not enough room available. This became more clear when the third major limitation appeared: The UAAV was highly vulnerable to ECM Jamming. This problem showed itself in the 1st Gumerian War, where midway through the war the Gumerians unveiled a ground-based drone jammer, cheaply and effectively reducing the effectiveness of Firefly UAAVs and forcing the Crossroad-Mechani forces to either kill the jammers or allocate valuable manned Aerospace Fighters to deliver an airstrike instead.
Because of these limitations the Firefly UAAV would eventually be retired in Crossroadian front-line service in favor of two new UAAV designs: The 10-ton "Hoverfly" which took over the role of cheap expendable UAAV while bringing more than twice the capability of a single Firefly, and the 30-ton "Dragonfly", a premium UAAV option bringing with it an extra anti-conventional fighter and VTOL capability in addition to its ground attack role, though its increased price tag would make it only semi-expendable.
Deployment
The Firefly UAV (non-autonomous) was fielded first in Crossroadian army units in 2837, and despite the introduction of the UAAV variant in 2842 it remained the most common version in Crossroadian service until the 2870s, where they were thereafter phased out by less manpower-intensive UAAVs. The UAVs were sold to Vela Corridor customers, however, resulting in the Fireflies first being used in several border skirmishes between the Mechani Alliance and the Gumerian Diktat, where both sides would use the cheap drone as an alternative to conventional airstrikes in certain scenarios.
The 2920 pattern Fireflies saw service in the 1st Gumerian War in the late 30th Century. They initially performed well, but midway through the war the Gumerians introduced ground-based and air-based jammers not dissimilar to the ones the Star League used to jam the SDS during the Battle of Terra, providing a novel challenge to the counterattacking Crossroad-Mechani forces. The ten-ton Hoverfly UAAV was designed and began production shortly after the end of the 1st Gumerian War. The 2nd Gumerian War was a rout of Gumerian forces that ended with the balkanization of the once-great Gumerian state. With no more meaningful threats within the Vela Corridor to the new hegemony of the two dominant allied powers, the Crossroadians temporarily shelved the Hoverfly UAAV project and produced the original Fireflies in low numbers.
During the Clan Invasion, Fireflies were supplied to the Vela Shield state-sponsored mercenary group to aid the Inner Sphere in fighting off the Clans. The Clans for their part regarded these pests as little threat, but their presence was helpful in the Battle of Tukayyid, where Crossroadian garrisons from the Vela Shields held off Clan Jade Falcon Elementals and Battlemechs with a ground force consisting mainly of Shocktrooper PAL BA and conventional vehicles; Firefly bombing runs managed to kill enough Elementals to turn the tide of the city fighting and kick out the Jade Falcons, denying them victory in the confrontation. After the fight, the Firefly's production rate was temporarily increased while the Hoverfly was reinstated.
The Firefly UAAV had its last deployment in Crossroadian service during the Jihad, when a joint-Velan corps joined Devlin Stone's coalition in the 3078 liberation of Terra. Their ending was unceremonious: as all Firefly UAAVs were lost within the first weeks of their assignment. Remarkably, most of these were by friendly fire. The task forces heard rumors that the Wobbies were spoofing IFF frequencies to attack allied assets while pretending to be friendlies, and the unknown drones were misidentified as a potentially new Word of Blake design and were shot down on the spot by the Allied forces that saw them. By the time the Crossroadians realized what was happening, nearly the entire Firefly fleet had been shot down.
Variants
UAV (2837): Original variant, equipped with a Robotic Drone Control System and no machine-gun. As it was man-operated and not autonomous, the 2837 variant resembled a loitering munition more than a proper fighter craft.
UAAV (2920): Upgrade to the 2842 variant, usage of lighter machine guns enabled the 2920 variant to fit two, one on each wing.
UAV/UAAV (3076): Refresh of the 2842 variant for the export market, streamlining drone maintenance and offered in both SRCS Autonomous and Robotic Drone "Loitering Munition" style control schemes. A light coat of the new Ferro-Lamellor armor did little to help its survivability prospects.
