CUT-01D Cutlass - 70t, TRO3145:AFFS
All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop” thread.No image available at this time.
The
Corsair spent more than three centuries as the AFFS’ dogfighter of choice, but nothing lasts forever, and the march of technology made it easier for Wangker to go back to a blank CAD/CAM tablet and start from scratch, rather than rework that stalwart for the umpteenth time. Oddly enough, what they
did do in drafting the
Cutlass was borrow a lot of ideas from the even-older
Stuka, at least in the departments of basic aerodynamics and weapons layout — that combination of canards and sleekly-swept wings with ‘winglets’ and mid-chord weapon-pods is unmistakeable. If the
Stuka was, in fact, Wangker’s starting-point for the
Cutlass, it only got to the flight-line after a long, dedicated training-programme at the track and the weights-pile. Leaner, faster, tougher, this is the Six Million Dollar Man of the lineage. }:)
Over the years, a
lot of electrons have been inconvenienced in relation to the Federated Suns’ military-industrial complex, so let’s just say that there’s no surprise in seeing this top-of-the-line starfighter being driven by a 350XLFE (and the typical five-ton fuel-fraction) that pushes it to 7/11. This is a very promising start for a would-be dogfighter; it’s notably faster than the 6/9 standard accepted during the Succession Wars, but the intervening march of technology doesn’t make the increase all that surprising. Welcome, but not surprising. }:) Just as welcome is the thick, stout jacket of reflective armour wrapped around the spaceframe like an old-fashioned coat-of-plates, sixteen tons of the stuff laid out 82/61/52.
A momentary digression: reflective armour, and presumably its counterpart(s) (anti-missile) reactive and (ballistic?) reinforced, are revolutions in modern combat-system design. Their impact on ground-combat is undeniable, but there are rather more options to deal with them on the ground; reflec-armour in particular is going to make aerospace combat in the ‘Dark Age’ incredibly interesting. Its interaction with the mainstay offensive systems of most fighters (energy weapons) and the threshold rules means that formerly superb designs are now almost-ineffectual, and some designs and systems which used to be lacklustre now get their time in the sun. (I’ll deal with this a little more next time, when I look at the AQA-1M
Aquila. [drool])
The baseline CUT-01D
Cutlass has a warload that either foresaw the proliferation of reflec-armour, or was simply intended to make sure Davion aerospace commanders had fighters at their disposal that could deliver a ‘knock-out punch’ to even the heaviest-armoured enemy fighters. As I’ve noted, ammunition and mass constraints mean that you expect to see a fighter bristling with beam-weapons, and the
Cutlass doesn’t disappoint on that score, with the chin-mounted ERLL and twin ERMLs in each wing-pod giving it decent reach and punch against opponents who aren’t slathered with reflective compounds themselves. However, the centrepiece of the armament is a trusty Poland Model C coilgun with two tons of ammunition, delivering nickel-iron basketballs out to Long range that say ‘your armour may be thick, but my Gauss slug doesn’t care’. As the advancing DCMS learned to their cost at Palmyra, these weapons deliver hits capable of thresholding even the mighty
Koroshiya’s nose, ‘reflec’ notwithstanding, and a contingent of FedSuns pilots who found themselves turned into a ‘non-revertor force’ by the destruction of their carrier during that horrific reverse showed the Dragon that whatever might have happened since the end of the Jihad, there are still Davions with stout hearts.
The array of systems supporting the guns is always important, arguably as important as the shoot-y stuff itself, and Wangker didn’t forget that. The nose houses not only the ERLL and Gauss Rifle, but also a Beagle probe and Guardian EW suite, granting the
Cutlass electronic-warfare capabilities which are vital in the modern aerospace fight and at least evening the EW odds against the
Koroshiya. If the CUT-01D has a ‘weak’ point, it might lie in the heat-dissipation array: a mere twelve DHS means that an alpha-strike means a nasty +9 heat-debt, meaning that ‘slashing attacks’ with the nose-guns and the ‘engaged’ wing are the preferred option if you’re looking to fight again another day. (Thing is, one of the things they teach you in flight-school is that red-line limits only matter if you plan to fly that particular spaceframe again. As demonstrated by the last fight of the Valkyries over Palmyra, if a repeat flight is not an issue, there
are no limits. }:))
The sole production variant is the CUT-01E, and frankly, as much as the ‘Delta’ can wreck faces, at first blush I wasn’t really thrilled with the ‘Echo’. Offloading the Gauss Rifle, the ERMLs, and a freezer, the
Cutlass -01E mounts an ELRM-20 with four tons of ammunition and retains only the ERLL for self-defence. The range-envelope offered by extended-range LRMs is pretty impressive in ground-combat, but unless you’re firing on interceptors, the five-point clusters it delivers aren’t going to have much meaningful impact in an aero fight...
... at least, not against other fighters. I left it overnight, then turned it over in my head again, and it occurred to me that ELRMs outrange almost every other conventional weapon out there, meaning that a squadron of -01Es can engage most DropShips from beyond range of their defensive turrets. At a maximum potential of 7 Capital damage for a six-ship flight, it’s probably not a bay that’s going to kill anything outright, especially in the face of proper AMS coverage, and anything with Sub-Capital weapons (or cap-missiles) will be the exception to the ‘plink with impunity’ rule. Nonetheless, a
Cutlass flight delivering this sort of harrassing fire will be too far away to squash and too aggravating to ignore.
On the ‘offensive’ side of the ball, demand for the
Cutlass is going to be far outstripping supply, and if the new First Prince has the sense Ghu gave a sand-flea (which would already make him an improvement over Caleb, the way I hear it), they’ll channel every article possible to the Combine front, to try to offset the Dracs’
Koroshiyas. It’ll be an interesting match-up, pitting the Davion machine’s agility against the Kuritan one’s resilience (reversing the old F4U/A6M paradigm of the two nations), and the Dracs will be crestfallen to realise their Heavy PPCs can’t make an impression on the dense layers of reflec-armour on the CUT-01D’s forward aspects (15/2 = 7 when rounded down }:)). The
usual maxims apply, of course; those heavy-peepers
can breach your stern, so use your superior manoeuvrability to keep him in front of your ‘three-nine line’ and just keep pounding away with the Gauss Rifle until it breaks something that matters.
Draconian fighter-commanders looking for a ship to smack down the
Cutlass might actually be well-advised to look past the
Koroshiya and reach for its predecessor, the humble SL-15
Slayer. While no faster than the newer machine, its AC/10 gives it a weapon that can generate ‘threshold’ TACs on all aspect of the CUT-01 in spite of its reflec-armour and it has more than enough fuel-endurance to play the ‘outwit-outplay-outlast’ game.
This column’s seriously late as it stands, so I won’t hold it up any longer by tinkering. Besides, there are others here who have a better feel for the expanded list of options the new timeframe enjoys ;), so I’ll leave them to their devices:
All proposed fan-variants belong in the corresponding “FotW Workshop” thread: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,30791.0.html
