GblaRCS Chpt 37

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 37 -==
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"Niops was in an arms race against an opponent that they knew was already one lap ahead of them. That the opponent in question was situated thousands of light years away did not enter into their calculations when determining how much effort they wanted to devote into weapon research and development. Already a generation or two more advanced in military technology than the Successor States of the late 2820's to start with, by the end of the Second Succession War forty years later the Great Houses had fallen back a generation whereas Niops had continued to move ahead. The end result of this growing disparity was of course that when Niops finally came to blows with one of the Great Houses the war was exactly as one-sided as most people in the Inner Sphere expected it to be, just in completely the other direction."Stephen J. Tran, Red Star Rising: A History of Niops 2800-2900 - Niops Press, 2915
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===Prototyping===
Military Research & Development Facility – Niops Association (Niops V) – 2839
Most of the people that worked there now called the place the 'Skunk Works', though it was likely that many of them knew the centuries old origin of the nickname, General Jenna Romanov considered as she prepared for her first visit. Now past her hundredth birthday and starting to feel old, though like most of those born on Terra she looked great for her age, she was starting to feel the need to make sure everything was running as it should be so that when she eventually retired and handed over command to Franklin Hallis the transition should be smooth.
Romanov had also come around to the idea that she might want to leave a more personal legacy behind in the form of children, with the Iron Wombs taking care of that. One thing she did not want to deal with at this age was actually raising them, which meant surreptitiously looking around for a family that might take on that responsibility for her and once she got back to Niops VII she planned to talk to a few people about that.
Not that she was in any hurry to rush back there. If nothing else the lower gravity on Niops V put a spring in her step that made her feel eighty again and she resolved to go for a run later, one that wouldn't leave her knees begging for mercy. Decades spent as a reluctant farmer on Buffalo Meadows had messed up her joints more than PT during her military career ever did. It was pretty obvious from her perspective now why the usual career move was to run away from the family farm to go join the army, not the other way around.
That was exactly what Brigadier Nellis had done himself of course, his brother inheriting the farm as a result, their respective time as farmers resulting in an occasional conversation between Romanov and Nellis about soil pH or crop yields in a Red Dwarf system that tended to bore General Hallis and Admiral Bremman completely out of their minds.
As for Hallis himself, if she wasn't suspicious that as soon as she was out of the picture he and his ilk would create a Romanov bloodname, as some of them had already suggested thinking that she would love the idea for some reason, Jenna Romanov might have been more inclined to go the sibko route for her potential Ironborn offspring. As it was however she had strong reservations about the whole thing and was hoping to find a young family that was looking to expand, and hopefully not just to get that tax break Olson had brought in for people with a lot of kids.
Still all of that could wait until she got back home, for now all her focus should be directed towards her informal inspection of the Niops V Skunk Works. Relocated from its original and temporary home on Niops VII to larger and more secure premises the R&D facility Romanov was visiting that day was still being expanded as funding became available, although being mostly below the surface you wouldn't be able to tell that from the air, or from orbit.
For the first ten years or so after the SLDF had arrived, Research and Development of more advanced weaponry had been restricted due to the need to direct what money and resources that were available into projects that gave the best bang for the buck. Upgrading the battlemechs and aerospace fighters of the 295th and NAM up to the standards of the Wolverine machines would increase the combat potential of the SLDF quicker and more cheaply than anything else, for one thing Hallis's people had arrived with the factories needed to do so already, and for this reason further development of most of the next-generation clan equipment that had been in prototype stage at the start of the 2820's had been given a low priority.
The second-generation of Extended-Range Large Laser had been in prototype before Operation Klondike, a period when the clans still cooperated on research as Nicholas Kerensky was prioritizing retaking the Pentagon Worlds over competition between the clans, so despite it being a Clan Nova Cat project the Wolverines had known enough above it to get them into production in time to equip the HSR-250-Dn Hussar Light 'Mech. Other equipment not so far down the development path at the time of the Secession, such as the new model of Gauss Rifle Clan Burrock were supposed to be working on for example, were more of an unknown quantity. In that particular case, as with others, it wasn't deemed worth the amount of effort that would have been required to try and catch up with the Burrocks anytime soon, especially given that the Improved Gauss Rifle the Wolverines already had was itself an advance on Star League equipment anyway.
Of course, as the point neared that all of the SLDF machines had been brought up to the latest clan-spec circa 2823, Kerensky's people having surely advanced on from there themselves in the interim, the priority was now to make sure Niops didn't fall too behind the clans and that meant creating the 'Skunk Works', taking another look at the tech which had been in various stages of design in the period between Operation Klondike and Operation Switchback. After sixteen years of effectively treading water in weapons development, the men and women who had once put Clan Wolverine at the forefront of military technology were now being put back to work in order to catch up with the frontrunners again and they all knew how important a task it was.
Thanks to experienced civil engineers and construction workers, some of whom had once been involved in building the secure Brian Caches in the Pentagon Worlds, and greatly assisted by imported heavy machinery Niops had purchased from the Magistracy, the Skunk Works facility was dug in deep and when completed could likely withstand anything short of a nuclear warhead in the hundreds of kilotons range set to surface-burst. It was certainly no Castle Brian, the legendarily tough fortifications of the Star League, but it was intended to be a tough nut to crack nonetheless and was about as good as it could be, given the allocated budget and the number of personnel who could be spared for its construction anyway.
Situated over a hundred kilometers from Chapterhouse, the industrial town where the large majority of the factories belonging to the Niops Association had been sited until the SLDF turned up twelve years before, there was no road leading to the facility so getting there required a VTOL or a dropship and that day Jenna Romanov had arrived in one of the former, catching a ride there in a Vector after visiting the Hussar manufacturing plant earlier on. Amazingly, despite the mech factory having been up-and-running for a few years now they had only just finished backfilling the old open-cast mine it had been built at the bottom of, although to be fair part of that was down to the difficulty of periodically melting large amounts of rock into lava and pouring it in like cement to help hold the bulk of the material together.
The Vector had set down next to a drab, non-descript building on the surface that housed the main elevators and from there Romanov was ushered down to the main complex and then through several grey concrete-lined tunnels to where the new Battlemech prototype she had been asked to check out before moving over to the directed-energy-weapons research bureau she was mainly there to see was waiting. Apparently the mech would have to be dismantled to get it out of there as the two-hundred-ton capacity cargo elevator to that level wasn't expected to be installed and running for another six months, but the huge cavern-like space where it had been put together for initial testing was more than large enough to put the thing through its paces.
As she entered the room following the technician who had been sent to guide her from the entrance, Romanov found herself looking at the prototype of the next model of Hussar and had to agree that they were right that you couldn't possibly mistake it for the one currently in production. All the additional aerials and that protruded from the rear torso, and the others sticking out of the turret on top, made the thing very distinctive even from a distance. Once you got closer a trained eye could also pick out changes made to several of the sensors that seemed to have been taken from a different machine entirely, this being obvious from the fact they were painted a different color than SLDF olive drab.
"General Romanov." a man in a khaki jumpsuit unadorned by anything but a name badge came up to greet her. "Doctor Richard Frasier, Project Lead" he introduced himself.
"Nice to meet you in person at last." Romanov replied. "So, this is the new toy?" she asked.
"Yes Ma'am, it took us a while to integrate all the new electronic systems but we've finally got something superior enough to the HSR-250-Dn to warrant replacing it in production" he said happily.
"The 250 has only been in production a couple of years" Romanov pointed out. "Hard to believe it's already outdated enough to warrant replacement" she said doubtfully.
"Oh, but it is" Frasier replied confidently. "Fortunately we'll be able to retrofit the new electronics package from this model into the current one, so those already built aren't going to be obsolete and fit for the junkyard before they've barely seen service" he told her. "I should probably send a note of thanks to Samantha Hollister for agreeing to fund the project before she retired from the Department of Trade and Industry, without her backing and belief in what we were trying to accomplish we couldn't have made it this far so fast."
Romanov dearly hoped he was right about being able to refit the Hussar 250 to the new proposed spec because the bean-counters at the treasury would go nuts about all the money wasted on them if he wasn't. "Okay, run me through it. What's so special about this thing anyway?" she wanted to know.
Frasier smiled, clearly proud of his creation. "In simple terms it's the way we've integrated the mech's own sensors and communications systems with the Beagle Active Probe and the Guardian ECM so that it's more than the sum of its parts" he began to explain. "As you likely know already the Hussar was originally designed with an improved communications system to assist with its scouting role, and also make it somewhat more resistant to ECM jamming. What you may not know, because it wasn't an SLDF design but a Clan Wolverine one, is that the Stag had both an Improved Communication system and an Improved Sensor suite which together made it one of the most sophisticated Battlemechs ever made, at least as regards its electronics."
"I did know that." Romanov told him, although the SLDF had mothballed such machines for fear of the clans noticing them somehow she had studied them intently. The Stag was particularly interesting to her because somehow the scientists and technicians of Clan Wolverine had taken a poorly regarded mech like the Vulcan and somehow used it as the basis for a far, far superior machine. "The additional aerials required for the comms and sensors are the reason you called it the Stag in the first place" she recalled. "They're supposed to look a little like antlers."
"Right" Frasier confirmed, smile widening. "I actually designed those systems for the Stag myself, though it wasn't me that came up with the name."
Romanov looked up at the prototype. "To cut a long story short I'm assuming you're going to tell me you've stuffed the sensor and communication systems from the Stag into a Hussar" she assumed.
"Well yes, but actually no" Frasier replied, shaking his head. "The Hussar carries a Beagle Active Probe and a Guardian ECM system, and the electronic suites on the Stag weren't optimized for integration with those so it would have been sub-optimal to do so."
"I'm confused" Romanov admitted.
"Okay, so basically we worked our way around the problem, Ma'am." Frasier told her. "Like the Hussar, the Mercury II mounts both a Beagle and a Guardian, with its electronics designed to work with them from the ground up. And since I also helped design the sensors and comms for the Mercury II, and I was far too lazy to start again completely from scratch in doing so, at their core they're near identical to those of the Stag." he explained.
"Ah, so you kludged together the electronics from the Stag and the Mercury II and then stuffed them into the Hussar after ripping out the original electronics?" Romanov now concluded.
"I wouldn't use the word 'kludge' myself, but essentially yes" Frasier replied, somewhat defensively. "We had to beef up the power distribution system to the electronics a little because they pull a lot more watts now than normal, and as you can see we needed extra antennae as on the Stag, but what we've been calling the Hussar 260 now has not only the best comms on the battlefield, it basically sneers at most ECM jamming and has superlative ECCM of its own, it also has sensors with an additional fifty-percent effective range over the original Royal Hussar, the HSR-200-Db, or our own HSR-250-Dn" he declared proudly. "It's now the ultimate in scout mechs" he claimed with some justification.
One of the technicians stood nearby coughed and once Frasier looked her way she mouthed a couple of words at him.
Frasier glared at the woman concerned who was giving him a disparaging look in return. "On the recommendation of our mechwarrior test-pilot some of the team have been calling it the 'Winged Hussar' because they think the extra antennae look a little like, well like wings, and apparently that's got some kind of significance in military history" Frasier told Romanov reluctantly. He didn't actually like the name himself, but had promised his staff to do so and they would be annoyed with him if he didn't.
"It does," Romanov told him. "Who's the mechwarrior?" she asked out of interest.
"Jackie Mroczkiewicz, she's not around today, I don't know if you know her?" Frasier replied.
"Not personally but her surname may explain why she'd be pushing to call it the 'Winged Hussar' because it's a Polish thing" Romanov told him. "Some of her ancestors may have charged down some of mine on horseback during the 17th Century. That is when they weren't charging down Swedes, Ottomans or whoever else was in front of them anyway" she said wryly. "The so-called 'Winged Hussars' were the elite of the Polish heavy cavalry, probably the best in the whole of Europe at the time, which is saying something because Europe in that era very much resembled the Age of War with everyone fighting everyone else, all the time, so the military art was highly developed."
"The military art, not the military science?" Fraiser queried.
"My field became a little more scientific and rigorous in approach a little later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries" Romanov replied. "Better firearms and artillery, not to mention better trained and drilled infantry, made a glorious seventh-century heavy cavalry charge that would have still resembled something from the Middle Ages considerably less viable as a tactic" she continued before chuckling. "Sorry if I'm rambling a little, I'm getting old but I can still remember all those lectures I had to sit through at Sandhurst Military Academy a lifetime ago. It's surprising how relevant they can be to modern warfare."
"Modern warfare also being a science not an art no doubt." Frasier supposed.
"It is for us, I'm not entirely sure about much of the Inner Sphere, or the clans for that matter, they seem to be lurching back towards feudalism and knightly chivalric orders at a rate of knots" Romanov told him. "There were militaries a thousand years ago with a greater understanding of combined-arms-warfare than you'd see in some battles these days. I mean honorable single-combat mostly went out the window before the Winged Hussars were a thing but somehow they've made a comeback, it's ridiculous. Amateurish even."
Fraiser nodded. "Well, I can only hope that the force-multiplier that the Hussar 260 represents as a superior scout mech only bolsters our own scientific and professional military strength" he said. "I can send you a full report on the machine of course, full technical specifications and our estimates as to how soon we can replace the 250-Dn in production" he said. "Fortunately, because we already have the production lines for the electronic systems of the Stag and Mercury II in storage we'll not be starting from scratch and won't need to wait for a Project Workshop to be available."
"That's very much a good thing, they're already at capacity and booked up for years" Romanov replied. "Am I right that you were also involved in developing the Pulverizer?" she asked him.
"Only tangentially, I helped out a little integrating its Guardian ECM into its comms and sensors" Frasier replied. "Why?"
"I was wondering why the Enhanced ER PPC on the Pulverizer is more accurate than the one on the Stag II, idle curiosity really." Romanov told him.
"Jones should know, he helped design the ER PPC and was more heavily involved with the Pulverizer than I was". Frasier replied.
"Jones?"
"Nathan Jones, he's part of the team working on the next generation ER PPC that I think you're scheduled to take a look at later so you should be able to have a word with him." Frasier replied. "For now though I'll give you a quick look in the cockpit of the 260-Dn and answer any questions you may have about it."
"Different cockpit layout from the current 250-Dn I guess?" Romanov surmised.
"Slightly, we've tried to keep them very similar for the sake of the mechwarriors transitioning from one to the other." Frasier replied. "The sensor screen is laid out a little differently, and there are a few more buttons on the comms system, but Mroczkiewicz herself doesn't think it's too cluttered or confusing for that to represent a problem."
"I'll jump in the chair, take a proper look" Romanov told him, always happy to get the opportunity to sit inside a BattleMech and not behind a desk. "So, what's next for you and your team after this?" she asked out of interest as she headed towards the ladder set up to facilitate reaching the cockpit.
"We're going to take another look at both the Guardian ECM and the Beagle Active Probe, preliminary work indicates it might be possible to shave half-a-ton in weight off both and if we can do that then it'll make the proposed HSR-265-Dn Hussar less risky."
Romanov stopped in her tracks at the bottom of the ladder. "What the hell is the HSR-265-Dn?" she wanted to know.
"It's essentially the HSR-260-Dn only with Target Acquisition Gear mounted coaxially to the ER Large Laser" Frasier explained. "We could do that now, but we'd have to remove some of the other weaponry, or shave off a ton of armor, and that would make the machine either less useful for anti-infantry work or more fragile. If we can save the weight on the Guardian and Beagle instead we get the TAG without making sacrifices elsewhere so there's no downside" he continued. "Unfortunately, we've got no idea how and when exactly we're going to achieve that goal as yet. It could potentially take another decade or more of R&D, which is why we don't recommend waiting for that new tech to be available as well before switching production from the current machine. As the saying goes, perfect is the enemy of good enough, and the 260 with its superior sensors and comms is more than good enough. After all we already have other scout vehicles equipped with Tag such as the Zephyr hovercraft that can plug the capability gap in the interim."
Romanov thought about all that. With a TAG fitted the ability of the Hussar to not only scout but also paint targets for guided artillery munitions like the Arrow IV could represent a huge potential tactical advantage in the long term, especially if used in conjunction with the longer-ranged sensors. A scenario where one of these things detected enemy machines waiting in ambush before it could be sprung, and then marked them itself for long-range bombardment to turn the tables was just perfect.
Although there was still a definite flaw to what Frasier had been saying before, General Romanov realized.
"If the HSR-265-Dn is going to be superior to this 260-Dn then the 260 isn't the 'ultimate' in scout mechs, it's the penultimate in scout mechs" Romanov corrected his earlier statement, giving him a look that she hoped conveyed the wisdom of old age and not that she was a pedantic jerk.
Frasier thought about that. "Yes Ma'am" he conceded the point. "You are technically correct, the best kind of correct" he praised her.
"Details matter." Romanov replied, starting to climb the ladder. "Also, on my authority as Head of the Joint Chiefs and Acting Commanding Officer of the Eleventh Army we're going with calling this thing the Winged Hussar." she told him, tone indicating that this was her final word on the matter.
Frasier sighed. "Lieutenant Mroczkiewicz will be thrilled to hear that when she arrives back here." he replied flatly, clearly less than enthused himself as he followed her up the ladder so he could guide her around the new cockpit layout.
----
===Meeting Doctor Jones===
After half-an-hour looking over the HSR-260-Dn Winged Hussar, concluding that it was indeed well worth switching production to it from the current model, Romanov was guided to another part of the complex where they were working on the new model of Streak SRM. Finding herself looking with amusement at the sign hung outside which said Calm down, it's not Rocket Science. No, wait, it is Rocket Science! YOU SHOULD BE NERVOUS! she was grinning as the door was opened for her.
Originally a project of Clan Star Adder, which had produced a prototype a couple of years before Operation Klondike and had the thing in production for their own Battlemechs before the Wolverines declared independence, the new model of Streak SRM launcher was not only lighter than its Star League era progenitor it also utilized the longer-ranged missile originally developed for the Improved SRM so it could reach out further.
The launcher that they demonstrated to Romanov was a Streak SRM-6 that weighed thirty percent less than the system it was intended to replace and carried missiles that had thirty percent more effective range. It was in fact so superior that the only reason it had no been brought into service years before was that it would require a whole-new production line and Niops was in no position until now to free up some time in a Project Workshop for that.
It was of course another example of Perfect is the enemy of good enough in that the Wolverines had arrived with a production line for the Improved SRM and getting those churned out in sufficient number to upgrade SLDF machines could be done right away without delaying other vital work.
With Project Workshop III-C coming on line next year there was finally a little headroom, which meant they could put the new Streak Launchers and missiles into production, thus the Skunk Works was making sure they were fully ready for that, with a production model available that had all the kinks sorted out.
As she was shown around and talked to the scientists and engineers of the rocket development team Romanov was also told that their next project after the Streak was to perfect the Improved LRM launcher, which had only ever been intended to be an interim design. As far as Romanov could tell the only major difference was that the perfected launcher would do away with the problem LRMs usually had of having a minimum range below which they couldn't hit a target, the missiles arcing up over them. It wasn't remotely as much of a leap in armaments technology as the Improved LRM launcher had been over the standard type, the former being only half the weight of the latter, but Romanov was assured that they could still use the existing iLRM production line to make the new launchers when they out of prototype so the switch wasn't going to draw excessive resources away from elsewhere for little return and shouldn't take too long to put into service.
Another longer-term project the Rocketeers, as they apparently liked to call themselves, were hoping to get to eventually was an improved Arrow IV launcher and missile. They were confident they could knock at least couple of tons of weight off the launcher by utilizing the new lightweight alloys available, and if the superior rocket engine design of the Improved SRM could be scaled up they could increase the effective range as well.
Given that the proposed TAG-equipped HSR-265-Dn would synergize nicely with a better Arrow IV system Romanov suggested that they might want to touch base with Doctor Frasier and put in a joint request for funding when they got to that stage.
Querying as to their input into 'Project Hittile' the rocket scientists had laughed and assured her that they could have a compatible SRM and LRM ready years, if not decades before the people still trying to figure out the electronics on the Starfire seeker had achieved their goal. For that matter the small team who had studied the advanced Tandem-Charge Warhead used by the Headhunter had already completed their work and had a reversed-engineered copy ready for testing.
The next stop on her tour brought General Romanov to where the team working on laser weaponry were eagerly waiting to show off their new Extended Range Medium Laser. A prototype of the weapon had arrived on Niops along with the Wolverines, but while replacing all the standard medium lasers in the arsenal with longer-ranged ones would have been the ideal, it simply wasn't developed enough to do that back in 2827.
While the prototype had been the same size as the weapon it was supposed to replace, it massed another half-ton making one-for-one switching out of the old for the new problematic even if they had arrived with a production line for them, which they did not.
The chances were considered likely that the other clans had a perfected ER Medium Laser with that extra half-ton shaved off before the SLDF even reached Niops, with the Jade Falcons openly known to be leading in the race to get there first, so while it was welcome to finally catch up not doing so until a decade and a half later was hardly ideal.
Still, the new weapon was now finally ready for production, the same size and weight as the venerable medium laser, forty percent more powerful and with thirty percent more effective range. As a downside it also produced a lot more waste heat, but double heat sinks could cope with that, especially the next generation boron-arsenide ones, so Romanov was more than happy with the design.
On a less positive note, development of better pulse lasers was not nearly so far along. They thought they could have something better than the Improved Large Pulse Laser in a year or two, but anything smaller than that was going to take a lot more R&D.
Well, you go to war with the lasers you have, not the lasers you wished you had, and the lasers they had were still going to be damn good as long as they played to their strengths, Romanov knew. Fortunately the new Extended Range Large Laser and Enhanced ERPPC had already pushed SLDF tactics heavily towards fighting at a distance and avoiding close-up brawling so shorter ranged weaponry like pulse lasers were only nice to have, not a necessity.
The the team working on ballistic weaponry were apologetic that they hadn't yet made any progress into developing successors to the various types of Improved Autocannon that the clans came up with over thirty years ago. This was partially down to the fact that they had spent a couple of years coming up with a prototype, then a production model of a class 5 autocannon that looked like a class 2 for the new Blackjack but they also freely admitted that because Clan Wolverine had concentrated most of its efforts towards directed-energy weapons they were behind the curve as regards the development of new LB-X and Ultra types.
They did have examples of prototype LB-X and Ultra type autocannons the clans had fielded for Klondike, so they weren't entirely starting from scratch now they were in a position to start working to perfect them, however the engineer that Romanov had a frank discussion with about it admitted that if they had a greatly superior weapon ready for production within the next ten years she would be very much surprised. In large part that was due to the need to develop new alloys and ceramics in order to shave off a useful amount of weight from gun-barrels, and unfortunately all the good materials-science people were already assigned to developing a better endo-steel and new types of armor plate.
Asked by Romanov if she thought the Clans themselves would already have better autocannon by now the engineer had replied with a flat 'Yes', with the only doubt being whether Clans Coyote or Mongoose would have gotten theirs into production first. The engineer hoped it was Mongoose because it had become widely known in Wolverine circles since the secession that their Khan, Mitchell Loris, had privately agreed with Khan McEvedy that Nicholas Kerensky was a tyrannical nutjob, which raised Loris and his clan quite a lot in people's estimations.
It was a little annoying that the Skunk Works ballistics engineers couldn't say when they might be able to come up with a successor to the Improved Gauss Rifle either, because that was a long-range weapon that would fit in very well with current SLDF tactical doctrine, but at least the team working on the new Particle Projector Cannon were able to claim with some justification that they now had something just as hard-hitting and with longer range.
If the astronomers and astrophysicists were still considered the pinnacle of Niops society, being seen as an elite set higher on the social ladder than other academics, let alone the bulk of the population, within the military R&D community it was the Particle Projector Cannon people who were the rockstars and when Romanov reached their department it showed in just how well funded they seemed to be.
When Clan Wolverine unveiled their Enhanced ERPPC (eERPPC) in late 2822 the other clans had been shocked, but if they had known that it was only ever intended to be an interim production weapon while McEvedy's people worked on its replacement they would have been appalled.
If not for the malevolence of Jason Karrige of the Widowmakers, and the political machinations of ilKhan Kerensky, the more powerful Improved Enhanced ERPPC (ieERPPC) would have likely been in production by early 2824 and that weapon would itself have been potentially been succeeded by a more compact version in preliminary development some time the year after.
Unfortunately in reality the need to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge in a hurry as Sarah McEvedy initiated Operation Switchback had abruptly halted the research and since a production line for the eERPPC was what they had when they got to Niops the eERPPC was what they ran with when upgrading all the mechs, aerospace fighters and dropships they had.
They had actually had a working production ready Improved Enhanced ERPPC over a year ago, Romanov had seen one tested, but resources being diverted to produce Star League era ERPPC's for export, and a decision being taken to run up a good stockpile of spare Enhanced ERPPC's before switching over to its replacement, meant that they had only recently ended production of those with the factory currently in the process of being re-tooled for its successor.
Jenna Romanov wasn't on Niops V to see that particular weapon though, she was there to see what they eventually intended to replace that with.
Or rather the two different weapons they intended to replace it with.
Firstly the Compact Extended Range Particle Projector Cannon, or cERPPC had the firepower of the ieERPPC but in a lighter, and yes more compact package, and the Skunk Works already had a working prototype that Romanov would get to see in action. According to the design team, ideally they would have skipped the ieERPPC entirely and gone straight from the eERPPC to the cERPPC, but the lightweight alloys and ceramics and an entirely new type of capacitor needed to make the latter meant it would need a whole new production line, whereas you could make the ieERPPC on the one they already had with only minimal re-tooling.
Since the cERPPC wasn't actually more powerful than the ieERPPC, and you could have the latter in service a lot faster and with far less capital outlay for new plant and machinery, the compact version was going to be shelved for now. Maybe by 2850 with even more Project Workshops available it might make sense to put them into production but for now there were just better things to do with the available resources.
One of those things was to take another look at the ieERPPC and consider, what if instead of making it smaller and lighter you kept it the same size and looked at what you could achieve in terms of making it hit harder or reach out further?
This was when Romanov got to meet Nathan Jones, once the wunderkind of Particle Projector Cannon research who had helped invent the Improved PPC in his early twenties, the Enhanced ERPPC in his mid-twenties, and after over a decade of not being able to develop the particle projector cannon still further, much to his chagrin, was finally back doing what he was best at.
At least thanks to the university he had managed to get his MEng degree and then his doctorate in the interim, so the time hadn't been totally wasted, though Jones would have enjoyed it more if not for that lunatic who lectured in high-energy-physics.
What kind of maniac marks you down for poor penmanship, Jones had complained at being handed a grade of A- on a test where all the answers were correct just because the handwriting wasn't neat enough?
Jones suspected it was because physicists like Farnstrom don't like to think that mere engineers such as himself could be just as smart as they were.
'Nathan Jones?" Romanov queried, spotting his name badge.
"Hey Lady, you call him Doctor Jones!" a young man with a Capellan accent interrupted indignantly. The fact that second and even some third generation Capellans still didn't have the 'native' accent of Star League English spoke to the fact Niops society had yet to fully integrate.
"It's alright kid." Jones told him. "Can you go make sure that the firing range is ready for the next test of the cERPPC?" he requested.
"Yes, Sir" the young man replied, dashing off.
"Yes, I'm Nathan Jones." the man confirmed. "Sorry about that General Romanov, that was my lab assistant Wan." he explained. "He's very loyal."
"Nice to meet you, Doctor Jones." Romanov replied, smiling. "Doctor Frasier, I guess you know him, told me earlier that you worked on integrating the Enhanced ERPPC with the Pulverizer and the Stag II?"
"I did, but that feels like a lifetime ago now" Jones confirmed.
"It was less than twenty years ago, and to an old fart like me forty years ago feels like the week before last." Romanov joked. "It's just idle curiosity but I was wondering why the same weapon on the Pulverizer was noticeably more accurate than on the Stag?" she asked. "Was it just because the one on the Pulverizer was torso mounted?"
"Sort of." Jones replied, thinking back to when he worked on it. "We basically built the Pulverizer around the gun using a special harness, rather than installing it as on most machines. The Stag II was basically just a re-built Stag with a bigger engine and the eERPPC arm mounted."
"Thought it must be something like that." Romanov replied.
"When we were retrofitting our hand-built Devastator assaults to carry the eERPPC, I was involved in that too, we tried to do the same thing with them as on the Pulverizer" he told her. "It's PPC bays also being torso mounted we hoped it might be possible, but we found we couldn't without re-building the whole mech which wasn't an option" Jones recalled. "If we decide to start making the Devastator again we could probably make the brand new ones using the torso weapon bay design from the Pulverizer though, except for it having two of them not one of course."
"Interesting" Romanov replied thoughtfully.
"I'd love to think that by the time we've got something like the Devastator coming off the production line the new toy we're working on will be ready, but don't get your hopes up" Jones told her. "The LRPPC will require as much of a technological leap over the cERPPC as it did over the original PPC though, so if it's available before I'm thinking about retirement, I'll be feeling pretty pleased with myself."
Romanov nodded. "But you're sure the proposed Long Range PPC is actually viable?" she asked.
"Oh, quite sure, as long as we don't set our sights too high on what's actually achievable." Jones replied confidently. "The current design goals of perhaps ten percent more range and firepower than the ieERPPC in a weapon of the same mass and volume isn't the really tricky part, it'll be achieving it while not producing truly excessive amounts of waste heat that'll be more difficult" he said. "The new model of double-heat-sink we'll have soon can only help so much. We want something that's efficient enough that the mechwarrior at the controls of the machine carrying one doesn't have to fear pressing the fire-button repeatedly for fear of being roasted alive in his cockpit. If we didn't have to worry about that we'd just slap on a big capacitor and a longer barrel and be done with it, but we want a good weapon, not a kludge."
"Admiral Bremman mentioned something about the technology being developed for the LRPPC possibly being applicable to naval use?" Bremman recalled. "Do you know anything about that?"
"Yes, it was probably my initial thoughts about that put to paper which he read" Jones confirmed. "It's very early days of course, but our initial work indicates that several of the various new designs for parts that'll come together to form the LRPPC will likely scale up better than what we use now. If so, it'll make the proposed Enhanced Naval PPC considerably more viable as something to look into in the future" he said. "It definitely won't be something we can just retrofit into current Naval PPCs though, they'll have to be built entirely from scratch. Push another twenty-percent more wattage into the big guns on the Zughoffer Weir and they'd explode… which is kinda sub-optimal" he added wryly.
"Oh well, I'm sure the admiral would find something to do with all the old Naval PPC's after they've been taken out and replaced with better ones." Romanov reasoned.
"Best if he did." Jones responded. "Even only counting Heavy NPPCs there's forty-eight on the Zug and sixteen each on Bismark, Rawhide, and Ulithi so it would be a hell of a shame to just scrap them all." he opined. "They're each worth more than a Thug assault" he continued. "Talking about the Thug, since we're going to be essentially hand-building them in a Project Workshop, rather than mass produce them on a production line, as an experiment it's been suggested we fit their arms with the hot-swap modular weapon bays they developed for the Stuka from the ones on the old Mercury and the Dragoon. If so, we're really going to want to make sure that the power-couplings are beefed up because if not they won't be able to mount an LRPPC later on. They'll pull a lot more wattage than anything we use now and why not future-proof them I say?"
"Certainly sounds like the thing to do, if you send the suggestion through channels I'll give my endorsement." Romanov replied.
"Great" Jones replied smiling. "The cERPPC should be ready by now if you want to watch it burn clean through some heavy armour plate" he suggested. "Does as much effective damage to armor plate as a gauss rifle but it's far smaller and only masses a third as much."
"Could have used one of those fighting Amaris." Romanov replied with a sigh. Though on the bright side there were still plenty of other people worth shooting at she considered.
==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : In the game of battletech some machines have Design Quirks these being positive or negative and reflecting something different about that particular mech or aerospace fighter. In the case of the Stag developed by Clan Wolverine it has the Improved Communications and Improved Sensors design quirks reflecting it posessing to superior electronics suites to most mechs. The Hussar also has Improved Communications (useful for a scout mech) but switching it out for the even better electronics used by the Stag seemed like something they might want to do. I can't imagine that the Wolverine scientists and technicians that designed the electronics for the Stag weren't also the people that did so for the Beagle and Guardian equipped Mercury II, so if anyone could kludge them together it should be the people that made the things in the first place.Adding Target Aquisition Gear (TAG) to the new HSR-260-Dn "Winged Hussar" to create the HSR-265-Dn would be a useful next step (Clan Wolverine always favored the use of artillery) but in order to find the weight needed to mount it they need both a lighter Beagle and Guardian unless they want to downgrade the machine in other areas (in canon the clans managed to lighten both the ECM and Probe to one ton by 2832, Niops is playing catch-up here).Niops is also behind the clans in several other fields of military research at this point (for example they've just gotten a new Streak SRM that the clans had over a decade earlier). The weapons where prototypes existed before they left in 2823 they're not quite so far behind in (eg. there were prototype clan Extended-Range Medium Lasers during Operation Klondike) but in others such as Gauss Rifles (the modern Clan version dating to 2828) or Medium Pulse Lasers (in clan service 2827) it'll be a while before they catch up.Despite inventing the Enhanced ERPPC (eERPPC) in the first place they're even behind on those at this point, with Clan Snow Raven coming up with the more powerful, lighter and smaller Clan ERPPC (CERPPC) in 2826 (presumably using captured Wolverine R&D). If you want the in-game stats the Improved Enhanced ERPPC (ieERPPC) is a 15 damage eERPPC while the Compact ERPPC (cERPPC) is... well it's a CERPPC basically.Known by the nickname Indiana 'Minnesota Jones' at university while getting his PhD what Doctor Nathan Jones doesn't know about Particle Projector Cannon isn't worth knowing (there had to be a reason why Clan Wolverine was ahead in PPC tech, he's got a lot to do with it).
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