Von Esling Aircraft Carrier

**Key Features** | »*"Sky Soldier Series"* UCAV hangar bay (x5)»Blackout missile assembly line»Internal assembly line for UCAVs»Extremely powerful communications array»Personal SPAM module (overworked)

*"We shall end this quickly!"*

- Aircraft Carrier captain

## Tactical Analysis

* **Our drones will blot out the sun:** Equipped with an even bigger variety of UCAV post WW3. The Von Esling squadrons of “Sky Soldier” drones, consisting of the original Sky Knight bomber for buildings, Sky Paladin fighters for heavy aircraft, Sky Cavalier dive bombers for infantry and vehicles, and Sky Crusader interceptors for nimbler aircraft, can overwhelm even the most heavily defended installation. Should any drones be shot down, the carrier can quickly and automatically replenish them. Some carrier captains have been known to use their drones to screen for more-precious Allied aircraft.

* **Why so dark?:** In addition to all those combat drones, a carrier's launch bay conceals the Blackout Missile, which can be used to power down vehicles or structures from an extreme range. The missile's defensive and offensive potential makes carriers even more survivable alone, or even more useful in a strike force.

* **Punishment at a premium:** Aircraft carriers are expensive, high-tech vessels, which mean they are a relatively uncommon sight. Though far less cost-prohibitive than some of the failed carrier designs proposed in the past, the model in use today still is one of the priciest fixtures of Allied warfare. Even more so post-war with its new slew of upgrades that comes with the unfortunate cost of cutting down its already thin armour and increasing its price.

* **Knights of the round table:** Seeing the success of using the S.H.R.I.N.K. ray to fit the Apollo’s engine within the much smaller Quasar Drone. Allied engineering have recently started to test out shrinking the Von Esling interior that allows them to add on even more launch bays and SPAM modules to double the capacity of UCAVs it can make and even reducing the time needed to assemble a new blackout missile without having to increase the ships size and mass. But as the effect of long term shrinkage on humans hasn’t been well documented, and the fear of the S.H.R.I.N.K. generator failing and the building-size SPAM modules returning to full size within the Von Esling, only a few crews are given the prototype vessels.

## WWIII Operational History

Many of those living in the free nations have remarked that the sight of an Allied *Von-Esling*-class **Aircraft Carrier** docked at harbour is a thing of beauty. These bold, seafaring beasts are some of the most sophisticated naval vessels ever created, and are the culmination of a joint 10-year military design effort between American, German, British, and French engineers and scientists. This famous collaboration drew some flak for being reactionary to increased Soviet aggression. However, the results soon spoke for themselves, as reports of Allied aircraft carriers effortlessly securing contested waterways and borders soon began to spread in Allied nations and even the Soviet Union.

Today's aircraft carriers are of course dramatically different than the relatively bloated, cost-prohibitive floating-fortress-style aircraft carriers blueprinted but never successfully launched due to the lack of a sufficient power source to fuel their voyages. The speculative design of old-style carriers was eventually abandoned when a German-engineered breakthrough in unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) proved to be the missing link in the carrier's design.

 File:SkyKnightArt.jpg  Though still much larger than the average ship, Allied aircraft carriers forgo the thousands of crew demanded by previous proposals for an elaborate network of automated drone manufacturing-and-launch bays, maintained and operated by a modestly-sized (and expertly-trained) crew. The result is another shining example of the Allies' commitment to efficient, specialised design and conservation of precious resources.

Now in active service worldwide, any given aircraft carrier contains a full complement of Sky Knight-class UCAVs, air-to-surface fighter drones proven to be highly effective in long-range engagements against fortifications and installations. Rather than suffer wear and tear and other unnecessary exposure to harm from being left out on the decks of Carriers, the Sky Knights are concealed in launch bays belowdecks, in facilities made to monitor, control, and maintain full complements of drones at all times. The drones are fast and precise, and each is armed with a powerful 500 lb. armour-piercing bomb similar to Jethroes commonly used by the Allies' Century Bombers. After releasing its payload, a given drone must return to its carrier, where it can rearm.

The aircraft carrier itself is heavily armoured and its hull can even take a direct hit from a Soviet Akula sub torpedo. Its primary armament lies with its Sky Knight squadrons, although the carrier also possesses a firing mechanism for the Blackout Missile, a tactical warhead whose blast overloads all known electrical systems in its area of effect. Overall, the sheer power wielded by these spectacular ships of war means that to helm them is one of the most prestigious posts in the entire Allied military hierarchy.

## Post-War Operational History

It was realised during WW3 that Carriers were inordinately tied to the dependency on CIWS equipped Hydrofoils to protect themselves from any form of aerial combatant, which harmed both parties directly in carrying out their respective duties. The Hydrofoils could not scout ahead of the carrier groups far enough to be useful in acting as early warning or to find landing sites for Assault Destroyers and Landers during amphibious operations and the carriers could do little to support inland combat operations because doing so meant that their covering Hydrofoils had less time to cover their charges.

Allied High Command came to the conclusion that carriers needed some sort of organic air defence, but attempts at mounting the Hydrofoil's *"Icarus"* CIWS onto the carrier were catastrophic. The punishing vibrations of the gun disturbed the launch cycles of the Sky Knight drones, either causing them to crash on takeoff from the internal hull bays of the carrier or landing into said internal hull bays, and their bottomless need for ammunition meant that the carrier's onboard SPAM modules had to split their time between arming the Sky Knights and refilling the Icarus's ammunition wells.

The solution came to the designers of the project when watching one of the many Allied airshows showing off their air force. Specifically, the Apollo was a natural choice to make into the carrier's air defence drone, but upon shrinking down the Apollo airframe to a size capable of being launched from a carrier, it was discovered that the drone was simply too small to carry enough *"Sol"* autocannon ammunition to be of much use. Again, advancements in the pilot capable Apollo saved the project; the designers dropped the *"Sol"* autocannon completely and armed each drone with a Rattler-2 AAM. This worked much to the benefit of the carrier, as the onboard SPAM could easily change the drone's loadout between Jethro 500 lb. bombs and Rattler-2 missiles before take-off.

The resulting drone system worked much like the previous Sky Knight, with a few tweaks; the carrier's crew would program the departing drone flight with its target before takeoff, and using their swarm targeting matrix, the new drones would share the load of locking onto and firing their weapons on a moving aerial target before returning to the carrier to receive their next sortie.

Christened the *"Sky Paladin"*, the curious flying triangles made their first successful sortie from the *ANV "Democracy"* off the coast of Great Britain, ably proving their ability to engage large airborne threats such as Kirovs and Centuries from stand-off ranges from the carrier groups they were launched from. Smaller, more agile threats proved tougher for the drones' swarm targeting matrix to engage, able to slip out of the detection radius of too many drones in the flight to the point where they just flew in confused circles trying to locate their target.

Not to be deterred. The engineers would create a new type of UCAV built to counter the nimbler bombers, leading to the Sky Crusader that uses simple M2 Brownings to shoot down planes.

It was at that point they also realised that smaller, lighter, vessels like the Stingray could easily dodge the Sky Knight bombs and close in to sink the Von Esling without an escort. And another UCAV was created, dubbed the Sky Cavalier, equipped with Dragonblaster missiles and small spectrum-guided bombs to blast away at vessels and amphibious infantry.

So what was meant to be a simple anti-air UCAV escalated into a whole series of “Sky Soldier” UCAVs that lets the Von Esling handle anything. And to get all the upgrades on time (and the sunk cost fallacy), the engineers worked overtime to retrofit all of the current and new Von Esling with the system, and realised they had to cut out some parts of the Von Esling to make it fit. And when Allied high command saw the results it was said that one member spit out an entire cup of tea and another fainted.

While the new system proved to have further improved the Von Esling firepower and let it basically handle anything coming towards it. The new SPAM modules and generators to power them was so large that large sections of the armour had to be cut out to make room. The resulting was that the Von Esling can now face an army by itself but all it took was a single Akula torpedo to sink it. And was now twice it’s original cost.

While Allied High Command was initially furious, they considered this acceptable once the designers reasoned that, as a bombardment vessel, the Von Esling is not meant for frontline combat and that their *"Sky Soldiers"* would be refined enough in the future to be able to engage these targets. In the meantime, the Hydrofoil remains more than capable of quickly dispatching any smaller foes that menace its carrier.

## Just the Stats

 **Armour Type** | Heavy Armour

 **Armour Type** | Thin-Skinned

 **Kill Reward** | 20000

 **DPS** | N/A

 **DPS** | N/A

## Famous Ships

### *"Enterprise-class"*

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### *"Halcyon-class"*

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### *"Von Esling-class"*

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