Dragon Assault Ship

The **C-21** **"Dragon" Assault Ship** is a quad-rotor VTOL heavy transport and assault aircraft used by the Dark Angels Air Force for full-scale military operations or as support during small incursions into otherwise hostile territory. It is coupled with heavy armor, devastating firepower, and a large cargo bay for additional room for cargo or forces, making the C-21 Dragon Assault Ship a fully-functional, multi-purpose airship.

## Specifications/Overview

### Military Usage

The C-21 Dragon is used for battlefield coordination and allows the navigator to act as forward air controller. Compared to both the AV-14 Hornet and AT-99 Scorpion, the C-21 Dragon is significantly larger, slower, and less maneuverable. However, with its panoply of heavy machine guns, dozens of rocket and missile pods, and possible complement of door-gunners, it can function as an excellent lead gunship when mainline Scorpions are not around or available. To prevent potentially catastrophic friendly-fire incidents resulting from careless use of such firepower, all but the door guns are constrained by friendly fire **IFF** (Identification Friend or Foe) avoidance codes for safety. Otherwise, it acts mainly as a military air transport and air assault vehicle, utilizing its ability to land numerous infantry, droids, and other military vehicles.

### Weapons/Armament

The Dragon Assault Ship has the ability to deploy many infantry units and droid units at once from its loading bay and is armed with a variety of missiles and rockets such as: four **TK-411 WAFAR** (Wrap-Around Fin Aerial Rocket) Air-to-Ground rocket racks with each rack carrying 285 rockets for a total of 1,140 rockets, two incendiary **AG-MFM 332 thermobaric warheads** missile racks with each rack carrying 285 missiles for a total of 570 missiles, two **Hawkeye HELLFIRE** Air-to-Air missiles pods with each pod carrying 4 missiles for a total of 8 missiles, sixteen GUA-23/A Heavy Autocannons (four dual-linked and two quad-linked), twelve CS-40 grenade launcher pods that can be changed with gas canisters, four additional rocket pods, plus two dual and two quad automatic gatling gun systems. The air-to-ground missiles and rocket pods are mounted on three huge stub pylons at each side, which are all in a symmetrical set.

Rather than aiming manually, a Tauran gunner indicates targets and delegates tasks to the multiple gun and missile computer systems, which then execute orders accordingly.

### Defenses

The Dragon has a 90mm lightweight composite sandwich armor of alloy platings, ten layers of layered titanium, plasteel, ceramic plates, ablative rubber and Kevlar weave. This armor is capable of resisting 45mm AP rounds and the detonation of proximity missiles. Because the gunship has such a big target profile, it is also protected by **ray shields** and **particle shields** to increase its survivability. It is also well-shielded against electromagnetic pulse and ion weaponry.

### Design/Propulsion

Its standard propulsion system has been modified, granting it much more forward velocity. The Dragon's original system relied solely on its four rotors for speed, which made it very maneuverable, but unsurprisingly slow. However, jet thrusters have now been added alongside its original four rotors to allow for much higher velocities while moving forward, while maintaining its impressive maneuverability.

The many weapons of the gunship are all controlled from a single central gunnery station housed in a separate cockpit just off to the side of the pilot cockpit. This gives the gunner excellent vision everywhere but to their starboard, but as every weapon had its own camera, and they are all controlled by computer systems, this is not much of an issue. The pilot themselves is seated in the forward cockpit and used standard rotorcraft controls. These inputs are then translated by the flight computer and directed to the four ducted fan rotor systems mounted on the corners of the fuselage.

Unlike the smaller aircraft in service, each of the Dragon's rotors does not have cyclic pitch control. Instead the ducts themselves rotate, and the collective pitch of each duct can be controlled independently. This makes the Dragon a fairly nimble craft despite its blunt airframe with its 105 knot top speed matching that of the Scorpion. If a single rotor system fails, the diagonally opposing rotor system is automatically moved to zero pitch within 40 milliseconds by the flight computer. The remaining two rotors are then set to 150% pitch and run at contingency rpm, pushing the blade tips to just below the speed of sound. Since this state can only be sustained for two minutes, an immediate emergency landing is required.

### Navigation and Imaging

The Dragon is equipped with instruments for navigation such as FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) for night time sorties and operations and radar capabilities for low visibility circumstances.