New Avalon Aviation F-86F-1000 Cosmo Sabre

When the engineers at the newly founded New Avalon Aviation Company sat down to design their first combat aerospacecraft in 2407, they looked to the past for inspiration. Their primary references were the space-capable variants of then-current jet aircraft that made up Earth's first generation of post-Contact starfighter fleets in the early 21st century and the Wedge Defense Force Armory Aerospace Division's "Retrotech" series of aerospacecraft of the 2380s. Like the Retrotech fighters, their inaugural product is based on an earlier aircraft that was obsolete by Earth's 1999 First Contact.

Where the F-86F-1000 Cosmo Sabre differs from its Retrotech cousins, though, is in its engineering DNA. The Retrotech craft were new designs from the ground up, designed by modern engineers with a mandate to make their creations as close to visually indistinguishable as possible from their historical models. The Cosmo Sabre's engineers began with the original design documents for the F-86F Sabre, a United States Air Force frontline jet fighter circa 1954, and adapted the vehicle to modern aerospace technologies, just as the creators of such vintage starfighters as the SF-14E Space Tomcat and SF-18H Cosmo Hornet had in the years immediately following Contact.

In many ways, their job was easier. They were starting with an older design, but the technologies they had to work with, both in terms of integration into the craft and on the design and manufacturing side, were 400 years more advanced and sophisticated. The end result, designated (somewhat with tongue in cheek) the "Block 1000" variant of the F-86F rather than an entirely new subspecies, is a swift and powerful retro-style starfighter that may yet give such Retrotech stalwarts as the F-8Z Super Crusader a run for their money.

Designation: F-86F-1000 Cosmo Sabre
WDF Procurement Number: FJ-1K
Pilot nicknames: Grand
Manufacturer: New Avalon Aviation
Entered service: Still in testing

Power system: Thermodyne TA-76C power converter/fusion reactor
Propulsion system: General Nucleonics J4700-GN-75 axial fusion turbine (rated at 520 KTU)
Speed rating: 105 MGLT
Flight control system: New Avalon Aviation NT-R0 ("Nitro®") dynamic flight control/avionics package
Maneuver rating: 93 DPF
Navigation: Industrial Automaton Model R8F navigation computer system
FTL: NAA CD-1T ("Cordite®") motivator drive unit (hyperdrive)
Drive rating: 0.80
Shields: Thermodyne DF-74 fore/aft projection deflector system
Shield rating: 45 SBD
Armor: NAA "Composition C17®" proprietary alloy hull
Armor rating: 67 RU

Description: All-condition aerospace superiority fighter
Crew: 1

Mass, fully loaded (standard armament): 15,500 lb.
Mass, empty: 11,200 lb.
Reaction mass capacity: 3,000 lb.

DIMENSIONS
Length: 37'1"
Wingspan: 37'
Height: 14'1"

ARMAMENTS
Fixed armaments: 6x Taim & Bak KX5 blaster cannon
Expendable armaments: 2x WDF Armory Beehive Mini-Missile Pods (18x WDF Armory GPM-150Z General Hosement mini-missile each)
2x WDF Armory AIM-91A Reaper II Medium Range Aerospace Intercept Missile*
4x WDF Armory twin standard-arms pylons**

* Specialized hardpoints that do not support other WDF standard expendable arms.
** Outboard pylons are plumbed to support supplementary reaction mass tankage in addition to armament.

ANALYSIS

The Cosmo Sabre is still in early testing, with two of the three YF-86F-1000 prototypes in the hands of WDF test pilots at Zukowsky Flight Test Center on Muroc III and the third undergoing further in-house testing at New Avalon Aviation's own flight test facility on Mathews Memorial Spaceport near the city of New Avalon. Since most of the aerospacecraft's combat testing is not yet complete, it would be premature to offer a full analysis of its capabilities here.

However, based on its published performance statistics (with the caveat that they have not all been proven accurate at this time), the F-86F-1000 appears to stack up well against its primary competition, the WDF Armory's own F-8Z Super Crusader. The Cosmo Sabre is slightly slower but a bit more maneuverable than its larger Retrotech cousin; its shields are marginally weaker but its armor somewhat stronger. Both are capable of carrying 10 standard WDF missiles and have potent fixed armaments; the Super Crusader's four 55mm Hi-X cannon pack a stiffer punch than the Cosmo Sabre's six standard starfighter blasters, but the blasters have greater range and are not dependent on finite ammunition supplies. The Cosmo Sabre's mini-missile pods are not expected to be useful in fighter-to-fighter combat, which is both vehicles' specialty, but they do permit it to take on a small surface/installation attack role, something which requires the F-8Z to switch out some of its main missile armament and possibly reduce its fighter-to-fighter effectiveness.

Interestingly, the designers at New Avalon Aviation chose to base their new craft on the Air Force variant of the original jet aircraft, rather than the FJ Fury naval variant. As such, the Cosmo Sabre is not equipped to be deployed from conventional spacecraft carriers such as those fielded by the WDF and Royal Salusian Navy, lacking arresting equipment and folding wings. Though at first blush this may seem like a shortcoming on the Cosmo Sabre's part, it may just prove to be a stroke of genius on the designers' part, enabling the F-86F-1000 to coexist with the F-8Z in a broader context. Fitted with a fast hyperdrive and the capability to ship extra reaction mass tankage, the F-86F-1000 is well-suited to be deployed from forward fixed bases and in a star system defense/interceptor role, tasks for which the Super Crusader is ill-matched.

FUTURE PLANS

If the Cosmo Sabre is adopted by the WDF, RSN, and/or other Avalon-friendly forces, New Avalon Aviation executives have announced that they will follow it up with a space-capable variant of another famous North American product, the XB-70 Valkyrie strategic bomber. The B-70B, if produced, will be renamed Nemesis (after the Greek goddess of divine retribution) to honor Stonewell Bellcom's trademark the word Valkyrie as applied to combat aerospacecraft. It is envisioned as an eventual replacement for the SB-17 Astrofortress in the long-range strategic strike bomber role.

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