Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Crop Duster

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The Crop Duster used by the MLA. is planned to be voiced by *TBA*

History
"Eigth times the charm..."

-The first Duster pilot, test flying the first MLA aircraft for the eighth time, which finally succeeded

After repeated defeats at the hands of the Aquilan, Voshkod and the Syndicate, the various MLA cells learned a lesson: Gun trucks are not capable of shooting down jets and trying to knock down helicopters with Suiciders in man cannons is a bad idea. However, some of the smarter warlords learned the more important lesson that effective close air support played a key part in infidel strategy.

Seeking an aircraft that could fill the same role, various warlords had their technicians start work on what they thought would be a top secret wonder weapon to drive off infidels from their lands. What follows is a summary of some of a recovered MLA designer's notes on the super secret project that an Alliance agent was able to buy off a street urchin for five Aquilan dollars:

Idea #1 Make a super cheap jet fighter

Hoping to close this gap, the MLA initially looked into purchasing modern fighters and bombers, but the various warlords balked after they realized that the cost of such planes would cost them a significant fraction of their personal funds, not to mention the daily maintenance cost. In order to save as much money as possible, they then looked into the possibility of making a super cheap jet fighter of their own. Within a few weeks, they had developed a design and built a prototype for testing. The resultant design, using a stolen jet engine, was made out of wood, held together with glue (which was acidic to the wood), and placed the engine above the fuselage.

The first attempt at a test flight had to be aborted when one of the wings fell off in the middle of takeoff. Shortly after, the wing was repaired, and a second test flight was attempted. While this time the plane managed to get off the ground, its test flight ended a minute later, after the cockpit (held on by an old door hinge) came off and got promptly sucked into the engine, causing it to explode. Following this, the MLA simply gave up and decided to use propeller planes instead.

Idea #2 Attach several Vickers machine guns behind the propellers of a stolen prop plane

The expected goal was pilots would strafe infantry and dogfight Apollo fighters. The idea was deemed a failure after the technicians forgot to sync the propellers and guns so the guns didn't shoot off said propellers. During its first test, the plane took off toward its fake target, shot its own propellers off, crashed into a nearby barracks, and ejected the pilot into a nearby port-a-potty.

After this debacle, the MLA instead attempted to attach steel deflectors to the plane. This worked in preventing the propellers from being shredded, but unfortunately, the poor placement of the deflectors resulted in them being redirected into the engine and the wings when the pilot attempted to fire the machine gun. This resulted in catastrophic engine failure, causing the plane to rapidly lose altitude. Miraculously, none of the bullets struck the pilot's face, who managed to survive by jumping out of the plane and using a large blanket (which coincidentally had a hole in it) as a parachute. Unfortunately, he was mistaken as an infidel pilot by MLA forces (even though there were no infidel aircraft within a hundred kilometers), and nearly had his leg blown off by a machine gun.

The third attempt was no less sucessful, this one placing a gunner in a mount in front of the propeller. During the test flight, the gunner, after having held on for dear life for several seconds, finally tired and let go. The result proved extremely messy, as he was sucked into the propeller blades and was splattered all over the pilot, who promptly freaked out, lost control of his plane, and flew it into the compound of a senior MLA leader.

Idea #3 Weld missiles on the wingtips of a stolen prop plane

The idea of a machine gun armament (perhaps too) hurriedly written off, the MLA then attempted to arm their air fleet with missiles. Having learned from the lesson of the machine guns, it was decided that the missiles should not be placed anywhere near the propeller. Unfortunately, the MLA couldn't make seekers, so they had to settle for unguided rockets. They would arm their aircraft with rockets that would be mounted on the wingtips, which were wired so that they would be fired off in a single salvo.

This attempt failed spectacularly as well because the mechanics had succeeded too well in mounting the rockets, as seen by how they failed to separate from the wingtips of the test aircraft when the pilot attempted to fire them. The result of this unfortunate mishap was that the aircraft was pulled into the ground by its own rockets and promptly destroyed by the explosion of their warheads. Somehow, the pilot managed to survive, though with several broken bones, having been thrown from his plane by the explosion.

Idea #4 Parachute Suiciders out of a stolen freighter plane

Building on the idea of firing the willing and brave, but most of the time simply plain crazy Suicider via stolen Tigr man cannons at the enemy, a clever rebel came up with a similar concept. If you cannot hit the enemy from below, hit them from above. Thus a bunch of rebels and their Gun Truck aimed to find a suitable fat-bellied airplane and as many parachutes as possible at the nearest airport.

Attempting to steal the parachutes worked. The idea to steal the airplane, however, failed to get off the ground, because none of the freedom fighters had the necessary license to fly a freighter plane. Giving up on this plan, the rebels instead asked for a normal jump routine, and parachute jumping has become a popular sport among the MLA members ever since, with its military origin quickly forgotten.

Idea #5 Send terrorists in suicide fighters against enemy aircraft

The next idea they had was simple: have a terrorist fly an explosive-laden prop plane into enemy jets. The pilot would close in on enemy planes and detonate a huge amount of explosives to take out multiple planes at once. What the designers failed to realize was how fast and maneuverable jet fighters were in comparison to propeller planes, especially when the propeller planes were weighed down by bombs.

On the maiden voyage of the first prototype in a battle against Allied forces, it attempted to ram an Apollo fighter. Unfortunately for the MLA pilot, the jet's pilot simply banked slightly to the left, causing the suicide fighter to miss and crash into a garrisoned hotel the MLA were using to hold off the Allies. Most of them were killed except the pilot, who was lucky to be ejected without being killed ... but unlucky enough to crash headfirst into a manure truck.

Idea #6 Have the pilot throw bombs out the window of the cockpit

By this point, the MLA had more or less given up on the idea of fighters, but there still remained ground attack planes. Another idea was soon trialed; bombers. The MLA planes, each carrying a single bomb designed to detonate when it hit the ground, would theoretically act as ground attack aircraft, releasing bombs over the heads of the enemy below.

Unfortunately, the test flight didn't go quite as planned, because when the pilot forced open the plane's door to throw out the bomb at the target (a camel), he ended up losing control of his plane, sending it into an uncontrolled spin and causing it to crash into a sand dune, while the bombs were all ejected out of the aircraft in different directions.

One of the bombs struck the palace housing the bomb maker, the airplane designer, and the warlord providing funding (all sitting around the same table at the time), killing them and heavily damaging the palace. It was realized thereafter how ludicrously inaccurate the bombs would be (none of them did any harm to the camel), so the MLA gave up on the idea of bombers as well.

Idea #7 Arm the pilot with darts

With the repeated failures, it was decided to use safer weaponry, so as to prevent pilots from blowing themselves up. One idea that soon made it to testing was to have a plane that would drop darts on their targets. Because metal-skinned airplanes were too tough for darts to penetrate, the darts were intended to be used against infantry and airships, which were sufficiently soft that darts would work against them.

However, as the test flight soon showed, attempts to hit infantry-sized targets inevitably resulted in the pilot missing (in part thanks to their poor eyesight), while attempts to attack a Voshkod observation airship failed because the MLA had failed to realize that the airship's flight ceiling was several times greater than that of the plane. Nevertheless, the test pilot attempted to throw several darts up at the airship, until one accidentally hit him and caused an immense amount of pain, at which point the pilot simply gave up and flew back to base.

Eventually, after a ridiculous number of failures they came up with the idea of using a crop duster to spray DDT over enemies. To keep enemy fighters off the pilot's back, the toxins may be ignited in midair, leaving behind a massive fire trail that can damage even modern aircraft. However, the planes and their sprinkler systems are poorly armored and assembled, held together with mostly baling wire and cheap, knock-off duct tape.

Despite this, these Crop Dusters have proved successful; several warlords have begun buying or assembling their own in workshops, and the aircraft has already laid waste to dozens of wheat fields belonging to infidel farmers and killed off goodness-knows-how-many livestock. And fortunately for the MLA, and unfortunately for the rest, their avionics after that disaster had rapidly improved years later, thanks to skilled thieves stealing better planes and the warlord now willing to buy proper jets, to the point that the MLA now has an airforce, including Vaseraga infamous Chamrosh.