Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Harbinger Gunship

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The Harbinger Gunship is the heavy gunship and the Alliance of Hawke's heavy aircraft that have been used. The unit is planned to be voiced by Darin De Paul

Tactical analysis

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History
"Wanna give them the bad news?"

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One popular theory about how the Alliance achieved limited victory in the war says nothing of the Proton Collider, or the Chronosphere, or any of the Alliance' high-tech advantages unveiled later on in the conflict. No, the theory goes that the Alliance's fearless air squadrons are largely responsible. Once they asserted a decisive hold over contested airspaces, their enemies were cut off and divided, and the Alliance could paradrop reinforcements and supplies wherever necessary. From that point, victory was only a matter of time. Furthermore, pilots of Harrier-class sortie bombers racked up the single highest confirmed-kill ratio of any single division of the Alliance military.

As the war neared its end, the quality of the Alliance's air power was not a subject of much dispute. Even still, AseliaTech Corporation openly continued working on an aircraft model that promised to usher in a new era of air support. That aircraft was the FTAC-X2, better known as the Harbinger Gunship. Dwarfing even the Alliance's own (insert) heavy bomber or Aquila's equivalent, the AC-17 Spectre, the Harbinger's advanced sensors and weapon systems would allow it to hold and secure large areas, as well as to provide heavy fire support to any surface forces in the vicinity.

The Harbinger was a veritable flying fortress, and was armed to the teeth with nothing less than the power of the Alliance's ultimate weapon, the Proton Collider. Although the technology used in the Proton Collider remains a well-kept secret, the Alliance top brass (as directed by Alliance official Rupert Thornley himself) agreed to disclose that particular secret to AseliaTech Corporation in exchange for services tendered, and in order to fulfill the ambitions of the Harbinger international design team. Before this, the AseliaTech team speculatively came up with an aircraft blueprint more massive any known turbofan jet to date, whose ability to fly in fact hinged on the need for an on-board Collider fuel cell -- one that was small enough to fit on such a gigantic plane.

The story goes, because AseliaTech had mostly deduced how the Proton Collider works, Alliance brass reluctantly agreed to partner with the corporation in order to complete a prototype of what later became the Harbinger gunship. The prototype model of the gunship featured not one but two starboard-mounted 120mm Collider Cannons, each one packing the explosive punch of a howitzer of roughly the same size. Because the fuel cell provided the Collider Cannons with their ammunition and also runs the Harbinger's four redundant turbofan engines, the thing could get off the ground and remain airborne for days.

Unlike other aircraft in the Alliance arsenal, the Harbinger prototype eschewed a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) design and needed to continually orbit while trained on a target. This, together with the Harbinger's sheer size, also meant it would be incapable of landing at a standard Alliance airbase. Fortunately, the Harbinger featured AseliaTech's proprietary self-diagnostics-and-repair system, which made up for its inability to touch down for repairs while out in the field. Meanwhile, an elaborate array of sensors and communication equipment lets Harbinger crews keep a lock on terrestrial targets during flight.

To make up for the Collider Cannons' inability to strike precisely at a chosen destination, the Harbinger featured a nose-mounted 25mm chain gun linked to targeting systems that track the gunner's eye movements. These extremely accurate weapons could shred lightly-armored surface threats without causing significant damage to the environs. All of the Harbinger's weaponry is directed toward the ground, however. Enemy air superiority fighter squadrons could conceivably give it a hard time, though the Harbinger's armor was shown in simulations to suffer barely a scratch from a Su-57's Archer missiles.

And if the Harbinger was truly surrounded, or making a suicidal attack run through enemy AA, it can activate its miniature chronosphere to "dive" into a pocket of time where it's invincible, though with the crew losing all visual they can only flight straight until they return to normal time, and since activating the chronosphere requires them to shut off their weapons it will take a few seconds after to start up the weapons again.

The Harbinger gunship's prototype crew was hand-picked by AseliaTech from its private flight schools, men demonstrating the coolness under fire and whichever other rare personality traits and skills that AseliaTech strictly demanded of its teams. Initially, Alliance officials were publicly miffed at the idea that their ace airmen might not be qualified to get behind the yoke of a Harbinger, though Pres. Thornley himself quickly smoothed the issue over, yielding to AseliaTech on that particular requirement. The Harbinger looked set to revolutionize the Alliance Air Force.

After a long series of tests and evaluations by Alliance officials, the Harbinger Gunship was sent on its first mission. The mission was to storm a PoW camp, rescue the Alliance commander and his engineering divisions and extract, all while being covered by the gunship. A small task force of some Wood Elven hunters was going to be sent against Rhino Tanks and Sentry Guns, so the Harbinger couldn't afford to make mistakes. After a few seconds of calculations and adjustments, the cannon was fired. As quoted by an anonymous Wood Elf hunter who was in the mission; "We were tasked to observe the PoW camp from afar while the Harbinger took care of the Rhino Tanks and the machine guns. I saw it fire, and the next thing I know, there was this blinding orange flash! When I opened my eyes, there was nothing left in place of the PoW camp!"

As the Harbinger's cannons had never been previously test-fired against live targets, something unexpected had happened. Just like the bigger Proton Collider, the Harbinger's cannons had a catalyst effect. This allowed it to use the surrounding air and nearby Voshkod emplacements as fuel for its explosion, amplifying the effect and destroying the whole barracks along with its tanks and machine gun towers in a single shot.

The field testing pointed out that the Harbinger wasn't the precision support weapon they intended to have, but a weapon of mass destruction. The Harbinger hadn't even fully charged that shot, yet it was enough to level the entire base while vaporizing every single person inside including the commander and the engineering division. While the result was fascinating for some warmongers among the top brass, the Alliance always strived to keep collateral damage to a minimum in most cases, so using the Harbinger in normal skirmishes wasn't a question that could be answered positively. Harbingers were relegated to airstrike teams only used in wars, as the Alliance never wished to harm the very citizens they tried to protect, or their own soldiers as the Collider's blast could easily induce friendly fire. Given the urban nature of the most common battlefields and the generally defensive Alliance doctrine, the Harbinger, despite being a massive success from a purely military standpoint, had to be moved to another division, with only the Aselian Federation willing to embrace the Harbinger. The res of the Alliance saw the Harbinger Gunship as too powerful and too inaccurate for a support aircraft, and since its destructive power would be limited to the open field or an evacuated urban area, they needed a new aircraft that filled a close air support niche, leading to the Mesofortress.

But, as of now, the Harbinger still stands as one of the Alliance's most powerful weapon and a showcase of their technological prowess, even if it's few in numbers. Though a good chunk of Alliance High Command wish the Harbinger was shelved, as it gave the wrong image, feared what would happen if an enemy managed to reverse engineer it, or because it was simply too expensive.

Trivia

 * The Harbinger in Gaiaterra has elements from the Mental Omega version.
 * The appearance of the Harbinger in Gaiaterra is based on the real-world Airbus A400M