WIVERNs, their Design, and The First Interview

 

Interview with Crew Chief Haynes (Ret.)

    If you don’t mind me asking… what’s this report even for? Everything’s in the official design spec, you can look at the records yourself.

Posterity’s sake, witness accounts from people who worked with them. They’re being undertaken throughout the branches of service.

    Alright, makes sense… so, anything specific you’re looking for, or you just want an overview?

A summary would be appreciated, although I may have specific inquiries later. Please, begin with whatever you feel most appropriate. Please, make your account in a manner that’s most natural to you.

    If you say so… alright, so what you’re looking at there is a first-gen WIVERN. Used to belong to the Blackjack squadron in the prototype phase, that one’s one of the ‘last of the firsts’. Weapon, Infinitely Variable, intra-Exoatmospheric, Next-generation. The acronym’s clumsy as shit, you can tell they came up with a catchy name for it and mangled the language to suit. Unimportant anyway…
So, starting at the front: Cockpit’s completely blank, cameras and sensors dot the skin all over. Pilot’s supposed to get a full 360 view when they’re wired in, data gets poured in through that connection. Conventional canopy would be a structural weakness and probably redundant, though I wasn’t really on the design committee. You know I’m just a retired maintenance tech, right?

We’re well aware of that. You have hands-on experience with the airframes that we’d prefer to pull this particular account from.

    Sure, sure… so, moving on from that, you notice all those little spikes? Like thick antenna, every meter or so, they’re the conduits for the particle control system. Don’t ask me how that works on the molecular level or whatever, I only really worked with what I needed to know. That’s the shit that allowed for the shielding system to redistribute itself. Whole reason the things can even fly in-atmosphere, they’re really bad aerodynamically without. They’ll barely glide, and good luck getting any actual control authority. Rumor goes we had to reverse engineer it from some vessels got shot down not long after first contact. I don’t buy that, personally. We had this tech operational just a few months after the war broke out, far too quick of a turnaround. Anyway… Wing segments. Over there, leading edge extensions. More for structural stability than aerodynamics, gives the roots more of a stable brace coming into the main fuselage.
    The wings here are the biggest departure from conventional craft in my opinion. See how it’s split into those thin trapezoids? We called em feathers, each of them has its own particle field antenna and tip-jet, takes their thrust from a bypass section from the main engine. Each of them can actuate independently and modify the field on the fly to supplement, allows for fancy shit beyond what you can do with vernier thrusters and gimbals. They’re an absolute bitch to clean, though. Every six months you gotta take them all off and inspect, usually throw in a cleaning when they’re out. Whole damn thing is so angular, they had to build handholds all over or we’d slip right off. Upper tail by the engines always was the hardest to dismantle, but putting it back together was even more of a pain. It’s like another wing segment, just tinier and more annoying. They revised that system for a cleaner burn in the later gens, but hey, work with what you got, and right now we’ve got that one.

What was your experience with maintaining these craft?

    Well, when they first arrived they didn’t tell us the underlying principles behind all the fancy shit, so we mainly just had to work by the book. Field generation we just mainly stuck with what the eggheads wrote down, for instance. Wiring was pretty standard, although a lot denser than previous fighters, although the harness was bundled together in ways that made it relatively easy to repair and splice, even with that big-ass field generator unit on the upper dorsal. Still, not my favorite bit about the craft. I absolutely love the way the powerplants are built into this.

And what way might that be?

    Happy you asked. So, the main engines are two air-augmented rocket motors. Got a heat exchanger and compressor up front, keeps the charge air from being hot while giving the rocket a real kick in the pants. Extra oxidizer, pulls it from the air. Runs a lot more efficiently in-atmo than out, and a hell of a powerplant if you ask me. Thrust vectoring nozzles at the back, wing jets pull thrust from right before it terminates. The beauty of it is that they’re built as a self-contained unit. You just undo the covering panels, disconnect all the couplings and mounts and slide them out from there. Sounds like a lot, but it’s a lot simpler to do than most in the fleet were, and the unit mass becomes a non-issue if you do it in zero-G. You see that big cut-out circle in the aft unit, right next to the nozzles? That’s the baby that allows this thing to break orbit. Fucker’s a huge-ass rotating detonation engine. Burns fuel like nothing else, usually can’t be used in any maneuvers pulling lateral Gs, but it’s got enough delta-V to break outta Earth’s gravity on its own. Single-stage to orbit and beyond, no auxiliary boosters required.

Can you compare these craft to predecessor units and other fighter designs?

    Besides just the engines? Yeah, sure. For starters, these are absolutely enormous as far as single seaters go. Engines and field generator necessitated it. Earlier fighters were usually fixed-wing or no-wing, stuck in-atmo or outside, no way to do both. Had to get something that did once those alien bastards showed up, they could dive through reentry like it was nothing. We could’ve had something on par long ago, but the crafts weren’t the limiting factor. The August Accords blocked AI pilots after those incidents with the freighters, and normal pilots and computer systems just aren’t up for the task of flying something like this. Pilot’s gotta take in all the sensor data, adjust each field regulator on the fly, plus all those thrust vectors… Could have all the computers in the world, they’re still not gonna cooperate in a way that’s flyable in combat. GRIFFIN tech demonstrator from some years ago had the same propulsion systems, and everyone who handled that said it was an inconsistent twitchy nightmare. 

    You want a technical marvel? Peek under the hoods of the pilots. G-load alone I don’t know how they contend with, they’re pulling consistent double digits. They gave me the creeps, I ain’t gonna lie. It’s those eyes, I think. Anyway, field generation system allows for atmospheric reentry, dissipates heat while the craft skips along the edge, loses velocity. You can make a straight drop from orbit, but from what I know that redlines the field, takes a while to regain full integrity. Fine for normal purposes, but wouldn’t want to do that under fire, y’know? That field goes down, it’s dropping like a rock. Besides, you want the system able to take a few hits, especially when shots start flying.

Paint us a picture of the craft's armament, if you don't mind.

    Right. Usually, these babies get a nice 37 millimeter revolver cannon. Fires around 1200 rounds a minute, standard ammo capacity was 800. Feeding system wraps around the front, nose pops right off to remove or maintain. It surrounds the main radar, which I’m personally not a fan of. Phased array system still needs to be serviced, and I’d prefer to not have to take the whole belt system out every single time. Belly contains the internal weapons bay, mounts standard missiles, rockets, et cetera et cetera. You can look at the official documentation for all the shit it takes, be quicker to list the things it doesn’t. Perks of such a large airframe, there’s a decent amount of room for all the goodies you need. Also, look under here, you see those ports under the chin? Cabling mount for the quench gun. Coilgun, takes a shitload of electricity, only carries a dozen rounds, but I’ve heard it packs enough punch to disable a frigate. Valentine’s- sorry, the Captain’s- wingman used one of em when the airframes were still in trials, swatted an Exodus-class out of the sky from 4 kilometers out. One hell of a shot. Shame what happened to them…

Thank you for your time, Mr. Haynes. Your account has been more than satisfactory, and upon declassification of the WIVERN program, it will be public record. Is that acceptable?

    You sure it’s done? Could go into a lot more detail on each system, hell, I’ve barely scratched the surface as-is. 

What we have is sufficient. Might we use this account for posterity?

    Yeah, I don’t mind. Besides, from what I know, declassification ain’t gonna happen in my lifetime, am I right?

No comment. Have a nice day, Mr. Haynes.
[Interview Ends]