Royal Space Force

Control Systems

A key feature of the Spitfire is its cockpit and control system. In normal flight the cockpit is like many other aircraft. But in combat it changes drastically.

Access is from under the aircraft's nose. The lower fuselage drops and folds down. The pilot takes her seat and is drawn up into place. The seat is adaptive to the pilot ensuring a perfect fit with auto tightening harness restraints to prevent unwanted movement.

I spent ages walking around the Spitfire trying to find a ladder to access the cockpit. I felt like a right Charlie when I realised that you just put your hand on the security panel under the nose.

Digital touchscreen windows can be activated to display whatever the pilot requires. This enables the most relevant information to be at the pilots fingertips, and at the right time. These windows can be either displayed on the cockpit display or directly to the pilots in-head wetwear.

The controls are all touchscreen and voice activated, with two side-stick controllers.

Beyond Visual Range (BVR) is capable of being displayed through adaptive liquid displays. BVR is only available with Tac-Sat or other external surveillance. 

G Force reduction

To combat high g manoeuvers the cockpit can be filled with a liquid gelatin fluid. The High-G Gel is quickly pumped in to the cockpit when the craft enters combat mode. It absorbs punishing g-forces and supports the pilot. The pilot switches to a liquid breathing system as well. This liquid breathing and cockpit system alleviates differing g force pressures on the pilot by using perflurochemical molecules. Forces applied to liquids are omnidirectional and are not easily compressed. This allows the pilot to survive punishing g forces up to 35g or more.

Many pilots fail the training when it comes time to tryout the liquid breathing equipment. There is no doubt about it. The trainers are trying to kill you.

Safety Systems

The Spitfire is fitted with a cockpit ejection system. It is a multiple stage system. Due to the Spitfire's deployment on RSF Sol normal ejector seats are unusable. The first system fills the cockpit with a foamed gel that cushions the pilot whilst the entire cockpit is jettisoned to the side. The second safety system ejects the cockpit up when the craft is in flight. The third system ejects the pilots seat in the traditional manner.

Flight Features

With the increase in computing and nanoscale electronics the aerodynamics of the Spitfire are greatly improved beyond any other aircraft. The entire aircrafts skin is made up of nano-scale digital devices

Using a digital nervous system, sensors are capable of sensing the temperature, stress forces, and airflow which enables the Spitfire to greatly improve the efficiency.

• Forward all moving canards
• Switch blade wings
• Fully extended to provide excellent low-speed handling
• Swept forward to provide enhanced dog-fighting capabilities
• Swept fully forward enabling high speed dashes, space capability, and for storage

The engineers on these aircraft  are a special breed. Their ICE systems are constantly connected to the aircraft and base support systems just so they can understand the basics.

Offensive Systems

Missile Racks

The Spitfire has two rotary missile launching racks both stored internally in the main fuselage. Each rack is capable of carrying 8 Sting missiles. They are 3.5m long and 1m wide. Missiles are rotated in to the launch position and ejected clear of the craft by gas pressure.

Each rack can be swapped out at a base in a couple of minutes enabling quick turnarounds during missions.

Sting missile

• Length
• 3.1m
• Range in Atmosphere
• 230km
• Drive
• EmDrive with integrated Opal Pack

The sting missile is a High IQ intercept and attack missile. It is capable of air, space, and surface attacks. it is fitted with an AESA radar with a wide field of view to prevent against sudden target avoidance at terminal range. The IQ-4 tracking system can anticipate target movements even over extreme ranges in space and BVR in planetary combat.

The sting has a loiter space mode enabling its use as an ad-hoc mine.

The Sting missile is one of the best missiles I have ever seen. It does just about everything that you could need. I did here that they are developing on-board 3D printers to enable adaptable, mission specific variants.

DRA 30

The Defence Research Agency developed DRA 30 rail gun is fitted to the starboard fuselage. Superconducting rails, excellent heat dissipation, and zero arc wear enable launch speeds in excess of 5km/s for each 2.8kg fletchette round. There is no propellant or explosive charge in the fletchette round with damage caused by the extreme speed of the round. No explosive warhead also makes handling much easier.

A helical magazine containing 20000 rounds is stored on the port fuselage. This magazine can be replaced in less than a minute.

The rail gun can pretty much cut a tank in half!

Improvements

Further development of the CNS system has allowed the Spitfire to be AI controlled. It is common practice to deploy a Spitfire flight with one or two AI controlled craft alongside their biological piloted Spitfire.

Space Capabilities

With the UKs deployment in space trials showed that combat required a completely different mindset and combat capabilities. The S-version altered the Spitfire in many ways. The most notable being the inclusion of a retractable turret fitted on the dorsal spine. This turret could mount a variety of casemate weapons, but was commonly fitted with the DRA-30 railgun.

The inclusion of a turret gave the Spitfire the ability to carryout manoeuvres whilst tracking another moving target.

The turret does have some disadvantages when the Spitfire is deployed in atmospheric conditions. When extended it dramatically upsets craft aerodynamics. The turret can be partially deployed in a locked, rear facing, manner that doesn't impede aerodynamics too much. But only at low speeds. High speed deployment will damage the turret and craft superstructure.

The turret is absolutely fantastic. Auto tracking and target lead is calculated immediately. You only have to look at something and designate it as a target and the turret does the rest.