The Crazy Horse is a bomber designed to complement the Spectre II. Named after the Lakota war leader Tȟašúŋke Witkó, the Crazy Horse was designed in 2249, after the Spectre II’s great success.
Though the stock version is vacuum-sealed and fully capable of spaceflight, the Crazy Horse is intended primarily as an affordable, land-based atmospheric bomber for ground support. It thus does not mount a hyperdrive in the stock configuration.
The Crazy Horse has an acceleration of 54.4mc, and manoeuvrability rated at 586 MEUs. Like the Spectre II, it retains some atmospheric flaps to squeeze every last drop of agility in atmosphere. While it almost matches the Spectre II’s performance (and even exceeds it in acceleration), despite the Crazy Horse’s larger size and heavier payload, it is not suited to dogfighting – its offensive payload is entirely missile-based, with no guns at all.
The Crazy Horse’s entire arsenal is contained in a single almost eight-metre long ventral bay. This is substantial; the main bay has ten configurable hardpoints, which can hold up to 28 Standard Warhead Capacity.
The bay is just large enough to instead accommodate eight Vitrious Conglomerate ASHAS-1184 Buccaneer Anti-Ship Missiles, each with a 154TXq yield, but this configuration is rarely seen, as it is more suited to anti-starship operations, which the Crazy Horse is not typically deployed to perform.
Two more hardpoints in the forward part of the bay are designed for self-defence weapons. These hardpoints are essentially the same as the Spectre II’s external hardpoints, rated to a Standard Warhead Capacity of 2, each one capable of holding up to two missiles. A typical stock loadout is four 30-TXq-yield Vitrius Conglomerate SRASHM-1111 Viper missiles, in addition.
However, the relatively flat geometry of the Crazy Horse, while serving the purpose of streamlining the craft for atmospheric operations comes at a cost. While the bay can hold a significant payload, volume considerations usually restrict the main payload to a single type of missile, rather than being able to use a wider mix. Thus, the Crazy Horse typically can only fill one roll at a time.
The four landing gear wheels can telescope up to a height of 2.8m, raising the ventral bay doors clear of the ground for loading and unloading, and lower for when the bomber is ready to take off. The size of the munitions bay actually precluded the fitting of anti-grav landing units – there simply isn’t space to install them on the hull. The Crazy Horse thus cannot take off vertically by itself, and require a runway. However, a solution is provided in GDH’s landing cradle. This is, functionally, a platform with an anti-grav unit, essentially working as a lift-engine, allowing the Crazy Horse to take off vertically. The landing cradle can be set to invert its own field, so it can be easily towed about when unladen. This is generally the preferred method for the launching the Crazy Horse.
The Crazy Horse was intended to have the same level of customisability as the Spectre II. Provision is made to mount a pair of guns either side of the cockpit, but this requires a direct sacrifice of the loading bay’s payload.
The Crazy Horse, like the Spectre II, can be upgraded with a more advanced, compact power core and shielding; like the Spectre II, the conversion kit nearly doubles the cost of the bomber and provides mediocre 82TXq shielding.
As most purchasers of the Crazy Horse are specifically looking for a low-cost atmosphere bomber, few are willing to deprecate the payload for a secondary role or to go the extra expense for the shield upgrade kit.
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