Arca III Morrigan Ultra Heavy Battle Tank

The idea of an ultra heavy battle tank was taken from the myths sorrounding the defense of Keto Pass by Eurusea using a single supertank. Although the victory of the Scaramanga is attributed to the fact that the enemy had relatively poor aerial assets, allowing the Scaramanga to remain unscathed until it was destroyed by continued assault, the Scaramanga has remained in the hearts of the people who have heard of Keto Pass, and understandably, had a division of main battle tanks held the pass it would have never been remembered with such awe. Within that context the Morrigan is designed. It's purpose is to fight when the fight is already over, but when it does to inspire, to strike fear within the hearts of her foes. It can be used as a last chance weapon, using it's strength to defend itself for hours at a time, allowing units behind it to retreat, although the expenses of the tank negate the cost effectiness of the tactic, it can be used in sieges, urban combat, et cetera. One would suspect that the physics of the matter would put extreme restrictions to the design, but that is simply untrue, and although it's suceptible to air attack, it also is, for the most part, self supporting.

Morrigan, Celtic Goddess of War, death, ravens, fertility and fate, gives her name to this tank. It fits well, as this tank is the giver of death, weaver of fate, and if merciful, the returner of fertility. This tank is the God of main battle tanks, although not the first of the design; nonetheless, it is the result of hard work to strive to make it better than the rest, although understandably, that is a hard task indeed. Nonetheless, the only tanks that are even thought to be able to withstand the Morrigan are the armoured designs of Eurusea. This tank is a land based dreadnought, and forever shall it inspire fear within the enemies of the Golden Throne.

To date there are a total of twenty Morrigans in service with the Golden Throne, all stashed away in extremely hardened underground storage facilities, awating when they are to be called to duty. Four of these goddesses are in Tordesillas [a provence of mine connected to a lot of people], two others in Gerfaanlich [a provence of mine in Haven, under the name of my puppet], and the rest within the Empire itself. Of course, with deployment changes nonwithstanding, these numbers are to stay fairly stable, but it's supposed that the government will never fully release where exactly these tanks are, and in what number, until they are seen on the surface.

The tank's gun has been said to be able to penetrate anything that rolls, or walks, or moves in general, on the surface, and its power is not to be underestimated. Apart from the huge gun, the tank does depart from old supertank designs it certain respects. Eurusean engineers claimed that the biggest threat to a supertank was another supertank, and in that respect the armour quality just did not help, so most of the money was spent elsewhere. Contraire to their own idealogy, the Morrigan does focus a lot on armour, as well as everything else, all quantifying the final cost which is truly going to send shockwaves through the community. Nonetheless, engineers and the administration have expressed their opinion that the costs are well worth the design.

There is no actual widespread exportation of the tank, although close allies can put in requests to purchase the piece of armour, and will most likely be approved. However, the design is to offer the advantage to the Empire, so any exported design would most likely be another piece of armour within itself, under the guise of another variant. So, it's safe to say that the Empire is not particularly open about selling the Morrigan, and will most likely never be until a new UHBT design is released, which may be a pipedream.

Power Plant

The most controversial aspect of the Morrigan is her pebble bed nuclear reactor, designed after the Nereus, called the PBR.23.AGI. The reactor itself is put right side up, reaching a total of 9.4 meters in height, while it's around 6.8 meters in diameter. The entire sysmte is about ten meters by ten meters by ten meters [10x10x10], offering a very cost effective, small, and affordable engine design for the Morrigan, although weighing a full one thousand two hundred tons, dropped from the original weight of two thousand tons only because the size of the engine was adapted to illustrate the fact that the engine is not designed to put nearly as much power as does the Nereus. Converted to horsepower, in terms of the international readings, it measures up to 16,092 horsepower, while it measures to 16,315 in the metric horsepower and 16085 in electric horsepower. Country of interest and subsequent unit designation nonwithstanding, the tank puts out enough horsepower to sustain the weight of the Morrigan.

To increase potential horsepower, although the ratings of the design are not included because they are largely theoritical, the turbine has been made out of the best features possible to exibit maximum effeciency, something the Empire has asked for in the design, now that they are putting it potential trillions of reichmarks. The turbine is forged and casted out of a titanium aluminum TiAl superalloy known as the cast duplex 45-XD. The alloy has a spectacular resistance characteristic against fatigue crack growth and expansion, making it amongst the best for turbine application. The turbine nozzels use a ceramic component to offer the entire apparatus a 910 hour operation life, before it has to be fully maintained, or even replaced [under extreme circumstances] - this rating is rather amazing.

The gear box is perhaps the most complicated mechanism on the tank's power plant, using a dual stick transmission with ten groups and twenty gears per group, offering a grand total of two hundred gears, giving the tank a 9:1 weight to gear ratio, which is better than most others there, although the tank would still suffer from minor transmission wear over the long run, although operational charactiristics for the tank negate the disadvantage since the tank is not designed to follow behind main battle tanks at the same velocity - it just wouldn't be accurate. Nonetheless, a lesser ratio would be devastating to the design, and any more gears would make the tank that more complicated - so, the gear ratio is rather optimal.

The suspension is a very heavy hydropneumatic system, that was chosen over all others because of its versatility and the fact that it suffers no problems at all in change of road quality. It also gives a huge advantage over others, especially within the context of the harsh logistics and maintenance of this tank, the fact that it's easier to replace or maintaine, offering a very big relief to the tank's designers. It's not known whether another type of suspension would handle the weight better, but in terms of general advantages, the hydropneumatic suspension has proved itself to be the best for this specific case.

The track system works on a total of six tracks, seventy-five meters long and three meters wide, offering a total of one thousand three hundred and fifty meters squared in terms of surface area. Taking the total weight of 2,136 tons and multiplying it by the force exerted downwards for total force, which would be at its simplistic [although somewhat off] gravity multiplied by weight, it would give a total downward force of 20,954 newtons. So, total force on a single point would be around 12 pascals, which is purely extraordinary, considering that the Abrams releases around 13 psi [the psi is not measured by pascals] on the ground.

All the while, to optimize the engine's capabilities, apart from the improved turbine, the tank uses an electromagnetic drivetrain, increasing horsepower output by at least three times over, providing the tank with an excellent power plant for propulsion, and it's easy to say that when it comes to power this ultra heavy battle tank does not suffer from shortages.

Main Armament

The pride of the Morrigan is her massive main gun, measuring a complete 380mm in bore size, which converts to near 15 inches, covered with a thermal shroud. The huge gun is an electrothermal chemical cannon, rifled with, not an electromagnetic coil, but with two parallel rails. The result is a much faster initial velocity when the round hits the rail, and thus a faster velocity at what has been named point Y, which would be the point in which the round reaches it's climax velocity, calculated to be around Mach 8. Keeping with the idea that Lorentz' Force provides more force the longer the rails, the rails extend the whole fifteen meters of the gun, the gun being of course, a L/50 design. The gun chamber does not portrude from the turret, and the original propellant and charge is within the turret itself, given the big size, although this does juggle around the seating arrangement of the crew a bit. In order to power the main gun the tank uses a seperate string of ultracapacitors and a series of batteries near it, but armoured, which receive their own juice from the PBR.23.AGI engine.

The same concept for the autloader used on the Arca. I Cougar was dropped for the Morrigan. It's safe to say that the autloader system could not take the weight, and if it could it would not take enough rounds to be cost effective. As a result, the Morrigan uses a variant of the carousel autoloader, using a seperate hydraulic system to push the shells into the autoloader carousel. Although this does present itself the same maintenance problems as on standard main battle tanks, it was necessary, as the rifle clip autoloader doesn't take enough shells to work to the effeciency wished by the engineers of the Morrigan.

The tank carries a huge load of ordnance. Fitted within its dimensions are forty armour piercing fin stabalized discarding sabots and forty high explosive rounds. The APFSDS round is crafted out of 100-oriented tungsten, offering a lighter variant to the depleted uranium, while denser, and now self-shaping, unlike older designs of tungsten penetrators. Meaning, the penetrator would be about twenty-five kilograms in mass, moving at Mach 7 at it's highest velocity, meaning it will hit the enemy with a force of 59,551 newtons, which with its density, general armoured penetration values exceed ten thousand millimeters; although it really depends on the armour type its hitting.

The length of the gun offers itself for several problems dealing with friction and pressures on the muzzle. To avoid buckling the main gun is supported by two columns jutting out of the armour below, offering themselves to be sturdy, even if a shell hits them, and a series of eight titanium suspension cables controlled over a pully system. Although rather suceptible to damage, that is all that can be done, and the gun would only buckle only after ten shots or so, allowing the gun to take out a threat, and then the maintenance crews replacing the cables.

To cover the weight of the gun, the turret turns based on electromagnetic ball bearings, allowing the turret to turn as if 'floating on air'. This allows for a far greater rotational speed, keeping the tank's quick targetting times. The same thing was applied, for the same effect, on the Arca. I Cougar Main Battle tank.

Secondary Armament

The Morrigan carries quite a bit of secondary armament. The two most apparent secondary guns are two mini turret mounts underneath the main gun [avoiding conflict of field of fire and traverse of the turrets] carrying a single 88mm ETC gatling on each turret. The guns use helium cooling systems to have a four barrel rotating fire system, putting out a maximum rate of fire of twenty rounds per minute. Unlike what most people perceive as an 88mm, these barrels only have a length of twenty calibres, offering a length of only 1.7 meters, perfect for soft skinned or light armour vehicles. Each mini-turret holds sixty APFSDS rounds.

The tank also has five 12.7mm heavy machine guns, operated by the three gunners, the commander and driver through a lever system, following the design of old German tanks. The guns are mostly for anti-personnel uses, in case enemy infantry come to close to the tank. The field of fire covers the entire tank, and a 7.62mm machine gun is used near the end of the tank to cover that blind spot. However, more often that not, the tank will have plenty of infantry around it to cover it's blind spots. On the top of the turret the tank also has two swivel mini-turrets, smaller than those the 88s are mounted on, holding two 37mm anti-air artillery cannons designed to be heavy close-in weapon systems, and anti-helicopter systems.

The Morrigan also includes a total of five quadruple rotational verticle launch systems, including a total of twenty preloaded surface to surface missiles for long range suppression.

To provide the Morrigan with further defenses it also includes two four cell P.746.B surface to air missile launchers, stocked with eight missiles total, four on either side. This provides the tank with medium range surface to air missile defenes in case of an aerial attack.

Fire and Control System

The Arca III uses an updated version of Brass, the FCS system introduced with the BredtSvert years ago. Although the entire process takes only milliseconds worth of time, it can be broken up into several distinct levels of operation. First, the FCS systems gathers all low resolution imagery, infra-red imagery, high resolution imagery and infra-red imagery, radar information and sensor information. Using all of this the FCS system can detect vehicle position, orientation and range, as well as provide accurate ballistic solutions, and preform threat solutions with fast countermeasure expenditure. This information is displayed to the crew, communicated with tanks in the same information network, and translated into the tank armament, providing the Morrigan with one of the best fire and control systems currently do date. In fact, there is information to back up the claim, and proof that the upgraded Brass is one of a kind.

For high and low resolution imagery the tank is equipped with two seperate digital cameras, feeding raw data to avoid pixel compression. Although there is room for mistakes from the feed and subsequent algorithms, the feature is on other designs and well liked, regardless of the criticism given.

The entire system has been dubbed 'Cornerstone', and as advertised, Cornerstone has the ability to track up to fifteen targets and deliver accurate information on said targets to the crew. Furthermore, with Conernstone the gun would be able to fire on the move, adding a distinct advantage, as it keeps the tank almost constantly moving during combat operations.

Armour

The armour of the Moorigan is perhaps the most contreversial, and it returns to a very old design by the Empire, the Mutawallis. The old armor was composed of a diamond helix bonded through double carbon bonds around and through a buckyball matrix, layered in 240 nano-meter strips. This was covered by the Indium/Osmium-Germanium mix 2nd Gen Supercooled Coil, which was stolen off an Iscariot VIII a while back. They are filled with supercooled liquid Xenon and when a round impacts, the liquid gasses out to counter the heat while the metal coil itself is used as a heat conductor to dissipate the attack it will render that portion of the coil useless but should still enable it to work on other parts of the tank. Especially good against HEAT. Finally there is a thick layer of NxRA Ablative Armor Blocks, up to 14cm in some places. This provides up to an additional 150mm RHA, for a total of up to 4700mm RHA. This primary armor is further reinforced by a ceramic composite bulk between it and a DUEIS plate, which gives it a final 6,000mm of armor. This final layer is coupled by a layer of NxRA armor which gives it the final RHA value of 6,500mm. This, with all a max real thickness of about 200mm.

The new, slightly variant, armour relies on the same principle, giving the same ratings in the end, but instead of the complex buckyball matrix, it's a matrix of Indium/Osmium-Germanium weaved around aggregated diamond nanorods, being substantially denser than diamond [0.3%]. From the studies on the material, although extremely expensive, they also don't have the threat of cracking or fracturing under pressure of an incoming round, and should provide the same level of effective resistance than the old design without the theoritical problems with the armour.

This, then, was effectively doubled in thickness, providing for a final rating of 13,000mm, using absolutely the most expensive armoured scheme one could find. This is finally topped off by a thick layer of chobham, giving it a final rating of 14,000mm rolled homogenous armour value. On top of this, gratings allow the application of additional appliqué armour or ERA.

Finally, in between the buckyball complex and the chobham composite there is a relatively thick layer of vanadium with depleted uranium weaved around a matrix, giving the absolutely final rating of 17,000mm of rolled homogenous armour. It is to say the Morrigan is impervious to all smaller vehicle designs, LOSAT weapons, and even smaller missiles, except other supertanks and larger bombs and missiles coming from aircraft. It truly is a beast.

Crew Compartment

The largest compartment by far is the one belonging to the tank's commander. In order to make up for the larger dimensions of the tank, and possible blind spots, and the harder job the commander is going to have commanding the tank and all other six crew members, the commander is given a wide array of navigational and command panels that resemble a lot the navigational aids of the GLI-34 Albatross Heavy Bomber. In fact, in front of him he was two polychromatic liquid crystal matrix display screens [AMLCD] which show the information provided by the electronic vehicle instrumentation system [EVIS], and the Communication/Navigation/Identification [CNI]. Two smaller heads up display [HUD] screens contain a Engines Indication and Crew Alerting System [EICAS] and the Integrated Vehicle System Controller [IVSC]; the former is designed to keep the commander always in key with the status on the engine. Next to him the commander also has a screen displaying all targets around him, fed from the electronics and radar compartment, and a GPS locational screen, which is about four times smaller than the first.

Each gunner is positioned with the gun, so the gunners sit abreast on the tank, two a bit closer to the front of the tank than the sole center gunner for the main gun on the tank. Of course, the mini turrets turn autonomously with the main turret, although if the main turret turns so will the mini-turrets, they have to turn again to return to their previous position.

The electronics and radar compartment sits a sole crew member, with three polychromatic AMLCD screens to his forefront displaying foes around him. Although the FCS system of the main gun tracks up to fifteen target, the radar controller can track up to two hundred different targets and feed them through priority to the main gunnery, allowing for quicker reactions. The system can also electronically transfer and prioritize targets for the two smaller guns and the AAA on top. With that said, the AAA gunner sits on top of the radar operator in a more lengthened compartment, as opposed to height.

The driver sits on the far left side of the tank, in front of the 88mm ETC gunner and has a direct communications link with the commander for orders. All compartments are linked through an intra-tank communication radio system, while all other tanks cooperate through inter-tank radio, sattelite databursts and other communication methods.

Combat History