Centaur

Centaur Family of Aircraft

The Centaur is the basis for a whole family of aircraft carrying out roles as diverse as in-flight refueling to ground attack. Such is it's versatility that the Centaur is the only fixed wing aircraft to be used by both the Shildonian Flying Corps and the Shildonian Fleet Air Arm.

The Centaur has been designed to be easily maintainable. The average time taken to refuel and rearm a Centaur is just thirty minutes, and it can have an engine replaced in just over an hour. These low turnaround times allow a comparitively small fleet of aircraft to carry out large numbers of missions.

All variants are powered by two EJ-200 afterburning turbojet engines, though in the case of the KA-5 tanker variant the afterburners have been removed in order to save weight so that the amount of fuel that can be carried is increased.

A-5 Centaur

The A-5 was the first of the Centaur family to enter service. It is used by both the Shildonian Flying Corps and the Shildonian Fleet Air Arm in the ground attack and maritime strike roles. The A-5 is optimised for use at low altitude, and also has the ability to carry air-to-air missiles, thus giving the aircraft a self-escort capability.

While not as stealthy as some of it's competitors, the A-5's stealth capabilities are still quite impressive, having a radar cross section approximately the size of a golf ball. Given that all ordanance is carried externally, this would normally defeat the point of having any stealth capabilities at all. However, special cases have been developed to house some of the smaller weapons used by the A-5 which allows the aircraft to retain most of it's stealth capabilities even whilst fully loaded.

The A-5 can carry a wide range of ordanance, depending on the target and type of mission, including precision guided bombs, cruise missiles, anti-shipping missiles and area-denial munitions. It can also carry a 27mm cannon.