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Ke-V7 Bomber Upgrade Program

HotelKilo

HotelKilo

Inactive Member
The theme of this thread is proposing upgrades to the Ke-V7 "Ginga" bomber. Seven years old and without any major redesigns or upgrades listed on the sparse wiki page means it's starting to show its age.

But like any old warhorse, there's a second chance! What I am (grandiosely) titling the Improved Lethality and Survivability Pilot Program. What are the goals? First let us look at the known information on the existing production Ke-V7s:

The Wiki said:
The Ginga's key features and abilities are:
Click to expand...

Taking this into account, I've come up with the following potential modifications:
  1. Decrease crew count; not necessarily a problem finding crew but definitely an endurance issue. Cut crew positions would provide greater space for electronics and storage updates. Improvements in fire control can reduce the number of gunners down to, potentially, one. Adding an ECM officer (see below) would still result in halving the crew complement.
  2. Updated gun turrets; Turrets from the more modern V9 "Nodachi" project would be a fairly low cost method of improving defensive fire capability with minimum cost. Mounting of the new quad turrets would reduce gun position count and help improve fire control by reduced gunner compliment as well.
  3. Internal bomb bay; Surprisingly, to my reading, the Ginga lacks an internal bomb bay and instead carries all stores externally. While giving it a slim profile, a lot of potential stores carrying capacity is eliminated. Perhaps the most expensive feature would be retrofitting test units with an underslung bomb/torpedo bay/cell. Without dimensions of the existing bomber it is hard to predict the capacity possible, but with proper method for ordnance loading, at bare minimum, a modest increase in payload would be expected.
  4. Electronics refit; Greater then a standard refit, this would call for extensive replacement of existing countermeasures and fire control systems to not only update software but bring hardware systems up to date. Increased systems would ideally call for an additional ECM operator, freeing the co-pilot to focus on assisting the pilot and handling weapons systems.
  5. Improved propulsion; As part of the upgrade process, replace older and potentially worn first generation Turbo Aether Plasma Drives with current generation units.
  6. Revised External Hardpoints; In addition to the high priority addition of internal stores carriage, the external hardpoints and potential for increased mounting of mini-missile pods should be examined.
  7. Increased Endurance; With the potential need for long-range bomber attacks and patrols once again looming it would seem ideal to improve across the aboard mission endurance. One primary method (as outlined in #1) is reducing the carried crew by half. Simply, fewer crew, reduced need for supplies. Eliminating the crew position also allows for potential expansion of storage space/addition of comfort facilities. The study presumes limited crew berthing and feeding facilities already exist.
With the above outlined improvements, the Ke-G7 would be an excellent addition to the fleet's strike compliment. Capable of carrying a hefty payload of planetary strike bombs or anti-starship torpedoes, they could be configured to serve as system patrol or long-range strike units where larger interstellar craft would be undesirable or are unavailable.

In the end, however, I'm not really sure what the Star Army needs or wants from the Ginga bomber. Is there even a need to update them since I'm not sure they've ever really seen much in-plot use? I don't know, that's why I'm posting this here. I hope more experienced players/GMs/FMs will be willing to weigh in on what is essentially a daydream.
 
I'm not really sure what the Star Army needs or wants from the Ginga bomber
Click to expand...

Fear not, I am here now.

There are a lot of different 'names for ships' but we should stick to the ones in the dictionary. You'll see lots of 'dive bomber' or 'fighter bomber' listings on the wiki but this is a lot easier if we focus on the two important ones: Bomber and Strategic Bomber.

Bombers are small craft that come along with a mother-ship, and are designed to launch missiles/bombs/whatever at whatever and then return home. The SAoY fleet already has this capacity in abundance within the fleet and the V7 doesn't really add anything to the SAoY fleet here. You've already got plenty of fighters and ships that can launch torpedoes. There also isn't much room/space for the V7 onboard ships. These bombers will also probably need some guns and shields because they are going to be right up close with the enemy.

But the V7 is a Strategic Bomber. It is basically the smallest possible star ship that can carry a large enough load of torpedoes to be a problem for someone. You can sit a few of these on a planet somewhere loaded with missiles, fly over to the next planet over, release a swarm of missiles, and then return to base without ever having to engage enemy ships or fighters. So long as you've got a stockpile of missiles you can have them doing this all day every day, meaning your opponent has to keep enough star-ships to thwart a massed missile attack at every vulnerable target. This lets you tie up a large number of enemy ships with the minimal amount of effort on your part.

--

In SARP terms, the V9 and the V7 are already very samey, lots of guns, lots of bombs. You could also reasonably make the case that you're better off building more V9s and retiring the V7.

I agree with the decreased crew count, as that seems like a reasonable improvement.

I also like the internal bomb-bay, a nice feature because it keeps the all-important bombs from being scuffed up on takeoff and landing.

Electronics, Propulsion, sure why not?

But I think the Hardpoints and the Guns should be removed entirely.

At some point you have to ask yourself why do you even have the V7? 6 torpedoes isn't enough to get through a ship's point defenses and if you're wanting to take the V7 in close you're basically just doing the same job as the V9. So why not drop the guns and hard-points entirely to make room for more Torpedoes? Then when looking at the SAoY you can point to the V7 and say, "This is our bomb-truck" instead of saying, "This is really just a large fighter"
 
I'm all for the hardpoints being removed, honestly.

My issue with the V7, and the whole reason I even spilled my thoughts out on this thread, is mostly that it's clearly intended to fill a strategic bomber role but it isn't really strategic bomber sized. By all rights this thing's entire job should be just as you described; haul heavy torpedo and bomb loads to make someone's day that much worse. So you've really cut straight to the heart of my whole proposal here, to give the V7 the ability to fulfill its intended role as a threat to shipping and planetary protection asset for rikugon units with some fancy window dressings to make it less likely to just die to incoming fire.

The idea for this was to make a reasonable effective upgraded V7; less a B-29 to a B-17 and more a B-17F to a B-17G. That being said, I feel like it would be worthwhile to describe exactly what I'm talking about with regards to a bomb bay for the V7.

I was inspired by the "Big Belly" project for the B-52D where the USAF basically pulled out the fixed bomb racks and replaced them with pre-packaged cells of ordnance that could be loaded in to much lower profile holding/release system thus freeing much more internal volume for ordnance.

ai.imgur.com_mSpKwF2.gif

Now since this would be a purpose built bomb bay/ordnance cell, whatever you want to call it, for a small craft that doesn't have one to begin with we're somewhat limited. Building on the existing hull how many bombs/torpedoes could we cram in there? I don't want to give it hard numbers at this stage but let's say ten, maybe twelve, with a low profile modular bomb release system to facilitate easy ordnance swaps.

I have to disagree on the guns though. While my imagined plan would cut the three wing-tip mounts on both sides and the front midline turret I'd advocate for keeping the nose and top dorsal. Small targets are a very real threat in SARP, between power armor and fighters retaining onboard active defensive firepower in addition to ECM seems pretty important. Bomber doctrine hasn't evolved like it did in the modern world where the idea was to totally avoid enemy fighters. The Ginga just can't do that.

Ultimately you're right, Zack, there's very little reason to keep carrying the V7 on the Star Army roster of ships. It's there, and I figured I'd try to beat it into a useful unit type to see what happens.

Edit: Hopefully the creator doesn't mind a sloppy MS Paint edited illustration of my idea.

ai.imgur.com_owxZ1DQ.png
I'd even say do in the nose turret for extra space frankly, leaving the dorsal and ventral turrets as the sole armor.
 
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These are great suggestions, but I have so much on my plate that I don't really want to take this on right now. If someone delivered me a finished article I could stamp I probably would, but at this point it seems like there's so much work required to fix the Ginga that we might as well scrap the bomber and come up with something better that's an entirely new craft to replace it and take over the strategic bomber role, which is basically to deliver aether WMDs to other factions in a doomsday scenario.
 
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