As part of the Next Gen Fighter Program, Osman Heavy Industries conducted an upgrade program bringing the technology used in its Mini Missiles and Standard Missiles to bring them in line with its Long Range Missiles, as well as improving the range of the long-ranged missiles with engine optimizations.

This update program was initiated in YE 44 after OHI was commissioned to provide missiles for testing as part of the Next Gen Fighter Program. While the existing versions of OHI's missiles were adequate for air-to-ground duties, their thrust systems, with the exception of the Long Range Missile, lacked the capacity to reach out to the extent that the LRM was capable of and even the LRM had room for improvement.

To rectify this relative deficiency, the program was initiated and integrated Vortex Plasma Thrusters onto the smaller missiles, as well as improving the control systems and sensor suites, and countermeasure rejection capabilities of all OHI missiles, as well as their networked-sensor capabilities.

Ultimately, the program led to the B variants of the Z1, Z2 and Z3 series missile systems which were ultimately utilized as part of the NGFP. These B-variants improved the range and speed of the missiles, bringing them in-line with or even exceeding modern standards now that they no longer needed to be limited by chemical propellants.

The result was longer ranges and much improved STL speeds in space, bringing the mini-missiles up to a blistering .85c launch velocity, with the larger standard missiles sitting slightly behind at .75. Tweaks made to the Vortex drives during the process of fitting them to smaller platforms enabled mass reductions, allowing speeds of .65 for the long-range missiles. The range increases saw the Long Range Missiles reaching out to 30 light seconds, and the standard and mini-missiles managing 10 light seconds.

Alex Hart created this article on 2022/10/04 16:31.

This was approved by Andrew on 2023/04/18¹⁾