// Vehicle File — In Service
Classification: Fleet Standard
◀ Small Craft Registry
Arquebus-Class
Support Craft
UGAF · MMS-ARQ-001
// Top-Down Profile — UGAF Livery
DesignationMMS-ARQ-001
OperatorUGAF
Crew5 · pilot and up to four specialists
RoleSensor collection · intelligence
Arrays3 · independently configurable
ReachExtended · longest in the small craft inventory
EnduranceHigh · extended station keeping
Armament2 × wingtip energy cannon
EscortRequired
Status In Service
"It goes out with a mission and comes back with what it found."
// Service Synopsis
The Arquebus is the first of three support classes in the United Galactic Authority Fleet's small craft inventory, and the only one built around instruments. It carries five: a pilot forward, and up to four specialists working the arrays from a compartment tall enough to stand in. There is no squadron it belongs to. It goes out with a mission and comes back with what it found.
Range and endurance are the point. An Arquebus can hold station where a fighter would already be turning for home, and it flies escorted for exactly that reason. What escorts it depends on the tasking and on what is available. Paired with Scimitars it gives the Fleet its longest mission range, the two classes reaching further together than either manages alone. The fighters are there so it can keep working.
It will not run with a fighter at full thrust. It is fast enough to outrun most everything else.
Range and endurance are the point. An Arquebus can hold station where a fighter would already be turning for home, and it flies escorted for exactly that reason. What escorts it depends on the tasking and on what is available. Paired with Scimitars it gives the Fleet its longest mission range, the two classes reaching further together than either manages alone. The fighters are there so it can keep working.
It will not run with a fighter at full thrust. It is fast enough to outrun most everything else.
// Sensor Fit and the Shield Problem
Three arrays sit on the upper hull, each configured independently. Focused tracking on a narrow arc, or a full sweep for a hazard picture. Passive collection across the spectrum. Long-range work nothing else in the inventory can do.
Deployed, they break the shield envelope. The craft cannot raise shields with the arrays up, and it cannot see with them stowed. Every hour on station is that decision, made again.
Two energy cannons sit at the wingtips. They will not break a fighter's shields and were never expected to. What they will do is answer, and most of what comes hunting an unarmed target does not stay to find out how much they put out.
Deployed, they break the shield envelope. The craft cannot raise shields with the arrays up, and it cannot see with them stowed. Every hour on station is that decision, made again.
Two energy cannons sit at the wingtips. They will not break a fighter's shields and were never expected to. What they will do is answer, and most of what comes hunting an unarmed target does not stay to find out how much they put out.