Skipper Missile

The Skipper Missile is a specialized, long-range, anti-ship torpedo fielded by the Crimson Blade exclusively, no other operators. Skippers are forty percent longer than a standard torpedo, but can be fired from a standard launder. Skipper missiles have also been mounted to Star Fighters.

Design

The Skipper Missile began as an upgraded version of the Scion Torpedo, itself based on the Scion=Sending Missile, a particular variant of anti-ship missile that used an N2 warhead to produce a powerful jet of high-energy plasma. The Skipper adopted this innovation, and combined it with high-tech sensors, state of the art guidance, and advanced stealth capabilities.

Like most torpedoes in the Foundation's arsenal, the Skipper uses a Deuterium Drive with an anti-matter fusion initiator for propulsion. The Skipper has one initiator but four separate magnetic fusion rocket nozzles, which provide both higher specific impulse than the single nozzle, and faster time to cool, augmenting the weapon's stealth functions.

The outer-casing is comprised of radar-absorbing materials, while the inner casing is made of Steal-fired tungsten. The shaped charge is an alloy of tungsten and osmium, steel-fired, and much denser. This is the actual weapon, the N2 warhead situated directly behind it is only there to vaporize the material into high-energy plasma. The charge takes up almost a third of the weapon.

The payload is a standard variable-yield N2 warhead, same as on a standard torpedo. Interestingly, it was found that Skippers do more damage on the lower-yields, but the payload is kept the same for standardization purposes.

The Skipper is the only torpedo equipped with a full-featured Combat Scanner, which is fed data through a battery of sensors. A target can be locked in to the computer and identified with near-certainty using the combat scanner.

Usage

Typically, Skipper Missiles are fired from great range. If at all possible, the torpedo will be fired from some point well ahead of the target's current path, or fired at a relatively stationary target.

Skippers never take a direct path. Instead, they travel some ways in "blind" mode, with all active and passive scanners disabled, take a reading, change course, and continue. The stealth technology is such that most targets can only detect the weapon while it is actively scanning. The scan cycles are short, so when a ship directs its sensors at the target area, it finds nothing, and the attack is frequently written off as a sensor glitch.

When the torpedo reaches attack range, it engages it's engines and moves towards the target, using combat scanner data to determine the best point to detonate. By this time, the Skipper is too close for standard counter-measures and often too fast for point-defenses.

It is the ultimate anti-ship weapon.