W-WING FIGHTER

The W-wing is a Rebel fighter that never made it past the prototype stage. Plans for this fighter were uncovered by Imperial spies on Mon Calimari.

Although not heavily armed, or particularly fast the Rebel W-wing fighter is extremely dangerous because it is the Rebels' first attempt at a stealth fighter. The ship relies on a new type of cloaking technology previously unseen and untried. Older cloaking technologies relied upon generating massive fields of energy which could disguise a ship or even render it invisible to all forms of tracking. The massive amounts of energy needed to cloak a ship prevents the technology from being applied to smaller ships. Up until the Vorknx Project, it was thought that only the Empire's V-38 assualt fighters possessed the ability to cloak, but only for short periods of time. The Rebels have tried a different approach to the technology. Instead of generating a field of energy around the ship the new cloaking technology is built directly into the outer layers of the ship's skin. The outer skin is coated with a fine layer of synthetic material which works to simulate the ship's surroundings. The material is so sensitive that it can change appearances quickly enough to fool any tracking sensors. The rounded curves of the fighter further augment this ability as sharp edges would be much more difficult to conceal. The outer skin also completely absorbs any form of active sensing radiation such that no data returns to an enemy vessel to pinpoint the fighter's location.

The W-wing is extremely expensive and slow to produce. If the Rebels had ever got prototype fighters online they could have posed a serious hazard to Imperial operations throughout the galaxy. It appears that the Rebels dumped the project after the Imperials stole the info.

Mon-Cal X-200 W-wing Fighter

• Length:22 meters.
• Crew:1 pilot, 1 navigator or passenger.
• Armament: 2 medium lasers, 1 concussion missile launcher.
• Speed: 120 mglt
• Shields: One Heavy Mon Calamari ML-60 shield generator.
• Armour:6 inch maximum
• Engines: 4 Mon Calamari XV16B Stealth, emissionless engines.