TME-19 Vanguard Supercarrier DropShip

STATISTICS

OVERVIEW

    The TME-19 Vanguard supercarrier is the largest combat DropShip in the history of the Battletech S/TS.  Weirdo Zone naval tacticians noticed that, although Aerospace fighters played a crucial role in Battletech warfare, they were only rarely carried in great enough amounts to be used to their full potential.  To address this, TME designed a fighter carrier capable of supporting an entire naval fleet.   Carrying two fighter wings, the Vanguard meets this goal admirably.

CAPABILITIES

    Massing a hundred thousand tons, it is loosely based on the civilian Behemoth transport.  However, it is a military ship by all accounts.   The Vanguard has more than three times the structural integrity and twice the engine power of its civilian counterpart.  It is armed with twelve Gauss rifles, twelve spaceborne Arrow-IV missile systems, twelve large pulse lasers, and twelve extended-range particle projection cannon situated strategically around the hull for defensive firepower.  Twenty four anti-missile cannon defend the Vanguard from incoming missiles, and all projectile weapons are well furnished with ammunition.   The Vanguard carries enough heat sinks to fire all of its weapons and has a hundred days' worth of interplanetary fuel.

    The Vanguard's primary mission, however, is not front-line combat but to transport the largest single aerospace fighter contingent in history.  One-hundred forty-four fighters, two complete aerospace wings, are stored on six launch decks and five storage decks and can launch four squadrons at a time.   Twenty small craft reside within its cavernous small craft bays and can be launched four at a time.  The pilots, technicians, and up to two hundred passengers can be carried in relatively luxurious quarters on the personnel decks between the hangar section and the engineering section.  Most of the twenty-six thousand ton engine is contained in four jettisonable nacelles, so its eighteen thousand seven hundred tons of cargo are stored around the central exaust port.

    Such a vehicle is an important target in combat and a priceless prize to capture.  The Vanguard is defended by four hundred tons of ferro-carbide armor, making it better defended than some WarShips.  One hundred twenty powered armored troopers or forty-eight platoons of standard marines provide protection from invaders.  In dire emergencies, a hundred lifeboats are prepared for launch.

DEPLOYMENT

    The TME-19 is a most desired item, but its staggering cost precludes all but the Great Houses themselves from purchasing it.  The Lyran Alliance has two, the Iron Hand and Gauntlet; the Draconis Combine has one, the Dragonbearer; House Marik also has one, the Federation; and the Tauran Concordat has one, the Stormbringer.  ComStar has shown an interest in the Vanguard, and the Clans are offering to barter raw materials for one.

VARIANTS

    The TME-19 has three production variants.  The TME-19-A mounts two heavy naval lasers in a built up hardpoint on the nose (pictured) at the cost of thirteen percent of the cargo space.  As the naval lasers' capacitors take a long time to charge, each can be fired only once every two minutes.  The Iron Hand and the Dragonbearer are TME-19-As.  The TME-19-B is a cargo hauler variant that removes the fighters and their crews and increases the cargo capacity by 228 percent.   No TME-19-Bs exist yet, but the Federated Commonwealth has ordered one, the Burning Sword, to be completed by June 3062.  The TME-19/a is a secondary variant that replaces the spaceborne Arrow-IV missiles with AC/20 autocannon.

    DESIGNER'S NOTE:    The Vanguard of the Storm fighter-carrier was the first DropShip I designed using the Battlespace rules.  I have redesigned it several times, finally using Aerotech 2.  The spaceborne Arrow-IVs were a standout charachteristic of the first Vanguard design, as were the massive amounts of armor.  This is a real scrapper of a ship and would probably only be used as the centerpiece of a battle.

Return to the Battletech designs page