ALB-65F Gladius

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"It's ike a surgeon's scalpel, except it's a nuclear powered chainsaw"

- Second Lieutenant Karl Voychek

The is a UNSC Attack Bomber. It is a modified version of the B-9 Bomber, designed for precision aerial strikes against ground targets.

Description
The AB-9F is a intelligently designed attack bomber aircraft, focusing on being able to go between tactical and strategic missions, including high altitude missions and close range, low support strike missions. To do this it focuses on a large flight body focused around the forward cabin, weapons, two main engines then the wide wings with vectored thrust engines. This format allows it to preform high altitude missions and even travel transatmospherically but also loiter at vary altitudes with some degree of agility. Its wing tip mounted vectored thrust engines are rocket engines while the main engines can vary between ramjet and rocket modes, like many UNSC engines.

The frame is constructed from superplastic-formed diffusion-bonded metal matrix composites. These light, oxidation resistant matrix composites are formed from high modulus, high strength gold and chrome doped zirconium oxide reinforced fibres and a titanium aluminide matrix. The skin is formed from four layered plates attached to the frame. The inside layer is a carbon composite which is bonded to the middle layer of single crystal carbon, which does not melt on reentry and protects the ship and occupants. The third layer is a resin bonded layer of structural titanium aluminide with a titanium mesh insert.The fourth layer is a outer layer of AEGIS, providing thermal and oxidation protection. The cock pit is situated in titanium-AEGIS compound armoured 'tubs'. These give limited protection against enemy fire. The windscreen is bullet-proof diffusion-bonded stretched-acrylic with a variable electronically controlled gold tinted setting, which protects it from solar rays and electronic interference. These give limited protection against enemy fire. The skin is painted with both RADAR absorbent paint and LASER absorbent laminates, which when compounded with its stealth design, gives it decent stealth abilities. It possesses a tail mounted point defence laser capable of fending off some attacking missiles, partially hidden in a small aerodynamic nook to prevent ruining the RADAR signature of the ship or the carefully designed aerodynamics.

The Flamberg utilises a LASER weapon system instead of a bomb bay, powered by a pair of CENTURION Fusion power plants. The Flamberg can utilises a pair of TITAN LASERS in a Firestorm CIWS styled set up, with them firing in sequence to achieve a higher rate of fire, or one single, custom made HYPERION LASER, with a output twice that of the TITAN and many times more powerful than the SPARTAN LASER. These differing set ups allow the Flamberg to precisely engage ground targets with high power weapons and total accuracy, with them being able to differ between engaging armoured columns or engaging heavily defended targets, such as bunkers and other kinds of hardened buildings.

The Flamberg uses a multidirection passive phased array RADAR with emissions control and Synthetic Aperture operational capacity, defensive RADAR reciever and ECM jamming abilities, a optical all weather/IR optical viewing system and LIDAR systems.