Vehicle:Mirage

Mirage is the name of a series of French superluminal strike craft. Named after the Dassault Mirage line of fighters and bombers of the twentieth century, they have seen extensive service in the French Starfleet and French Army and have been exported to a number of countries.

History
The success of the aging Aigle Voltigeur spawned a revolution in French fighter doctrine, definitively proving the viability of FTL-capable strike craft. This sparked a shift away from small point-defense fighters and subluminal bombers, whose short range restricted their use, to heavier and more independent strike craft. The program for an FTL-capable omnirole strike craft, originally entitled Comète, began in 2715. A working prototype was ready by 2721, and ordered by the French Starfleet in 2754. The finished product was named Mirage Comète after its resemblance to the French line of Mirage fighters and bombers of the 20th century.

Mirage Comète
The Mirage Comète was the first of many delta-wing designs built by the French. It was meant to replace the Aigle Voltigeur, which suffered in mobility and agility with the awkward incorporation of a hyperdrive. A new approach was needed to seamlessly and deliberately incorporate it into the design from the beginning. By 2753, development teams delivered a craft that was agile and quick despite the added bulk. Unlike its smaller predecessor, it had a large body and expansive wings. To satisfy the needs of the French Army, it was fitted with vertical-take-of-and-landing capabilities, though that was removed in later variants that were only used by the French Starfleet.

As an omnirole fighter, the Comète was meant to respond to changing circumstances with relative ease. It could be retooled to carry missiles or bombs of different sizes with few modifications, though they were not exactly interchangeable at the time. Parts needed to be added or removed from the release mechanisms to hold different types of ammunition. This was fixed in later versions of the craft as the French continued to standardize their ammunition and production methods. The Comète 1CV3 was known for being able to seamlessly launch almost every type of ammunition that could be found on the deck of a French carrier, a trait that would later came back in the Comète 2.

Variants
 * Mirage Comète (2721) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Comète 1A (2729) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Comète 1C (2735) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Comète 1CV (2737) - omnirole, warp (prototype)
 * Mirage Comète 1D (2743) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Comète 1DU2 (2756) - omnirole, hyperspace

Mirage Comète V
The original design of the Comète came in two variants, the normal one and a highly experimental variant called the Mirage Comète V. Though similar in many characteristics, they differed on one important point: the Comète V was equipped with a warp drive, not a hyperdrive. Only a few hundred examples of this craft were ever produced, assigned to specialized Voltigeur squadrons within the French Starfleet. They were meant to experiment with the then-theoretical Voltigeur drill, which was considered viable by 2760. The Comète V itself, however, was plagued by problems. Its design was specially tailored to the hyperdrive, and was poorly optimized for warp-based travel.

Variants
 * Mirage Comète V (2723) - omnirole, warp
 * Mirage Comète V1 (2737) - omnirole, warp

Mirage Comète 2
Though the Comète 1 had been designed to be easily upgradable and for its parts to be changed out as they grew obsolete, the design itself was starting to show its age by the end of the 2770's. Advances in design made the old one look clumsy by comparison. The Mirage 2 brought minute but revolutionary changes to the delta-wing design, making it easier to navigate and control. Over the course of the first half of the 2780's, it replaced the Comète 1DU2 as the French Starfleet's primary omnirole strike craft.

Variants
 * Mirage Comète 2 (2751) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Comète 2A (2770) - omnirole, hyperspace

Mirage Comète 3
As the Mirage Roi project progressed, it became clear that it was going to be more expensive to produce than was originally thought, which might impede its performance on the market. The French government decided to collaborate with the Roreinians to produce a more affordable fighter to act as part of a deal to produce a flagship main battle tank for the French army. The French intended to use the Mirage Comète 3 as a supplement to the Mirage Roi both on the market and in the French military.

It built on the design of the Mirage 2, and had very similar characteristics to it.

When a breakthrough was made in the Mirage Roi project, promising to reduce the cost of the craft greatly, the French left the project to the Roreinians. By that point, a working prototype had already been built, and the Roreinians went on to mass produce it as their main omnirole fighter.

Variants
 * Mirage Comète 3 (2779) - omnirole, hyperspace (canceled)

Super Mirage
The Super Mirage was a memorable line of heavy conventional strategic and tactical bombers. Though they all carry the same name, the designs actually differ greatly from incarnation to incarnation. It was originally meant to replace the Hydre gunship in the role of fire support in space, though through the intervention of the French Army in the design process, the project took a drastically different turn and produced a superluminal bomber with similar flight characteristics to the Comète, plus added bulk. The French Starfleet fielded the Super Mirage 1 in 2760, though quickly realized that they had little use for a bomber optimized for atmospheric flight. As the Army brought out new Super Mirages in 2770 and 2780, the Starfleet briefly considered adopting them before discarding the idea.

Variants
 * Super Mirage 1 (2730) - bomber, hyperspace
 * Super Mirage 2 (2750) - tactical bomber, hyperspace (canceled)
 * Super Mirage 3 (2780) - tactical bomber, hyperspace (canceled)

Super Mirage V
After the Voltigeur drill was shown to be feasible by the Comète V, the French set out to build a warp-optimized fighter, the likes of which had not been seen since the Hyperspace Revolution. They adopted the Super Mirage 1 as their base design and heavily modified it based on data gathered from the Comète V. The result France's first strike craft specialized for the Voltigeur drill. Like the Comète V, it was distributed to a few specialized squadrons for testing before being generally adopted.

Variants
 * Super Mirage V (2737) - tactical bomber, warp

Super Mirage 2V
The Super Mirage 2V is widely considered as a misguided attempt to modify the French Army's Super Mirage 2 to operate within the Voltigeur drill by a different team from the one who produced the Super Mirage V. The craft was in many ways worse than the its predecessor. It handled poorly at warp, lacked maneuverability, and tried to incorporate a warp drive that rotated externally so the craft did not need to consistently enter warp backwards and could change its attack vector more easily while executing the drill. In practice, the mechanism was flimsy and was easily torn from the craft. The Super Mirage 2V4 refit attempted to fix these problems, but the problems were intrinsic to the design. A complete overhaul was needed.
 * Super Mirage 2V (2758) - tactical bomber, warp
 * Super Mirage 2V4 (2764) - tactical bomber, warp

Super Mirage A
After having been set back ten years, renewed interest in the Voltigeur project sparked the creation of the Super Mirage A. It was a complete redesign of the Super Mirage to include three seats, taking the strain of the operation off of the shoulders of a single person. It was a lot bigger than its predecessors and a lot more responsive both at warp and in real space. A new firing mechanism, added in the Super Mirage A1, allowed the fighter to perform runs at other angles than directly at the target, reducing risk of collision for the crew. Previous craft required that the craft travel in the direction it wanted the missile to go––directly at the target. If the pilot failed to activate his warp drive in time, or if the warp drive failed, he was likely to collide with his target. Attacking from a slightly offset angle negates this risk.

Variants
 * Super Mirage A (2766) - tactical bomber, warp
 * Super Mirage A1 (2775) - tactical bomber, warp
 * Super Mirage A1B (2786) - tactical bomber, warp

Super Mirage B
The Super Mirage B built on the successes of the Super Mirage A, incorporating among other upgrades a drive system that could rotate three-hundred-and-sixty degrees within the craft itself. This allowed the Super Mirage B to enter hyperspace from any angle, having been previously been confined to warping backwards.

Variants
 * Super Mirage B (2787) - tactical bomber, warp

Mirage I

 * Mirage I (2775) - superlumninal interceptor, hyperspace
 * Mirage IP (2790) - superluminal interceptor, hyperspace

Mirage Roi

 * Mirage Roi (2780) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Roi Dominant (2792) - omnirole, hyperspace
 * Mirage Roi Dominant X (2793) - precision bomber, hyperspace
 * Mirage Roi Dominant X1 (2793) - precision bomber, warp
 * Mirage Roi D (2796) - omnirole, hyperspace