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Austerlitz
Details
Unit
type: covert operations submarine carrier Developed in the utmost secrecy using the Earth Union's "black budget", the Austerlitz is a mysterious and unusual submarine mobile suit carrier developed primarily by European defense firm Dahlgren Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (Dahlgren Weapons and Munitions Factories) under supervision of the Earth Union's Main Intelligence Directorate. The design, construction, and even existence of the vessel was not known by the Union's regular military or civilian government, being exclusively deployed by the MID for use in covert warfare and "black" operations. The submarine's awkard and boxy-looking hull, looking vaguely similar to a hump-backed seal, was arrived at out of a desire to facilitate a maximum number of embarked mobile suits while minimizing the submarine's overall dimensions. The entire central hull is devoted to a large mobile suit hangar with launch doors and linear catapults for up to twelve mobile suits. Watertight inflatable sleeves can be deployed around each mobile suit bay to allow for underwater launches and recovery, giving the Austerlitz a coveted ability to field its mobile suits without surfacing. While the primary method of deployment is via the dorsal hatches, a single ventral hatch can also be used for quiet launches where the embarked mobile suit is slid forward in the hangar and dropped out of the bottom face-down. A mooring ring is available for a Trilobite mobile armor to attach itself to the submarine's ventral hull. While unconventional in shape, the Austerlitz boasts high performance albeit at the cost of significant expense and a high degree of mechanical complexity. A pair of finely crafted feathering props allow it to travel at a comparably high speed while still operating silently. Maneuvering is accomplished by a series of low-noise pumpjet thrusters in the submarine's outboard fins and in the "lip" that circumnavigates the vessel's waterline - it has no conventional rudders. The Austerlitz is armed with both GN torpedoes and GN missiles which are arranged in a fairly typical configurations. Similar to the Trilobite, both the torpedoes and missiles can be used to attack aerial targets via breaching the surface, as the GN particle propulsion works equally well in both water and air. The torpedo launchers are positioned in the bow, while missiles are deployed from a vertical launch system in the "hump" aft of the sail. At the stern there are also a pair of countermeasure dischargers, which are capable of launching sonar decoys and dummy capsules that release compressed GN particles, creating the illusion of drive trails to sensors that can detect such emissions. While surfaced, the submarine can also launch conventional flares or deploy smoke. In order to maintain the secrecy of its operators, the Austerlitz has also been configured to be capable of launching conventional (non-GN) torpedoes and missiles as well, and while it is capable of fielding mobile suits with GN drives the Main Intelligence Directorate operators just as frequently employ old Atlantic Federation Daughseats or ex-ZAFT ZnOs, or sometimes even non-amphibious mobile suits as a whole for operations on land. |
