Faucher AA 5.60

Holy Harvest

The Arnaulde Faucher AA 5.60 (Commonwealth reporting name "Backhand") was a four engined turbo-prop maritime patrol aircraft that saw service with the Forces Navales Nationales of the Republic of Nouvolouis. Designed and built by Arnaulde Aeronatique, the aircraft entered service with the FNN in 119 A.S. as a wide area surveillance and reconnaissance craft. It would only see combat in one conflict, the Islander War, where it was instrumental in the strike that crippled the UCS Formidable and played a key role in attempts to do the same to the UCS Mystique.
After the Republics soft coup and armistice, the Faucher's would be retired from service under disarmament negotiations. Considerations were given to adopting the aircraft to serve in the UC Fleet Air Arm or Army Air Service, but they would be shot down quickly. Still, design elements from the aircraft would ultimately be found in the MP.3 Auxin Able, a much smaller patrol aircraft that would see faithful service in the UCFAA for decades after its entry in 162.

Development

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The Ministère National des forces Navales first issued the set of requirements that would become the Faucher in 115 A.S. The nation's two largest rivals in aviation, Arnaulde Aeronatique and the Societe des Avions Lavigne, put forwards their proposals later that year. SAL offered a novel design, based around a pair of highly modern and entirely untested turbofan system they'd devised, and which promised high speed and reach. Arnaulde, on the other hand, offered a militarised version of their AA 4.60 series of civilian air liner. While its poor passenger care and loud noise left it a less than ideal liner, the 4.60 was well known for its deep fuel tanks and roughhouse reliability, which left it a small niche in the civil aviation market as the only recourse for truly long haul routes.
Initial prototyping led to an almost immediate default victory for Arnaulde, when the test bed for SAL's new engine repeatedly failed to ignite, failed to take-off, or spontaneously combusted owing to severe complications derived from the rushing into service of a terminally unready engine. With the cash strapped Nouvoloian government of the time just wanting an aircraft it could use, Arnaulde's offer was taken in 116. The first militarised prototype would fly that same year, and the Faucher would enter service with the FNN's Western Fleet in 119 A.S.

Design

The Faucher's most distinguishing feature is its bulge nose and flanks, a common characteristic of many early Wave Emission Sensor platforms that sticked out particularly harshly on the converted liner. Combined with an all weather electro-optical camera set embedded in its underbelly, the aircraft could silently watch over thousands of miles of open ocean on day long flights, reporting real time intelligence to Commandement de la Flotte Combinée in Cagnan.
Propelling the aircraft at four hundred knots are four Mateu-500 engines, each turning a pair of contra-rotating four bladed propellers. The equipment and weapons carried depended on a given aircraft's assigned mission, from filling the weapon's bay with a retractable set of electronic emission detecting antennae to stripping the aircraft bare and loading it up with its own weight in long range anti-ship cruise missiles.
Later developments in Nouvolouian arms technology precluded the latter purpose, relegating the Faucher to the sidelines in favour of the more modern SAL Gloire 6.10s with their greater speed and capacity. The Faucher's superior endurance still left it a place in active service, however, and taking advantage of its constantly upgraded sensor suites it formed a crucial link in the hunter-killer network that the FNN and Forces Aériennes Nationales would employ, to significant success, against the United Commonwealth.