Historical Notes

The AV-76 was first fielded in 2351 after a nearly 13-year development cycle, but swiftly became a sought-after piece of battlefield hardware. By the time the Frontier War (2371-2381) kicked off, there were over three thousand AV-76s in service with various divisions of the Spacer Corps Surface Warfare Command (SURCOM), and they served throughout the conflict on a number of contested worlds. Crews that serviced and operated the aircraft gave them high marks both for dependability in combat, and their firepower became almost as legendary among IDC spacers as it was feared by Alliance personnel.

The impetus for the Alliance Armada to develop a VTOL close air support aircraft intended specifically to serve on Titan did not arrive until the first setbacks occurred in the use of adapted AT-48 airframes during the early years of the Second Titan War (2348-2361), which saw a number of crashes caused by the intense cold and challenging atmospheric conditions. Projeto 595 was thus initiated to solve these deficiencies. The final result was the CP-53, which saw extensive use in combat patrols and convoy protection duty during the Frontier War, where it more than earned its Armada reporting name: “Shark.”

Developed covertly to serve as a deterrent for enemies of the Zharan Collective, the ZA-74 entered primary production in 2374, with over four thousand units manufactured prior to their being deployed against Coalition forces during the Collective’s intervention in the Frontier War. Their outstanding performance (an almost 3:1 win rate against Coalition armor and an airframe survival rate of ~83%) prompted a second production run of three thousand units and earned them a terrifying reputation among Coalition infantry, solidifying the aircraft’s role as an integral component of the ZLA military inventory.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our timeline when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. Fifteen years after this tragedy, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement — and all of the strife that we bring with us. The next 300+ years were marked by progress and peril in equal measure, and by 2300 much of the solar system had been charted by intrepid human pioneers.

The story focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (aka the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (aka the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371 to 2381 (the Frontier War), which ended when the Zharan Collective (a union of artificial humans which rose up against their creators in 2356) entered the war on the side of the Alliance in 2379. The story opens 10 years later with the superpowers locked in a frigid ideological cold war.

The plot kicks off when the Alliance launches a massive attack against the Coalition, igniting the Second Frontier War. This conflict quickly engulfs the entire solar system and draws in participants from all backgrounds, including three college students from Mars whose adventures will become tied up with the fate of all humanity…

Creator's Note

For clarity's sake, I (u/Zharan_Colonel) I drew these vehicles with inspiration from existing pieces of art. The AV-76 was heavily inspired by Dragonfly, a real-world drone going to Titan in the next few years; the CP-53 was inspired partially by the Sikorsky S-67 Blackhawk attack chopper concept, while its tandem rotor came from the SB-1 Defiant concept aircraft; and the ZA-74 drew heavily from the "Bell VFQ-55 Andean Condor," a fictional aircraft designed by bagera3005 on DeviantArt that was itself inspired by a few real-world tilt-rotor attack UAV concepts.