A United States Air Force AC-130 is transported to Equestria while in transit through the Bermuda Triangle. Insanity aside, this motley crew of aviators must juggle their duties while treading the uncertain waters of diplomacy.
Disclaimer: I've decided to write this in an attempt to get a more realistic view of what military in Equestria would act like, rather then the dark brooding kill happy stuff I've read. So with that being said, these guys will act more like diplomats. So there won't be much gore, and they certainly won't be going on a killing spree. (Obviously, as fiction the term realistic is applied loosely. My main goal is a realistic characterization of one specific community within the military. Just keep an open mind about how sub-cultures can exist within an entity as large as the U.S. military and you'll be fine.) Also rated teen for obvious reasons, morbid humor, light swearing, and background stories.
This sounds interesting.
Three cheers for the Herc, sexiest airframe in the inventory.
7049197 If she were a woman I'd make sweet love to her.
TCAS - Traffic Collision Avoidance System
If you want to include more realistic details, there are reference materials available for aircraft of all sizes.
http://www.b737.org.uk/flightinsts.htm
If the GPS faulted, then the aircraft would be running on the inertial systems, which have an error drift over time.
Next chapter when?
7049202 If I'm ever a billionaire, I plan on buying a C-130 with low hours on the airframe, completely updating and retrofitting it, and using one as my home away from home. Plenty of rough strips up here in AK to fly out to, etc.
Now I just need to make the $
7049228 Probably within the week seeing as the next chapter is already planned.
7049226 Not sure if your saying TCAS is not real or not. However I do know AC-130's have them, since I've flown on em a few times. I will take your GPS suggestion to heart, but just so you know the gps we have on the gunship is old. It also operates off a 1980's computer so when it doesn't have a constant contact with the satellite it doesn't drift it just locks up. The plane is state of the art in some areas and just plain archaic in others.
7049247 Well good luck to you brother, it would be awesome to have one of them all to myself. Fly it in airshows and just have a grand ole time flying it all over the states.
Second or third time you mentioned the plane by model, you missed a letter. Minor mistake, but still. Anyway, interesting, in a way. From my understanding, the Equestrian Pegasus branch, or whatever they are in your personal headcanon for this story, sets up a storm to stop them as well as either some airlifted unicorn guards or the princesses, not expecting them to be able to power through it all. Am I right in my understanding?
7049326
Your TCAS acronym is wrong. TCAS is Traffic Collision Avoidance System, not Tactical Collision Avoidance System (Though it could be tactical if they painted it black).
Also, the altimeter and airspeed systems are fed data through the pitot tube system, which relies on air pressure to gauge altitude and airspeed. They could get funky altimeter data if they had the system slaved to the radio altimeter, but the radio altimeter is really only good below 5,000 feet, while in the story it appeared they were much higher.
----
If you aren't perfectly familiar with the AC-130's systems, you could probably crib from 737 spec's on the internet, considering that most of the concepts are the same.
Some typos/suggestions
it's
too
it's
won't
nowhere
otherwise
there were no aircrafts / there was no aircraft
(The) Star Wars
a while ('cause awhile = for a while)
7050524 Typos have been eliminated with extreme prejudice, thank you for your input.
7049517 You seem to be a pretty knowledgeable type on this stuff, how about I change the systems fed by the pitot tube, and have the "weird affects" to the aircraft just be electromagnetic in nature and just affect the electronic equipment as well as the normal compass? Also TCAS has been changed, and I added the drift recommendation.
7049347 Yeah if it's the one I found, I did that one on purpose. I wanted to make it seem like they recognized the similar shape of a C-130, but didn't understand what they saw until they recognized the guns and realized the impossibility of there being any other AC-130's in the area. If I didn't make that clear let me know, I'll figure out a way to make it read better. Not quite the direction I'm going, the storm is just supposed to be a Earth phenomenon that ended up sending them through an interdimensional portal. In this version of Earth the Bermuda Triangle's strange disappearance's are a real thing, and not at all Equestrian in nature. But I will have the characters spit ball ideas about what they think really happened to them.
well written and believable characters. Please keep going :D
Wow, they really are off-course...
'piqued', I think?
Off to a good start! I see they have great timing in their visit...
7064257 Ahaha damn it, yeah that would be way off course, thanks for pointing that out. I'll take care of the piqued vs. peaked as well. Of course! As the saying in the military goes if your not 15min early your late, these guys arrived for the party just in time!
Edit: Corrections made.
Down in Kokomo? Isn't that a song by the beach boys?
Edit: this was before I read the chapter, but do I get bonus points for knowing the reference before hand?
*looks at the title*
ENEMY AC-130 ABOVE!
Literally every announcer in MW2 screamed in terror when this bad boy was called in on the enemy side, except for Task Force 141, who kept a cool head...
Pretty interesting so far. Well written with some good descriptions. That said, not much has really happened yet so I'll be looking forward to the interactions. It'll be very nice to see a culture clash story with the military that doesn't become a war fic or overly violent. Like basically every single one of these military stories ends up being.
7064276 No no no. If you don't arrive 15 minutes before the time sergeant says, which is fifteen minutes before First Sergeant says, which is fifteen minutes before Gunny says, which is fifteen minutes before Lieutenant says, which is fifteen minutes before Colonel says, which is fifteen minutes before Commander says...
So it's safe to assume that they won't defect to Equestria?
I really hate how that happens.
7065417 Of course not, most of these men are heavily invested in their country and military service. It would take something that won't be in this story for them to turn their back on that and their families. While I'm sure a Dances with Wolves scenario has happened more then a few times in our history, it wouldn't make sense with most of these characters backgrounds that I'll get into more depth with later on.
7065164 Hurry up and wait, one thing I don't miss about the military.
7064428 Yeah you win a slice of cake, redeemable wherever gunships can be found. Disclaimer: Author is not responsible for injuries and, or loss of life sustained while trying to find them.
7049197
B-52 is best airframe
7065600 Dammit now I have nothing to fall back on if I can't find any gunships.
I'll be following this one! Good to see people with sense and a more realistic as opposed to high adventure approach. :)
Talley-ho!
Changelings inbound!
For any and all interested, I'm in need of a pre-reader for the next Chapter. Must be familiar with google-doc, PM me so we can get this train rolling.
I'll be following this. I do appreciate the raw power of the mighty Spook.
7069096 The Spooky is the embodiment of human might. That being said I'm excited for the release of the next chapter. It should be up tomorrow.
Haven't read fic, but what happens when they run out of fuel? x3
A-10 is sexiest. A pox on people who say it's ugly and double-pox on Congress for trying to replace them.
Ayyy! An AC-130 fic set during the changeling invasion that doesn't involve the changelings on the receiving end of some dakka? Count me in!
7069727 Who knows? In the words of Ron White, running out of fuel would equal this. "All the way to the scene of the crash." But in all seriousness I've got plans. Mad, deranged awesome plans for this fic, you'll just have to stay tuned lol.
7069727 They get out and push the plane, my good man!
I really am enjoying this and I can't wait for more to read. Keep it up
7069745 Of course! I'm going for realism first and foremost. Standing operating procedures for all troops including aircraft is that if you can exit a engagement, that should be the course of action. Self defense is authorized but withdrawal is highly encouraged if able. Also I don't know if I touched on it enough, but this isn't a full crew. They have 5 out of the 13 people required to operate the aircraft, while in a pinch they could surely make do it wouldn't be smart to operate at such a deficiency.
7069744 I love the A-10, I've worked with them dozens of times. However they do seem to steal a lot of the spotlight from the other close air support platforms.
7069778 Just have Pinkie attach a shit load of balloons
"They penetrated our armor!" (World of Tanks)
7069790
No joke, in this one fic the soldiers in the plane see Canterlot under siege and start raining down hellfire...
It was not a very long fic.
Sooooooooo, why is it rated mature then?
I know 2 more WOT references in this chapter...
7069792 The visual I got was comical but also a little depressing.
7069799 Never played it. I guess I'm just that good. I can make references without referencing anything.
7069818 Eh. That will come into play in later chapters, it has nothing to do with anything planned within this fic. Rather it will deal with the past's of our protagonists', nothing overly angsty though.
I am definitely liking the way you are approaching this, although I do have two issues I want to bring up.
First is a technical issue with the way you mention the crew loosing sight of something on the ground while the aircraft is orbiting. The whole point of that maneuver is that it lets them keep their guns trained on a single point on the ground so they can rain continuous fire on a target until they run out of fuel or ammo, so they should never loose sight of a target on the ground as they are orbiting. You ran into this issue both over Ponyville and Canterlot and it really bothered me because it completely violates the core operational concept of the gunship.
Second is the way the changelings behaved. There was no reason for them to attack the gunship based on its actions, and Chrysalis's orders required them to figure out what it is before they could decide on a course of action. They really should have flown up to investigate it before doing anything else which would have led to a very different confrontation, although I doubt things would have played out all that differently because I cannot see the crew opening a door to let the changelings in. They would have either pulled away when they saw the changelings flying up towards them (because they absolutely would have seen that in a proper orbit) to avoid a confrontation, or looked at each other through the window for a bit until one side or the other decided to leave (or the shield bomb happened while Chrysalis was distracted trying to figure out what was going on). As is, the changelings just feel like the generic stupidity you explicitly said you were trying to avoid in the description which is extremely disappointing because I was really hoping you would do something interesting with cautious, rational diplomacy here rather than just throwing a slightly less awful coat of paint on the usual smash the baddies stupidity.
Anyways, it is looking good outside those two issues and I am definitely curious to see where it goes because you do seem to be generally on the ball with this, although it is too early for me to make a judgement on a thumb at this point.
7049247 Not gonna lie, that would be awesome.
7051560 You missed one C-130/AC-130 typo:
7069790 To be perfectly fair, there isn't usually much left to do after the A-10 shows up so of course it steals the attention.
More seriously, it is really not all that surprising because the A-10 is the only aircraft in service explicitly built as a dedicated ground attack airplane so of course it is better at the job than its competitors. The AC-130 is really the only serious alternative in the realm of fixed wing aircraft (helicopters are different enough that there really isn't a direct comparison between the two), but there are a lot more A-10s and they can fly in much more dangerous airspace than the converted cargo birds so it is not surprising that the AC-130 is generally seen as a runner up to the A-10.
Ticer's nickname could be Mr. T.
7069992 Have someone fire a warning shot, only they accidentally hit and get chewed out for it. Stupidity problem mostly solved.
You have my attention. Followed.
7069992 I'm very happy to hear that. It is far too often that I get grouched at for those kinds of comments so it is great to see that you appreciate them as the chance to learn and grow that they are.
For the first one, I'm not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the AC-130, but I would think that they could at least move the naviguesser to the TV station temporarily to get a better view of the area in a pylon turn because the pilot can do that without his help. Still, I can definitely see the interior layout making that infeasible depending on how hard it is to move around the aircraft and operate those systems untrained so I'll have to take your word on this one.
For the second, I don't think the timing is really all that tight. There is a fair amount of implied travel time with the girls going to the element chamber and getting dragged back in addition to the time spent talking and fighting so you should have at least 10 minutes of story time to work with, and I think 15 to 20 is a more realistic estimate. Now, you do loose about 5 to 10 minutes of that with the changelings getting into position and talking to each other, but that still gives a good 5 to 10 minutes for the interception and interaction. That is still not a lot of time, but it does at least give them time to intercept the plane and ponder it for a minute before the spell goes off. Thinking about it, I think the timing actually works perfectly to make them reporting what they are seeing be what distracts Chrysalis to let Cadence and Shiny light up their spell to throw the changelings out of the city. It does not change a lot because there is still no real conversation between the two sides, but it keeps the changelings from being stupid and gives a nice reason for Chrysalis not paying attention to the prisoners.
Alternatively, you could just have the crew see the changelings coming up to them and decide that they don't want to risk letting them get close so they pull away early. That actually takes less time than what you wrote because they start leaving earlier, and the changelings don't really wind up doing anything besides reporting what happened because the gunship left on its own before they could figure out what it was.
As for the last part, I understand exactly where you are coming from, but it is a case that could be confusing to people that don't know airplanes which is why I pointed it out.
That poor changebug. At least cartoon-physics seem to be in full effect and he'll have a story for the grand-nymphs...
That was a rather calm start to a "humans in Equestria" story than any I've read, especially since said humans are staffing one of the most powerful airships in the modern age.
Love it! The only concern I have is that the crew, like in every other 'vehicle+crew in equestria' fic, will be complete pushovers and immediately help Equestria in a war because 'it's the right thing to do'.