Excalibur heavy fighter
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The (fictional) F-103 Excalibur heavy fighter is a spaceplane in the Wing Commander computer game universe. At its introduction in the 2660s it was the finest production fighter in existence and it would soldier on well into the 2680s.
At least five different versions were fielded by Confed; four of them have been shown in the game series.
The F-103A was the initial version and was used to deliver the Tremblor Bomb on Kilrah. It carried four tachyon cannon, two reaper cannon, six image-recognition missiles and six friend-or-fo missiles as standard loadout.
The F-103B was a less-expensive variant fielded after the war's end. It was also less maintenance-intensive; the two reaper cannon were downgraded to ion cannon and the missile loadout was reduced to four heatseekers and four image-recognition missiles.
The F-103D was the final fighter version fielded by Confed. It had stronger shields compared to the F-103B, but otherwise was not very different in design. It was also the last production fighter to include auto-tracking guns; newer fighters did not have that feature (amongst others) due to budget cuts. The RF-103D was a reconnaissance version of the F-103D with enhanced sensor equipment and a cloaking device which proved to be of questionable utility against the Nephilim.
The few Excaliburs that saw wartime service were extremely successful against the Kilrathi for which they were designed to fight. No other production fighter could match it. Unfortunately, by the time of the Nephilim invasion, the Excalibur was dated. While well-armed (in fact, somewhat more powerful than the newer F-108 Panther medium fighter) it was, by the standards of the 2680s, also somewhat fragile. They performed fairly well in the war (especially as cloaked reconnaisance fighters) but their glory days were past.
The Excalibur design bears a strong resemblence to the Transformers microcassette character Raindance.