Two IB.012 Sunshine strategic interceptors on a flight to test lidar data sharing.
Made to take out strategic missiles and bombers, it carries the heaviest airborne laser of the Pacific Bloc and cruises at mach 4. A number of interceptors is kept in a state of perpetual readiness, with engines already spun up, since a slight cut in response time could save a major city or nuclear weapons battery from vaporization.
The previous IE.003 interceptor, built on an AWACS airframe, has proven too slow. Before it could come within range of incoming ballistic missiles, they would reach their functionally invulnerable reentry stage. The Acquisitory Commission of the World Liberation Army was reluctant to fund a new airframe, a fact possibly related to Ordnance officers worrying it would encroach too much on the Ordnance's nuclear defense role. Cranial engineers of the World Liberation Airforce Innovation Wing decided to convert the B.012 Everest supersonic bomber instead - the only high supercruising aircraft in service with enough payload capacity.
The bomb bay was dedicated to the laser, its power supply and cooling system, the nose radome was replaced by an optics dome, and cooling intakes were added on the dorsal side to take advantage of turbulent air from vortices. Since a conical dome would interfere too much with the laser, and a round nose would kill the aircraft's supersonic performance, a drag-reducing aerospike was installed as a compromise, already used with success on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. A second set of optics above the cockpit covers frontal angles obscured by the spike, although with lesser beam quality.
Among pilots the aircraft is known as the "laser pointer" or "foo fighter".
