Orotzavak Coastal Cutter Cruises Along

Despite the eclipse and decline of naval forces as the foundation of force projection in modern warfare, aquatic combatants still have a role to play eight hundred years since their strategic demise. While still occasionally appearing as 'novel' solutions in interstellar campaigns when it comes to attacking water-rich worlds, the ecological niches in today's battlespace for aquatic vehicles are in either defensive or peacetime operations. Any interstellar invader can be assumed to have tactical and strategic spacelift capability, and isn't going to bother with oceans unless it absolutely has to. Defenders, on the other hand, often have aquatic infrastructure that needs protecting, or navigable rivers that allow a brown-water fleet to operate near common objectives on land. When not suffering invasion from above, waterways are still common and often vital routes for intraplanetary commerce due to the relative inexpense of naval shipping and, as such, attract more unsavory elements that would prey upon legitimate operations on the seas, thus requiring brown- and blue-water forces to police the waterways.

The Orotzavak cutter was conceived and designed to support the latter 'policing' mission while being immediately useful in the contingency of a 'defending' mission. TME Industries noted that most common wet-naval platforms across the Inner Sphere, like the Sea Skimmer-class hydrofoil and the Monitor-class battle barge, were primarily brown-water only and optimized for short ranges. While generally suitable for policing waterways against poorly equipped pirates and even capable of defending the immediate shore, these boats were distinctly limited by their short range (both in armament and operational environment). Additionally, as tactical aerospace forces grew stronger and stronger in the Sphere, these legacy boats became comparatively weaker and weaker, since the short-range missiles of the Sea Skimmer or the assault autocannon of the Monitor were not much use against aerospace fighters.

In 3061 TEAM MELTA, hot off the heels of the Bracamante debacle, found themselves tasked by Management to develop something that could fit this recently identified niche. While many teams would be understandably sullen after having a 'brilliant idea' torn to shreds like the Bracamante, TEAM MELTA, to everyone's surprise, leapt upon the opportunity to deal with something that wasn't their failed tank proposal. They were still sullen whenever the Brancamante came up, of course, but they had already relegated support work for that bit of distasteful hardware to team members who had broken one of MELTA's many unwritten codes of decorum and so any hard feelings were at least manageable.

TEAM MELTA's first pass at the design was a hundred ton cutter with a conventional monohull fitted with an extra-extra-light fusion engine and armed with a plethora of autocannon: quad ten-class smoothbores in a turret and twin light five-class autocannon in side sponson. Rather than immediately run back to their management with this solution, however, MELTA had an unusual case of collective introspection. "Okay, it was cool," one TEAM MELTA member recorded in her journal, "but could we sell it to The Man?" On the plus side, it was well armed, well armored, and very shiny. On the minus side, it had an XXL engine--a feature which, while shiny, never seemed to make it very far with managers and salespeople--the "beancounters"--who would complain about "we'd have to charge a premium price" and "it would make people curious about our capabilities" or the grime-fingered production people with calloused hands who would moan about it being "hard to maintain..." and the guys down in Testing would always side with the production staff.

Nowhere in the notes, correspondence, or personal effects of the TEAM MELTA members at the time is there any indication that they considered these complaints to be justified. The conclusion appears to have been "well, if they won't take awesome, we'll just have to give them the awesome they will take," according to the minutes of a team meeting.

Without review, TEAM MELTA shelved their XXL design and started again. The quad smoothbores were kept as a must, since "that makes it a floating Annihilator" and everything else was adjusted to maintain that design decision, since "LBs always sell--they're good against everything." Simulations showed that the amount of ballast necessary to keep a monohull from capsizing from a broadside would've taken away from the ship's blue-water capability, so the new and improved Orotzavak was built on a catamaran hull. Its 270-rated extra-light was mounted in the forward hull to improve its sea-keeping capabilities (by putting the engine near the hydrodynamic center, fore and aft waves would be less likely to capsize the boat) and its blue-water capability was further improved by enclosing it as much as possible, similar to a lifeboat.

The quad LB 10-X turret became a rotating ring mounted around the superstructure, with elevation mechanisms affixed to the sides in a 'cat ear' configuration. Access through the turret subdeck was through a ladder going through a cylindrical aperture; the sub-deck around the ladder consisted of turret driver mechanisms and ready-magazines for the weapons. The seven-man crew was berthed in living spaces in the twin hulls, and secondary ammunition stores were kept underneath the aft deck. Both the ready magazines and the stores were mounted with cellular ammunition storage equipment to protect the crew, and the Orotzavak could stay afloat (albeit derelict) in the event of an ammunition explosion. The Orotzavak could be loaded quickly through large hatches in the curved outboard upper deck of the side hulls, a feature which would later be reused on the Rogue Baron main battle tank.

When TEAM MELTA submitted this design to upper management for approval, the only point of contention was the turret armament. Ammunition dependency was relatively unusual for TME Industries--even though the Orotzavak maintained an above-average magazine--and LB 10-X autocannon were generally extreme overkill for police duties. TEAM MELTA argued, somewhat on the fly, that military-grade machine guns and missiles such as those on the Sea Skimmer or Monitor were also overkill for police duties, but clearly insufficient for defense. In police duties, Orotzavak crews could use demountable railing guns if they needed less than the autocannon; in actual combat, the Orotzavak both easily outgunned expected surface combatants and brought the firepower of a Partisan air defense tank to bear against enemy air assets. Not only could it defend itself, but it could provide mobile littoral air defense.

The managers agreed, and the Orotzavak was approved for test production with the mild caveat that a dedicated air defense version--differing only from the standard model by the addition of an anti-air radome just to the side of the integrated sensor mast--would also be produced.

Both test variants, Article 001 and Article 002, experienced only minor technical teething problems. The worst offender was the feed from the ammunition reserves to the ready magazine, which was complicated by the turret's design and the need to have hot-selectable ammunition from any of the stowed bins available to the gunner at all times. This was eventually resolved by a two-stage system where the six reserve bins would load six ready bins in the turret, which would then act as the ready magazines for the autocannon. Reloading reserve bins required the turret to return to 'neutral' or 'battery' and the complex ammunition feed system from the ready bins to the four autocannon always required delicate maintenance, but with a dedicated crew aboard (of which only three were necessary for combat operations) these were not seen to be severe problems.

In day-to-day operations, however, the Orotzavak was unpopular with crews because, except for the aft deck, it had no flat topdeck. While rail poles with safety ropes ringed the vessel, Testing crews still felt safer using D-clips attached to lines to move around. This was more natural to spacers than to sailors. Any tool accidentally dropped anywhere other than the aft deck would more like than not roll down the hull and straight into the water, and moving around on the deck was effectively equivalent to walking around a small but steep hill. While annoying, there was nothing critically wrong with operating the cutters, especially as their sea-handling capabilities were surprisingly good for a relatively light vessel. While best kept within the bounds of continental shelves they could easily withstand medium seas and their shallow draft put them on par with barge-based Monitors for brown-water accessibility.

The Orotzavak went into production in 3062; the Orotzavak-0 had only the integrated sensor mast and the Orotzavak-1 also had the dedicated air defense radar and targeting systems. Given the complexity in transporting naval vessels over interstellar distances, TME Industries stole a page from Nav Hull's playbook and instead sold tooling sets and production rights, with turret kits available. As naval battles were not unknown in the FedCom Civil War, a few Orotzavak duels occurred and modifications became common, aided as they were with TME Industries selling design standards for the 'cat ear' turret emplacements. From then on, TME Industries only had to supply basic spares for engine and weapon components, or occasionally take on the odd custom design job.

Later standardized turret production variants included the Orotzavak-A, which swapped out the quad autocannon with twin long range missile twenty-racks and quad short-range missile six-racks; the -B which took up the littoral artillery role with twin Sniper-class artillery pieces; the -C which swapped the smoothbores for 15-class Thunderbolt launchers, and the later -D which mounted twin Gauss rifles and twin light particle cannon.

A rare "bomb ketch" version of the Orotzavak deleted the turret entirely and replaced it with a centerline Long Tom-class artillery cannon. This was never officially supported by TME Industries, as it was a field refit borne of necessity and desperation. Once TME Industries heard of it, they figured there wasn't a real market for it and decided that redesigning the Orotzavak turret to accept a Long Tom naturally wasn't feasible.