Condor

The Condor is the most advanced aircraft ever designed by the Leviathan Group.  Based on a sleek Delta wing pattern, the amphibious ship has two primary modes.  In basic flight mode, the Condor can achieve speeds over Mach 4 utilizing scram jet technology and achieve an operating ceiling of 300,000 feet.  Several suborbital tests were performed on the Condor but it was found that the ship’s photocloak cells allowed an unacceptable level of solar radiation to penetrate the fuselage.

The Condor can also operate in HyrdoScram mode in which the ship can descend to a depth no greater than 100 feet below sea level and accelerate to a maximum speed of 90 mph.  The conversion to HydroScram mode takes approximately 5 minutes.  In order to prepare for HydroScram mode, the cockpit component of the Condor actually retreats into the primary fuselage of the ship allowing a protective sheath to slide forward covering the area.  The cockpit windows are replaced by high-resolution video monitors that provide a 270-degree field of vision of the ship’s underwater environment.  The protective sheath shields the occupants from the substantial pressure of moving through the water so quickly.

A series of three massive hoverfans are located under each wing and the nose of the Condor allowing the ship to perform VTOL maneuvers and actually hover over water or land for extended periods of time.  The hoverfans can also be reversed thereby rapidly pulling the Condor back to Earth in a complex aeronautical maneuver called Descentglide in which the primary engines are shut down and the Condor enters a modified flat spin designed to dramatically increase the downforce on the ship.  This allows the Condor to achieve a descent rate of over 1,500 feet per second with no apparent heat signature.  If the Condor were ever to be tracked, Descentglide allows the ship to literally disappear from the face of any tracking device and vanish into the ocean.  Specially modified flight suits allow the immortal pilots to remain conscious during this dangerous maneuver.

Originally developed by the Leviathan Defense Group as a prototype, the most sophisticated feature of the Condor is its photocloak system.  Utilizing specialized photoreactive cells (similar in technology to the Lumoflora installed on the roof of Leviathan City), the Condor’s central computer takes a statistical average of the light spectrum surrounding the ship and can alter the Condor’s surface appearance and color to match its environment.  While this is not an “invisibility cloak”, it does allow a much greater degree of camouflage for the making the Condor difficult to see at a distance and all but undetectable for satellite imaging.

The Condor was stolen from Leviathan during the Rebellion Incident.