Flail Missile
The Flail Missile is an air-to ground[4] and anti-ship missile used by the Imperial Navy.[1]
Description
The Flail has a plasma warhead capable of making a crater of over 50 feet on impact. It its self-guided, using its surveyors to acquire potential targets[1] up to several dozen kilometres distant. The Flail gives of a screeching warning tone when detecting a target's location, giving the bombardier the signal to fire. On launch, the missile drops downward from its carrying aircraft and accelerates to its target.[4]
The missile has half of a kilobrain of memory storage, allowing it to store and recall information on seventy-five separate targets. The Flail’s systems focusses on detecting enemy vehicles, disregarding smaller objects as irrelevant.[4] Due to errors caused by an incorrectly received 'Deviant Perceived' signal, the Flail suffers from premature launch issues.[2] During flight operation, the missile can adjust its own flight path to the target, especially when operating in adverse weather conditions, like being beset by strong winds.[4]
By merging with the missile's machine spirit, a tech-adept can obtain relevant information on detected targets. The Flail’s Auspex system is powerful enough to find enemy vehicles even when operating in adverse conditions like a dust cloud.[4]
The Flail has a successors in the Lance Seeking Projectile, which has fixed the premature launch issue and, in addition, operates better in adverse conditions.[2] Six Flail Missiles can be mounted on the wings of the voidborne Marauder variant.[3]
Sources
- 1: Acceptable Losses (Short Story)
- 2: Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition Rulebook, pg. 282 — Appendix
- 3: Inferno! 9, pg. 53 — Raptor Squadron
- 4: Raptor Down (Short Story)
