White Shark

Description
The White Shark missile was developed as the middleweight of the SLDF Navy's three anti-fighter missile systems. Like the Barracuda and Killer Whale missiles, the White Shark was effective at destroying small craft, unlike the Naval Lasers, Autocannon, and PPC's. After the fall of the Star League and the loss of WarShips and other capital weapons, production halted. The Federated Commonwealth restarted production during the Clan Invasion alongside the production of new WarShips.

Once production of WarShips resumed, a glaring flaw became apparent in the White Shark and its sister missiles: The primitive guidance packages the post Succession Wars era Successor States could manufacture couldn't always hit the target. The easiest way to solve the problem was to remove the guidance package and install communications links that would allow friendly operators to guide the missile like a remote-controlled AeroSpace Fighter. The Draconis Combine Admiralty did this in 3056. Though the White Shark-T lost the ability to attack small craft, the ability to manually guide the missile and change targets more than made up for it.

Capital Missiles like the White Shark are popular for Pocket WarShips because they are the only capital scale weapon system that can fit on a DropShip sized platform.

Models
The White Shark missile system only has one model, produced on the following planets:

Variants
The Santa Ana is a 50 kiloton nuclear warhead mounted on a White Shark missile, allowing it to be launched from a White Shark or AR-10 launcher. In addition to being fired by WarShips at other space targets or to perform planetary bombardments, special purpose-built missile silos can launch these missiles at orbital or surface targets. When operating within an atmosphere the missile has a maximum range of 5,000 kilometers, which it can travel in approximately eleven and a half minutes.