Egidă

The proposed design of an Egidă watchtower

Egidă (Eng.: Aegis) was a project in Caradia. The project was under supervision of the Caradian Legion leadership, though the project itself was being carried out by the Sacred Guard. The project was funded and supplied by the CNSC.

The project was considered one of the most important construction and military development projects carried out in recent years by the Legions. With the prospect and danger of ballistic missiles becoming apparent to both the Caradian government and the Caradian people, an order to fund a state of the art defense system for long-range missiles, as well as other projectile weapons which are considered a threat to the security and sovereignty of Caradia.

The system, which was designed by Vosanski Vitaliy Ponomarenko, an officer in the higher research divisions of the Sacred Guard, is designed to consist of watchtowers spaced throughout the Duchy, which are equipped with orientable railguns at the peak of the tower. The towers are proposed to be an unmanned defense matrix, which is guided by computer programming to target the high-velocity railguns at particles flying through or near Caradian airspace at or above a certain speed, which would indicate either a hostile aircraft approach (as Caradian aircraft tend to be far slower than other conventional aircraft), or a ballistic missile approach. The railgun would then fire a lightly guided projectile at the incoming object to destroy it.

Egidă was foreseen to require at least five more months' testing, as the technology required to program such a complex system into the computers of the watchtowers was shaky at the time of proposal, and it would be extremely important to guarantee that the system would not misfire on Caradian aircraft. It would also, though the railguns that the towers are proposed to be equipped with have a range of roughly 120 kilometres, take a large amount of resources because of the number of watchtowers that would need to be built.

Seventeen Egidă towers were completed in Caradia and placed mainly on Caplona, with one tower being brought to Porto Vormouna. The towers are certified to have high accuracy on incoming missiles as well as purely hypothetical attacks from orbit. Following the deployment of Egidă, the Ciric Confederacy placed an order for five towers, both for defence purposes, and to study for possible upgrades.