Project Axoxohuicoatl

Project Axoxohuicoatl is a Zacapine experimental design project seeking to create a prototype for a large nuclear-powered military ekranoplan which would function as an flying aircraft carrier. The design initiative is the responsibility of Special Design Unit Axoxohuicoatl, a temporary body of the NTT Program incorporating resources from the NTT 99, 97 and 75 design bureaus. The proposal for the large, expensive and highly unorthodox vehicle at the suggestion of the Zacapine Navy's aviation unit was nicknamed as the "beast of the seas" in the early proposal documents, resulting in the official designation of the design project, Axoxohuicoatl, meaning "Abyssal Serpent" in Nahuatl. The Special Design Unit Axoxohuicoatl was created on March 3rd, 2008, and has been officially developing the proposal since that time, although design interruptions and stoppages due to budgetary constraints have been unofficially acknowledged. To date, Project Axoxohuicoatl has cost less than a quarter of the total development expenses for Zacapican's most expensive single NTT initiative, the design of the Navy's Teomictiani aircraft carrier.

Background

The impetus for not only Project Axoxohuicoatl but a variety of related and ultimately canceled projects has been the Zacapine geopolitical desire to improve the military's power projection capabilities beyond those already available to the Navy and its carrier groups. The litmus test for these experimental military projection projects has been the hypothetical capability to relocate meaningful reinforcements from Zacapican to Malaio within a specified short period of time, often a 24 hour period but in some cases as short as a six hour period. This desire of Zacapine military planners addresses the Tonalcalaquiyan scenario, a hypothetical worst case scenario which planners frequently test against to gauge the readiness and strength of the Zacapine military in wargames and simulations. The Tonalcalaquiyan scenario and its many variations present a hostile Ozeros sea power, varying from a specific nation to an non-specific coalition of Ozeros states aligned against Zacapine interests in their home region, which launch a sudden and overwhelming attack against Zacapican. Vertain variations of the scenario test the ability of near-Malaio forces of the Zacapine Navy and Marines to resist such an attack, but the majority presume the defeat of local forces which presents the immense logistical problem of waging a trans-oceanic war in which military forces must be moved from Oxidentale to Malaio, often penetrating hostile waters and conducting contested landings.

The desire to develop a high speed means of reinforcement or direct attack capable of traversing the Ooreqapi or the Makrian oceans in a matter of hours rather than the days it would take for a naval task force on a similar mission has generally led the military planners to request ever larger and more unorthodox aircraft designs, most of which have been conventional aircraft. The earliest such designs were variants of strategic bombers already in service with the similar function of striking targets in Malaio from air-bases in Zacapican or on Zacapine controlled mid-ocean islands. These initiatives yielded a variety of high capacity transport aircraft, some of which would later enter into active service, but none of which adequately addressed the problem of operating without a friendly airfield on which to land or having sufficient power to launch from a base in Zacapine territory, carry a heavy cargo to the target area and return to base. While some solutions such as aerial refueling were proposed, the direction of design ultimately fell on increasingly unorthodox nuclear-powered aircraft designs far exceeding the size and lift capacity of any existing aircraft. Project Axoxohuicoatl is only the latest attempt to finalize such a design capable of carrying and supporting reinforcements or an assaulting force across thousands of kilometers of open ocean to a target on the other side of the world within a short window of time.

Development

The development for what would eventually become Project Axoxohuicoatl began in the 1980s as the personal ambition of legendary and eccentric designer Micol Aketzalli, then director of the ekranoplan focused NTT 97 design bureau. Aketzalli had championed the development of the first military ekranoplans, the TC-14 and TC-26 already in service with the Zacapine naval aviation units. However, he remained unsatisfied and expressed a strong desire to push the revolutionary ekranoplan concept even further now that it had been proven by his earlier successful designs. This "culmination of the ekranoplan" as Aketzalli referred to it was to be a truly massive vehicle, easily rivalling the most modern Zacapine aircraft carriers of the time, yet outstripping them in top speed by nearly an order of magnitude. Aketzalli strongly believed that the ekranoplan represented the ultimate vehicle, more efficient than any aircraft, boat, hydrofoil, train or hovercraft, a potential that had not yet been realized but which Aketzalli believed would completely revolutionize transportation technology and by extension, human civilization. Although he was well respected as a brilliant engineering mind, Aketzalli's reputation as an eccentric and a substance abuser contributed to the wider Zacapine engineering establishment discounting his more ambitious proposals. Nevertheless, Aketzalli created a draft proposal for the truly massive ekranoplan vehicle he believed would change the face of the modern world, a draft which would go ignored for decades.

It wasn't until 2005, some 15 years after Micol Aketzalli's death, the lost draft was recovered and found its way into the initial proposal for Project Axoxohuicoatl.