Musai-class

The Musai-class is a class of light cruiser in the Universal Century timeline. It was the first warship designed to carry mobile suits for the Zeon, and had a "Komusai" landing capsule that could carry additional mobile suits. There were several models of the Musai-class produced during the war. It was first featured in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam.

Technology & Characteristics
The Musai-class was the Principality of Zeon space force's light cruiser, serving as the primary combat unit in ship-to-ship combat. Its closest contemporary in the Earth Federation Forces was the Salamis-class.

The Musai-class was designed at the same time as the Principality of Zeon's mobile suit development program, and as such the Musai was built from the ground up to support mobile suits. The ship features a hangar system designed to carry and maintain 3 of the early Zaku mobile suits. Two more additional mobile suits could be kept in the hangar of the Komusai shuttle, giving the Musai five mobile suits to use in combat. Earth Federation soldiers referred to this style of carrying as "three in the back and two under the hood." Using the Komusai pod bays to carry operational mobile suits (rather than for their initial purpose of carrying the mobile suits to the surface of the Earth) brought the mobile suit carrying capacity of the Musai up almost to the same standard as the much larger EFSF Pegasus-class assault carrier. The standard Musai had three mobile suit catapults mounted on the upper port, upper starboard and lower faces of its hexagonal mobile suit hangar.

Musai-class cruisers were not designed for long term independent operation. To overcome this short-coming the Principality of Zeon used the Papua-class and later the Pazock-class logistical fleet to resupply Musai out in the field, along with any other Zeon ship or base.

In combat, after fielding the mobile suits the Musai would engage enemy ships with powerful double-barreled mega particle cannons, weapons that had more than enough punch to penetrate the armor of any of the Earth Federation's warships. Because the Musai's generator required several minutes to compress the mega particles needed for each shot, the cannons mostly remained silent during combat. The Musai's design compensates for this lack by incorporating 12 missile launchers, 2 large missile launchers and 10 small missile launchers.

Unfortunately, the original Musai-class ships had one major flaw: they lacked any type of Anti-Aircraft/Anti-Mobile Suit defense systems. While a seemingly unimportant and ignorable issue at first, this flaw would return to haunt the Zeon in the latter half of the One Year War, when the Federal Forces deployed their own mobile suits.

Armaments

 * 2-barrel Beam Cannon
 * The Musai-class light cruiser is equipped with three 2-barrel main gun turrets. These were the primary weapons of the Musai-class, possessing the greatest amount of power per shot. However due to the high energy demands of the cannons it took the generator several minutes to collect the energy for a single shot. Due to their position, these turrets are only able to aim in a 180 degree in front of the Musai, and unable to aim downward. However, it can focus all six cannons on single target.


 * Large Missile Launcher
 * The Musai-class light cruiser is equipped with two large missile launcher. These launchers served as the Musai's secondary weapons, being second in strength to the cannons.


 * Small Missile Launcher
 * The Musai-class light cruiser is equipped with ten small missile launcher. These tertiary weapons are the weakest among the Musai's arsenal, however because of their high number and the feasibility of storing larger numbers of smaller missiles these are the weapons that could be used most frequently.

Special Equipment & Features

 * Komusai Shuttle
 * Each Musai-class had a specialized dock that allowed them to carry a single Komusai shuttle that could be used to carry men and equipment down to Earth. These Komusai shuttles were often pressed into service as secondary hangars, increasing the number of mobile suits a Musai could carry by two.


 * External Fuel Tank
 * To extend operating time, the Musai-class can be fitted with up to two external fuel tanks, each located below the mobile suit hangar.

History
The Musai-class light cruiser would have been introduced sometime between U.C. 0075 and U.C. 0079, the time period when Zeon first introduced mobile suits. These light cruiser would quickly replace the more heavily armed Chivvay-class as Zeon's primary warship in space. During the One Year War the Musai would see action in virtually every battle and combat action until Zeon began experimenting with possible replacements such as the Zanzibar-class.

Char Aznable commanded a modified Musai I with a helmet-shaped command bridge.

Towards the end of the One Year War, due to changing dynamics brought by Federation mobile suits, the Musai had to be reorganized, and the Zeon engineers remodeled the three-turret based cruisers into a two-turret model. This was due to the fact that the Zeon forces were mostly now using the far more efficient MS-09R Rick Dom mobile suit. This caused a problem though for the standard Musai model; the Rick Doms were far bulkier, making it impossible to fit three of the units inside the already cramped hangar. By remodeling the hangar and removing one of the mega beam cannon turrets, the hangar could hold two of the new "heavy" type Dom mobile suit units, while the Komusai could hold one of the "heavy" type mobile suits. However, the two turret models could also now hold four "standard" type Zaku IIs. Despite not being able to carry the Rick Dom mobile suits, this didn't cancel the three-turret variant as they still continued service until the end of the war at A Baoa Qu.

By U.C. 0087, most of the surviving original Musai-Class Light Cruisers had been upgraded into the Musai Kai-Class Light Cruisers by the Zeon forces at the mobile asteroid Axis.

Fate of the Musai
The Musais of all variants acquitted themselves well in the One Year War and afterward during Operation Stardust. Examples of the Musai continued to fly in the postwar Republic of Zeon fleet until Zeon rejoined the Earth Federation in U.C. 0099. Afterward, all remaining ships were mothballed in U.C. 0100 and were sold and scrapped after that, with the last ship leaving for the breakers by U.C. 0120.

Variants

 * Musai-class Late Production Type
 * Musai-class Final Production Type
 * Musai Kai-class

Notes & Trivia

 * "Musai" is Japanese for "witless," which may be intended to go with the Zaku's name association of "small fry/expendable troops".