285 Scale Gorn G-7 Shenyang Fighter MGL

The Gorns are six-to-seven-foot-tall, 350-pound, cold-blooded, egg-laying, reptilian humanoids bearing a superficial resemblance to a T-Rex or Raptor. Despite the fearsome visage, they are actually quite civilized people who run one of the few democracies in the galaxy. The Federation and Gorns met in a border incident in which two hot-headed captains shot first and faced embarrassing questions later. (A Federation corporation built an unauthorized colony outside of Federation territory. The Gorns saw a few Vulcans and thought the colonists were Romulans (with which they had fought wars for over a century). Diplomats smoothed everything over and the Gorns became the most stable ally of the Federation. (The Gorn legislature’s reluctance to spend money or join the Federation's war limited this alliance during some periods.)

The Chinese corporation Shenyang wanted to get into the business of manufacturing fighters, but Federation politics froze them out and limited them to the less glamorous production of shuttlecraft. In response, Shenyang cleverly took a standard (“administrative”) shuttlecraft and went to work converting it into a “sort of fighter” which could be built on a shuttle assembly line and maintained by shuttle mechanics. The F-7 fighter had two phaser-3s and two type-VI anti-fighter drones. It had two (cramped) seats (pilot and gunner).

The Gorns needed fighters and quickly, when these small attrition craft came to dominate galactic warfare. They bought various types from the Federation, although they were unhappy with the available designs (which were older models the Federation had discarded). The biggest problem the Gorns faced was themselves. The average Gorn was simply too big to fit inside a fighter designed for the average humanoids of the Federation. The handful of genetic dwarves among the Gorn population could not provide anything like the number of pilots needed, and the percentage of dwarfs who could do the job was no higher than for any other population. The simple solution was for the Gorns to hire Skoleans (a reptilian species that was a member of the Federation and admired the Gorns) as “contract pilots” (i.e., mercenaries).

Shenyang delivered several free samples to the Gorns (notoriously short of fighter production) with the observation that unlike real fighters, a normal-sized Gorn could actually sit in an F-7. These were converted to G-7s with canister plasma torpedoes instead of drones. While some Gorns showed interest, the Gorn Navy decided to build real fighters and bought the assembly line of the failed G-12 fighter program.  They did not adopt the G-7 fighter for general use but some Gorn planets and corporations bought them (or bought F-7s and modified them) for local defense. This may have amounted to 200 or more copies but details are not clear as these were sold as commercial contracts and not under military registration. So while the G-7 technically existed and entered service (the samples were sent to a colony planet that complained once too often about the lack of defensive fighters) it was never anything close to a standardized Gorn fighter. Even so, it easily could have been.

The ship is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.