Celaeno Bio

Name: Celaeno
Function: Wild Weasel
Alternate Mode: JAS 39A Gripen
"The trick is to tag and bag before you're the one who’s bagged."

Profile: There’s a common saying among the Decepticons regarding Celaeno; “As beautiful as she is bold.” It’s perhaps the highest compliment anyone can give her, since she’s tasked with the most dangerous mission type on any side: the suppression of enemy air defenses, better known as “Wild Weasel” missions. These types of assignments are usually voluntary and require a special breed of warrior; Celaeno is perhaps the most skilled member of this elite group and certainly the longest lasting; most other Wild Weasels either burn out or are shot down. Her longevity is the reason why she’s most often called upon to train new volunteers, a task she takes seriously, even if she’d prefer to be in the field. It may also be the reason why she’s aloof around her fellow Decepticons; she’s reluctant to make friends and is as serious in private as she is bearing down on an Autobot SAM battery. She does maintain a close relationship with fellow Dragoons Stratosphera and Novacula and is often seen in their company, but most of the time she keeps a respectful distance from the others.

Abilities: Celaeno can reach speeds of up to Mach 2.1 in vehicle mode and operate as high as 50,000ft in an Earth-like atmosphere. Her Gripen form is armed with a 27mm laser-pulse cannon under the cockpit fuselage and is capable of carrying up to 14,300lbs of ordinance on seven wing and undercarriage hard points. She carries one of the most precise targeting systems in the Decepticon arsenal; it’s rumored that she could thread a Sidewinder missile cleanly through a sewer pipe. She typically carries an electronic countermeasures (ECM) pod that that prevents an opponent’s weaponry from locking onto her by jamming the sensor frequency; giving her a little extra time to trace the beam back to its source. Her unique canard configuration means she has significantly better performance than most; she has a higher pitch rate and lower drag, enabling her to be faster, have a longer range, and carry a larger payload than similar sized aircraft. The canards also assist in landing while in jet mode; tilting them forward turns the canards into large airbrakes, thus slowing her down considerably, and allowing her to mimic her alt’s Short Take-off and Landing (STOL) abilities. In robot mode, she’s nearly as fast and is armed with a powerful, high-energy energon crossbow that she’s affectionately named "the Red Baron."

Weakness: Wild Weasel missions are best described as “playing tag in the dark with a flashlight;” the light lets you know where your target is, but also reveals your position to him and any of his friends. This is basically Celaeno’s job in a nutshell; she often books her time in the CR Pool several mega-cycles in advance, since she's almost guaranteed to come back in need of repairs. Her ECM pod, inherently unstable airframe, and no small bit of luck have allowed her to avoid the “golden BB” thus far and she hasn’t developed any level of cockiness that would cause her to drop her guard. She suffers from a glitch in her hardwired software that no one can seem to pinpoint; the effects can range from mild vertigo to a stalled engine.