Royal Aeronautical Ordinance

Royal Aeronautical Ordinance is a Britannian airplane manufacturing facility that was situated in South Haven, an industrial town next to Lake Michigan. In 2017 a.t.b, it was attacked by Peace Mark.

Description
RAO is located in South Haven by Lake Michigan. It is the largest industrial area in the Homeland because a large quantity of fresh water is needed for the production of advanced technology. The area is full of various big and small factories, mixing munitions and private demand. Most of the huge grounds around the factory were comprised of a test flight-use airfield. RAO’s factory and airfield were adjacent to each other, so that prototypes could immediately go to the taxi way when they were rolled-out of the factory. Both the facility and airfield were firmly guarded by the Britannian military. The security checks on people going in and out of the facility were ranked among the highest in the Homeland and it was noted by Orpheus Zevon that it would be difficult even for him and his Geass to penetrate it. Even if he did succeed in getting in, he did not expect to be able to accomplish a mission and escape afterwards.

History
At some point in 2017 a.t.b, Royal Aeronautical Ordinance won a bidding war with the Britannian Air Force to design a new bomber. At their South Haven facility, they claimed to have developed a prototype capable of super-long-distance and high-altitude with the state-of-the-art Float System. If this bomber was deployed in actual combat, Miss X hypothesised that Britannia would obtain the means to inflict damage to every base on the earth without resupply.

After destroying the Britannian Military Bejaia Base in Algeria, Peace Mark was contracted to destroy the new bomber prototype scheduled to preform a test flight. Orpheus inquired as to whether the client was one of the other superpowers or was a rival company that lost the bidding war, but Miss X said that Peace Mark had not looked into it that far, only that it was deemed beneficial to rewind Britannia’s world conquest schedule a little.

Due to the high security in the area, rather than inflitrating the facility, Orpheus would hid the Byakuen on a hill on the other side of the horizon and use its ultra-long distance / ultra-high output electromagnetic accelerator cannon to destroy the bomber just after takeoff. This was the desired outcome because Britannia would suspect machine trouble at first if an accident occurred with this timing, and more importantly, it was expected that it would buy time for Orpheus to escape. In an unfortunate coincidence, two South Haven police Knightmares showed up at the empty hill where Orpheus was concealing himself after having lost their way because of land navigation trouble while doing practical Knightmare training. Killing the officers, Orpheus adjusted his angle so that the precision bombardment-use 72mm Sakuradite explosion shell bullet, fired at supersonic speed, would trace a parabola with its path and then fall downwards into the Britannian bomber's path. The mission was successful, however, Britannia would identify the Byakuen as the culprit after comparing data with the Bejaia Base attack.