The Hound family of Neu Samaran light fightercraft, from their prototypical rough around the edges variant to its final iteration before TL10 starts creeping into ship design.

The Hound and its fellow class members provided Neu Samara's first true COACC air superiority fighter. Though not as nimble or as fast in atmosphere as some earlier airframe aircraft (Just under Mach 2 max speed), their armor levels and extended life support gave them true space-travel capability. In fact, with 30 days hydrogen for the fusion plant, Hounds could as far as Neu Samara's outermost gas giant in a week at 1G constant, refuel from scooping, and return. Cramped living conditions required crews to be creative to pass the time however, often resulting in a heavy private investment of VR games and utilities.

The Harrier ironed out some of the grav-field distribution issues of the Hound, and was able to carry a moderate amount of additional armor, as well as an extended magazine.

In the Beagle, the design was refined further, with a much more robust collection of sensors, jamming, and communications equipment, tighter handling, stealth capability and cheaper overall hull (phasing from the flattened discs of the older designs into more of a needle/wedge profile). Though it lacked the armor of the Harrier, and its power requirements ended up costing 5 days operating fuel, the Beagle was generally preferred by pilots as an air and deep space superiority fighter craft.

Of the three Hound classes, only the Beagle was extensively modified into a variety of special purpose variants, from forward scout, submarine, captain's yacht (converting the two small staterooms into one large one), express courier (removing 1 stateroom for an additional 2 tons of cargo). In general, the ship was overpowered for normal transport and prolonged combat at full G's, and flight suits were often necessary to maintain consciousness during dogfights.

As the vessels aged and production tapered off replace ships lost, a few were retrofitted with model 4 computers to extend their operational life (though not in triplicate - to save on costs - both backups would remain model 3's). When the technology to build space superiority fighters where the crew could ignore external g-forces, the Hound's days were numbered.

Once obsolete, all forms of Hounds were either shipped to newer colonies for defense, or stripped of weaponry and jamming equipment and resold to commercial interests at a substantial markdown.