EV-44 Nightingale

"Right here, sir. Someone need patching up?"

- An EV-44 pilot's response to Alice-130's request for Nightingale support.

The EV-44 Support VTOL, colloquially termed the Nightingale, is a VTOL support helicopter manufactured by Misriah Armory.

Design details
The EV-44 Nightingale is a tiltrotor helicopter similar to the UH-144 Falcon in heavy service with the UNSC Army. The craft has a two air intakes just offset of the centreline, connecting the two tiltrotor wings to the main fuselage. Further toward the craft's rear is a tail mounting two jet engines capable of similarly-rotating on the horizontal axis to help provide lift to the rear of the craft. The front of the Nightingale boasts the cockpit, with the main fuselage boasting a generally bulky profile with no visible ingress/egress points—suggesting that entrance into the Nightingale is done via a ventral ramp similar to that of the Pelican series of dropships.

Overall, the Nightingale is considered a relatively simple craft to construct, and has an extremely versatile design template. This makes it fairly easy to modify for operations-specific design templates for more specialised roles. One such example is the speculative ZAV-48 Frostraven, an aircraft study intended to leverage the Nightingale's airframe to test the possibility of cryonic weaponry. The easy-to-construct nature of the Nightingale (with the exception of its advanced restoration drone systems) has left them able to be adapted for manufacture inside the older construction modules of the, —despite the ship's age and antiquated processing systems.

Equipment
The Nightingale serves as a dedicated support unit, and is thus completely unarmed. It instead maintains a complement of multipurpose restoration drones to heal and repair personnel and vehicles. For self-defence and allied support, the craft is equipped with various countermeasures including the ability to deploy both multi-spectrum smokescreens and disposable jammers capable of camouflaging all personnel and vehicles within the target area.

While typically not employed with an armament, Nightingales can be modified with weaponry if needed.

Variants

 * Trooper Nightingale - a specialised Nightingale painted with dazzle camouflage and stocking additional drones, alongside on-board teams of infantry.

Usage
Nightingales are one of the newest additions into the roster of the UNSC military in the post-Covenant War era. They have seen recent adoption into the inventories of the UNSC Air Force's rescue squadrons and UNSC Marine Corps' combat logistics teams.

Operational history
"I'm under fire! And all I got is harsh language."

- A Nightingale pilot on Installation 00.

Nightingales are a fairly recent craft introduced into service during the post-war era. During the Carrow Conflict in September 2558, the Surakan Militia Volunteers used armed Nightingales against Hekabe's forces alongside numerous other aircraft such as the AV-22 Sparrowhawk and G77S Pelican gunships.

In April 2559, Nightingales saw action on Installation 00 during the fight between the and the Banished. These aircraft blueprints were adapted for construction within Spirit of Fire's onboard factory modules and firebases, with the simple designs making for easy construction inside Spirit of Fires much older and outdated infrastructure.

Halo Wars 2
The Nightingale can be built by all UNSC leaders at the Airpad. In Blitz, the Nightingale costs, while a Trooper Nightingale costs. When the Trooper Nightingale is destroyed, infantry squads will spawn. Unlike Engineers, the Nightingale can heal up to three units at once due to its drones, but the healing rate is three times slower. The Nightingale is the best unit to heal troops, saving the player from having to use Healing Drones constantly. Another great benefit is that it can heal troops when they are mobile.
 * Info: Support Unit, Repairs and heals, Defensive Smoke, Detects cloaked units
 * Tier: 2
 * Cost:, ,

Trivia

 * Like most UNSC aircraft, the Nightingale is named after a bird. As the aircraft fills a medical support role, its name is also a likely reference to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.
 * The voice cast of Nightingale is same as the voice cast of Jerome-092.

List of appearances

 * Halo Wars 2
 * Halo: Envoy