Cylon Raider: the living fighter

The Raider was the Cylon space superiority fighter and the counterpart to the Colonial Viper, deployed in successive types across both Cylon wars and launched in great numbers from the basestars. Far from a simple machine, the modern Raider was a living organism fused to a metallic exoskeleton, sentient enough to plan, communicate, and resurrect into a new body when killed. (Battlestar Galactica (miniseries); Battlestar Galactica, "You Can't Go Home Again"; Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

The Type II Raider#

The Type II Raider of the First Cylon War was a flying wing crewed by Centurions rather than being a living craft in its own right. At Djerba, a basestar's Raiders swarmed the Battlestar Osiris and its handful of Mark III Vipers, outnumbering them ten to one. With the ship crippled and its launch bays jammed, Commander Ozar rammed the basestar and detonated the nuclear warheads by hand, destroying both capital ships. (Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome)

The Type III Raider#

The modern Raider, called a sparrow in Colonial pilot slang, entered service at some point after the First Cylon War and replaced the older design. Where the wartime Raider had been a vessel crewed by Centurions, the modern Raider was itself a kind of Cylon, and the Humanoid Cylons treated it much as people treat a working animal. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom"; Battlestar Galactica, "Scar")

The Raiders spearheaded the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. Galactica itself kept an old Cylon War Raider on display in its museum, a reminder of how different the earlier machines had looked. (Battlestar Galactica (miniseries))

Design#

The modern Raider kept a bird-like, scimitar-shaped profile with a central body. At first the Colonials assumed it was purely mechanical, until Kara Thrace shot one down and climbed inside. Physically, the Raider was a biological organism fused to a metallic exoskeleton, weapons, and engines, with organs and a brain housed in its centre mass. It needed oxygen to stay alive, a fact Thrace used to keep the craft breathing while she worked out how to fly it home. (Battlestar Galactica, "Act of Contrition"; Battlestar Galactica, "You Can't Go Home Again")

Resurrection and the Cylon Civil War#

Sharon Valerii, held in Galactica's brig, explained that Raiders were more like trained animals than thinking machines. Like other Cylons, a Raider that died was reborn into a new ship, carrying its experience with it, so that, in Sharon's words, death became a learning experience. A Raider ace the Viper pilots named "Scar," for the battle-scarred look of its hull, was the deadliest fighter in the area; with the Resurrection Ship gone, Sharon warned Kara Thrace, it would fight hard to stay alive and probably hated her as much as she hated it. (Battlestar Galactica, "Scar")

Raiders could recognise their own kind even in human form. During the Battle of the Ionian Nebula, as Galactica and the fleet neared destruction, a Raider's scanning light passed over the newly flying Samuel T. Anders, and soon after the entire Cylon strike force withdrew. Cavil argued that the Raiders had exceeded their programming and proposed rewiring their brains to dull their independent responses. The vote over that lobotomy split the Humanoid Cylons; Natalie's faction removed the inhibitors from its Centurions, and the split became the Cylon Civil War, in which Cavil's side ambushed the rebel Number Two, Six and Eight models. (Battlestar Galactica, "He That Believeth in Me"; Battlestar Galactica, "Six of One"; Battlestar Galactica, "The Ties That Bind")