Design notes: The hover-transport (know as a "Wave-serpent") I acquired from a recent battlefield was heavily damaged, especially the engines, turret and those sticky-out-bits, it appears to have taken a direct hit to one of the engines while at high speed.
My engineers have repaired the bodywork and added tweaks where directed.
I have also allowed the troops to decorate the interior to their tastes, Which has led to some interesting results (detailed in report Soci3045), where the mixed species have added their own specific touches while being oblivious to that added by others. My devices allow them to see what they would expect to see and not, for example, that someone else has hung a head of one of their kind on the bulkhead. Fascinating.

While I had the chance, I decided to add a pair of engines that I have developed. They required a little modification to fit in the vehicle, but work well alongside some of the original parts. Each engine works essentially like two different engines plumbed together and operate over a wide range of velocities and conditions.
The first is what you may call a turbofan-type engine, this has a large fan at the front that sucks in low-pressure, sub-sonic air and then compresses it, adds fuel and ignites the mixture. The burning fuel causes the gasses to expand and this expansion is used to drive the vehicle forwards and...AND it drives the fan at the front that sucks in more air and the cycle continues.
The second half of the engine works as what I have termed a "Ram-Jet". Supersonic air entering the vent above the fan will be compressed and slowed by the genius (if I say so myself) vent system without any mechanical parts. The air is then mixed with fuel which, upon burning, heats the air and produces thrust far in excess of that produced by the "turbo-fan" half.

The whole package therefore works at low speed with the fan compressing the air and as the air-speed increases above a certain level the vent system takes over the majority of the compressing and allows higher velocities to be reached, the angle of the fan also allows it to continue to work at these increased speeds and so the whole engine works together to produce far more thrust than is possible in such a small package.
I have also added a small booster to each engine that mixes a small amount of a special oxidizing mixture I concocted with some air and feeds it into the engine intake allowing short bursts of very high acceleration. This mixture is stored in an external tank as this helps keep it cooler and allows it to be jettisoned in emergencies, oh well that sounds almost sensible... I may have to look into this turn of events...

There was no need to have a pilot for this craft that had useless legs and arms etc... The only necessary part was the brain. Keeping it in the head and using the eyes (well eye, he was severely injured and required a little reconstruction) was just easier than wiring a brain in a jar. A few tweaks to his pleasure centres and he is quite happy to be a part (in a very real sense) of the machine. Good for him, he's a very enthusiastic pilot now.

Externally, there wasn't much to do other than replace the turret and the energy-field projectors and a few aerodynamic tweaks and then I let my chief designer slap on some paint... he does get a little carried away sometimes... (real life note: I haven't even got a plan for the paint job yet, or the energy field spines...)