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CA-2 Coalition State Heavy Body Armor For the most part, the CA-2 armor system is identical to the CA-1 system, featuring only heavier armor plating, increased kinetic shock protection, and more advanced electronic systems. The CA-2 is designed for heavy combat, high threat theaters, and other such situations where the individual soldier requires more protection that normal. The CA-2 is often worn by officers, infantry soldiers, special forces, and other persons that require more than standard protection. Many units responsible for keeping important persons safe keep several suits of this armor in storage to protect and camouflage the important person. The CA-2 features modular equipment rails, two on the back, one on each shoulder, one of each forearm, one on the outside of each thigh, and one on the outside of each calf. While the MOC scorned the addition of these systems, and vehemently protested the modular armor enhancements being manufactured, the modular system has allowed the armor to be mission oriented configured, rather than rely on specific armors being manufactured according to duties. The CA-2 uses passive stealth systems, radar refracting coating, thermal baffling, EM shielding, and warning systems when the wearer has been locked up by radar or painted by targeting laser. Built into the suit, between the primary plate system and the kinetic absorption shielding are strength enhancing micro-hydraulics, however, the actuators are not built into the suit, and must be added at Battalion or Brigade level, with the exception of CS-SOCOM operators. This allows the wearer of the suit to be outfitted with three different strength levels. Either high threat, which makes the wearer capable of making hand to hand capable of damaging combat rated plating (Robotic PS: 22), security rating, which allows the wearer to engage in limited combat engagements (PS: 16), and maintenance rating (Standard PS: 28), which allows the wearer to handle heavy weapons secondary components, reload ammunition in field conditions, or carry armored soldiers from combat engaged positions to the medical stations. In addition, the suit keeps track of wearer's biometric data, allowing field commanders to check on a soldier's physical state. The system also records all suit data collected on a WORM data system, and can burst transmit the data, or continuous broadcast to a command and control vehicle. The system can identify multiple armor, weapon, life forms, and vehicles for the wearer, as well as carat weak points, weapon systems, and other critical systems. The helmet contains a sophisticated inertial mapping, navigation, and digital battlefield system, tied into the HUD mapping system, that tracks not only landmarks, friendly units, neutral units, and hostile units, but also can track waypoints, allow the wearer to call in pinpoint artillery and missile strikes based on map locations, as well as transmit or receive "flash updates" allowing the entire digital map system to be suddenly upgraded or revamped. Software also can update based on supernatural or magical events that effects the terrain or battlefield area. The armor can be plugged into crew served weaponry, allowing the wearer to use the weapons more effectively, and tie the armor system into the weapons systems, increasing the effectiveness of the wearer. The armor can be plugged into crew served weaponry, allowing the wearer to use the weapons more effectively, and tie the armor system into the weapons systems, increasing the effectiveness of the wearer. The armor takes a slight bit of time (3 seconds) to fully integrate the armor's internal combat systems with the weapon's systems, but the fusion of combat packages is well worth it to heavy weapons gunners. Additionally, some units install servos to allow the heavy weapon gunners increased strength to more easily use the weaponry (Robotic PS of 19) they are assigned. The right and left forearms of the armor possessed three data-plugs each, allowing weapons to be plugged into the armor and integrated into the computer. The short lived C-13 Combat Rifle was issued with the armor, intending on replacing the (rumored) cursed C-10 rifle, but an accident at the plant in 84 PA stopped the rifle's production after less than 100,000 had been produced. However, the software and circuitry to enable the C-13's "reactive trigger" remained embedded in the armor's software and fire control circuitry. Many unit level armorers brought the circuitry back online, and adapted the C-10 laser rifle and other weapons to use the reactive trigger assembly. This allowed CS ground troops to engage enemies that had superhuman reflexes or speed with a modicum of success. In 87 PA the strength augmentation was completely removed, cited as being too expensive, and opening the door to the possibility of too much abuse. Despite field troops complaints, the CA-2A1 was released without strength augmentation circuitry, actuator sockets, or the increased structural components that allowed the suit to be used with enhanced strength. This resulted in the suit's protection being reduced by 20%, an unintended side effect that was not rectified. In addition, the liquid atmosphere was removed, once again cost, supply line vulnerability, and training time was described. However, the environmental system built into the CA-2A1 was inferior to the CA-1A1, with no positive pressure system, only 3 hours of internal environment available, and filters slow to react. The filter system often lagged as far as 30 seconds behind the detection of threats or the order for full environmental. In 92 PA the CA-2A2 was released, which featured the removal of the data-ports and the combat computer. While this reduced overall cost, and training time, once again the effectiveness of the individual CS soldier was decreased. The MOC argued that it was cheaper to build crew served weaponry and train crews than it was to produce the combat computer circuitry. In 95 PA the CA-2B was released, which had decreased waste disk system which could only handle 38 hours of waste and was not field clearable resulting in the disposal of the waste disks, the more invasive catheter system replacing the adherent suction cups, and the internal nutrient paste dispenser removed. This required a soldier to remove their helmet to eat. The humidity collector (featured in the picture) was added as a separate component, rather than built into the armor itself. While the humidity extractor was more prone to failure or improper installation, the MOC still defended the move away from a built in system. In 99 PA, Marshall Cabot, with the Emperor's authorization, had the production lines for the CA-2 series of armor shut down, with only replacement parts being built, rather than full suits. This has led to speculation that Marshall Cabot intends on replacing the venerable CA-2 High Threat Armor with something new. Despite the MOC's insistence that whatever Marshall Cabot has been authorized both military and civilian funds to oversee, the Emperor has refused to release the relative files. Weight: 19 lbs Available Sizes: XXXS to XXXL Mobility: Excellent (-5% to prowl) Availability: Excellent Manufacturer's Cost: 10,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 22,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 30,000 Cr Black Market Price: 17,500 Cr Wilderness Price: 15,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 07:09
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USA-G10 Laser Resistant Infantry Personnel Assault Suit Debuted in 2035, the US-G10 was manufactured by the KLS corporation. Developed by reverse engineering the materials and equipment used by a supervillian, and the theorems left behind by a rogue scientist who had faked his own death and destroyed a lab. While the theroums were first laid down in the late 20th Century, it took the KLS corporation nearly 2 decades to reengineer and understand the theories behind the molecularly bonded superdense armor and structural endosteel. When the fledgling NEMA military put out a call for new and advanced armors, the KLS corporation fielded the Glitter Boy/Chromium Guardsman power armor. Initially doubted due to its small size, the fact it had an indistinguishable visual profile, the USA-G10 armor soon proved its ability to function in a multitude of roles, and the "Boom Gun", despite its drawbacks, was seen as one of the more powerful weapons available, and the military purchased the Boom Gun for the prototype Powell class main battle tank. The USA-G10 suit featured advanced molecularly bonded chromium armor, formed into a interlocking molecular "chain" lattice, that made the armor plating incredibly tough and resilient. Additionally, it could refract the majority of laser weapons. Although original prototype Chromium Guardsman featured no weakness to specific laser frequencies, the fear of the suits being hijacked, reverse engineered, or stolen by hostile powers encouraged NEMA and the three nations to convince the KLS Corporation to make 10 different frequencies that the armor would be vulnerable to. This was in order to allow proper authorities to successfully combat the G10 should any fall into the hands of terrorist organizations or other enemies of NEMA. The secrets to USA-G10 manufacture was a closely guarded state secret by all three nations, and after lengthy debate, it was decided that there would be only one public manufacturing facility for the Chromium Guardsman. Tycho Base, on Luna. A secure sublunar surface wing was built, with the sole purpose of manufacturing Chromium Guardsman. The only other "known" facility for manufacturing USA-G10's was in the Central American nation of (It's in VIllians Unlimited, under a supervillian entry in the U section, I can't find it, and don't have access, so pardon if this is left unfinished temporarily.) However, at the demand of NEMA, KLS agreed to build an additional 12 sites, 6 in the United States of America, 3 in Mexico, and 3 in Canada. These sites were locked down, under constant guard, and we considered "Event Recovery Sites" with entire facilities built around them in case the unthinkable ever happened. In Canada, the plants and facilities were located in Quebec, Saskatchewan, and the Yukon Territory. In Mexico, they were located 20 miles west of La Paz, 15 miles southwest of Culiacan, and 12 miles southeast of Oaxaca. In the United States of America, they were located in the West Coast Emergency Command Center (location lost, but records point at Klamath Falls Oregon, or Vancouver Washington), the Mid-West Command Center (rumored to be near Omaha Nebreska, but firm evidence points at 45 miles east of Chicago), the East Coast Emergency Command Center (Aberdeen Proving Grounds), Fort Hood Texas, NORAD II (rumored to be somewhere in the Rocky Mountains), and at a secure facility that rumor places somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, possibly one of the many off limits islands possessed by the United States military. Recent data has surfaced showing that NATO managed to aquire permission from NEMA to house a USA-10G plant in the nation of Germany, and the plant was all but superficially complete by the coming of the Great Cataclysm. Rumor states that a nation in South America is in possession of a Pre-Rifts manufacturing facility, as is the nation of Japan, but there is no data confirming or denying this. The sites were stocked with zero-G manufactured equipment, including the foamed endosteel/titanium endoskeletons, the advanced Chromium armor, ammunition, laser-fusion reactors, and other important parts that would require time and raw materials that any post-apocalyptic government or survivors ensconced in the EVS's may have had difficulty acquiring, specifically zero-G manufactured materials, primarily the rail gun rails, which were only able to be manufactured in a zero-G environment. The USA-G10 was used to replace the aging main battle tank stocks of the United States military, the only organization among the three nations outside of NEMA that could afford the power armor, and many armored divisions moved straight to the USA-G10, the SAMAS suit, and other power armors by the year 2045. Canada quickly followed suit, replacing their old fashioned armor units by 2053, but Mexico lagged behind, not replacing all of their armored units by the time the Great Cataclysm occurred. Despite the armor systems advanced state and obvious power, many students of history and war material do not realize that the commonly found "Glitter Boy" of Rifts Earth is the USA-G10, not any of the following advancements and variants. Only Free Quebec possesses any of the G-10 series support vehicles, variants, and upgrade kits. While most nations consider the Free Quebec USA-G10's to be functionally identical to all other Glitter Boys out there, this is not the case, as this document will illustrate. The USA-G10 is an advanced power armor, featuring miniaturization not found in any other power armor or robotic vehicles outside of NEMA. The advance molycircs found in the Chromium Guardsman served as the basis for all other NEMA armors. It contains advanced, state of the art actuators, superdense molecular bonded armor, and capabilities unlike the world of 2035 had ever seen.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:11
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The Rise of Power Armor and "Amplified Weaponry" With the "Global Energy Crisis" in full swing, nations all over the earth were feeling the budget crunch of maintaining a large standing military. Military vehicles were more about offensive and defensive strength than fuel efficiency, and this was coming back around to bite the larger and more well equipped militaries. By 2035 the rising price of fossil fuels was devouring up to a whopping FIFTEEN percent of the larger nations military forces budgets. Something had to be done, and be done fast. With the bast Arabic oil fields mostly dry, the shale reserves slowly becoming tapped out, and acquiring oil becoming more and more difficult, gas prices were going up faster than ever. In order to calm the United States population about rising gas prices the US government made the decision to use the Strategic Oil Reserve to lower civilian costs of gasoline, even though military analysts pointed out that the loss of the reserve would seriously hamper military operations. Some vehicles were changed over to hydrogen or solar power, but this application never caught on for military use. Hydrogen cells explode when breached, hydrogen storage facilities were vulnerable to missile/rocket/mortar/suicide attacks, and equipment to extract hydrogen from the atmosphere rather than ship it via conventional supply lines produced a thermal, audio, visual, and electronic signature that just screamed for the attention of modern targeting systems. Capacitance gel was seen as a possible solution, when combined with solar cells, but the large solar cells needed to charge the capacitance systems of a main battle tank were obvious sniper targets, and a modern main battle tank could only operate off of their internet storage systems for a few hours. This meant that electrical storage systems were complete useless for modern military vehicles. By 2039, Dow/Exxon would produce the first synthetic gasoline, including fuel that could be used in high performance aircraft. This gasoline had actually more energy potential than normal gasoline, allowing more efficiency per gallon. Once the synthetic fuel was out, produced cheaper and sold cheaper than regular fossil fuels (Fossil Fuel Gasoline, 87 Octane sold for $26.93/gallon in North America, while Exxon NuFuel at 87 Octane sold at $0.78/gallon) and the military became testing the fuel's possibilities for military use. However, the very increased energy potential that was so exciting to car makers, aerospace designers, and civilian applications were a death sentence to military vehicles. It meant that there was more energy to be liberated by enemy damage, and any light vehicle would certainly explode if the fuel was ignited. This meant that once again, the military had the short end of the stick regarding energy, and it was rapidly becoming a problem. A problem that had exactly one solution, but that solution brought up a venerable boogey-man of public opinion. In 2030 Lightwell Energy Group, later to be folded into the massive laser systems industrial giant Wilks Energy Research Consortium, perfected and patented what became known as "pocket-reactors" or "micro-fission plants" that were scientifically impossible to turn into nuclear weapons, did not melt down, nor vented toxic or radioactive gasses. Tests held out at Groom Lake/Dreamland Facility showed that even a direct hit by a 105mm APDSDUFS anti-armor round did not cause any nuclear event, merely shattered the fission reactor into pieces of metal and plastics. It did not use weapons grade, or even power plant grade enriched uranium, but rather ran efficiently off sub-critical "partially enriched" uranium. "Sub-critical" nuclear reaction took place by application of plasma field, precise "laser flutter" (the beam flashed literally thousands of times a second), and magnetic "pinching" of the fuel. This caused the uranium to heat up, boiling the inert fluid, thus driving small micro-turbines (the basic design of which was based on the thrusters that had been formerly used in "micro"-UAV's to provide thrust) to produce electricity. The "pellet-ring" used by the system had an approximate "full engagement" use life of 20 years on the larger models, with 2-5 years on the "vest pocket" models. So the military was sitting on a source of energy it was using as backup power generators for military bases that was safe, dependable, and fairly inexpensive to manufacture. The radiation shielding, a byproduct of the aero-gel research, was not only highly effective, but simply and easy to replace, with any saturated shielding having industrial uses that were in high demand, meaning that a reactor actually made money in the long run. The problem was, public opinion and "knowledge" held any kind of nuclear fission or fusion as an evil that would destroy all of mankind. Despite the rolling blackouts in the mid-2020's that had led to dozens of nuclear power plants, Fukashima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Uganda were still the go-to incidents for anyone talking about nuclear power. Which meant there was no way in the Nine Hells that the US Military was going to get permission to strap nuclear power plants into their vehicles. Public pressure was already increasing monthly to remove the nuclear power plants from naval vessels by ecological groups that claimed that by just existing these power sources poisoned the oceans. It didn't help that in 2029 terrorists managed to storm the a Type-97 Jin-II Class nuclear submarine and cause a catastrophic meltdown of the reactor during a "Fleet Week" demonstration in the emerging nation of Vietnam, irradiating the harbor and the ships in the harbor. By 2030 there were already weapon tests were going on for new weapon systems to replace the aging "War on Terror" equipment. Everything from laser rifles to MRE's to computer network systems to ion weapons to body armor to rail gun systems were being demonstrated by companies hoping to secure lucrative military contracts. Capacitance gel was used to power most of the weapons, with heavy "capacitor rings" used to store the energy for railgun or plasma cannon shots in submitted armored vehicles. But that still didn't solve one of the major problems for anything that might replace conventional armored vehicles: How do we power the thing? By 2032 Lightwell was in trouble. Constant lawsuits were levelled against them to stop their research. From attempts to block the patent in hopes that Lightwell wouldn't continue research for fear of all their work becoming public domain, to lawsuits claiming environmental damage at the manufacturing plants, to lawsuits claiming that the mass production of small nuclear power plants was just "handing out suitcase nukes to anyone in the world with an industrial manufacturing business license). The billions of dollars that Lightwell had invested in energy research was pouring down the drain as the legal bills stacked up, and out of desperation they approached the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Association in hopes of interesting them in the tiny nuclear reactors. DARPA immediately saw the application uses and not only ordered dozens of the small nuclear reactors for testing, but also used their influence to shut down the lawsuits under the umbrella of "national security" and "because we said to." While the DARPA researchers knew that the idea of nuclear powered light vehicles would never go over with the civilians who oversaw the US military, as well as the civilian populace, they approached the public relations department of the Department of Defense and began researching what a nuclear powerplant would be acceptable in. One thing was repeated over and over. "Giant [CENSORED] Robots!" DARPA had been researching "man amplification exo-skeletons" since the early 1980's, but had mostly shelved their plans due to energy consumption problems. Most battlefield robotics ended up having a severe problem with extended operation, even with capacitance gel added in. While many military "experts" citing the short sharp engagements of the War on Terror, they willfully ignored the longer periodic engagements that the US military and UN forces had been forced to engage in. Robotics are all well and good until you want to use them for long then a couple of hours and further away from the generator than the extension cord reaches. However, the micro-fission plants answered the power problems neatly. With more resources, more research funds, and access to more testing areas, the US military and NASA managed to shrink the already small nuclear power plants by over 30% without compromising on safety, shielding, or power output. Advances in flat-ware motors, memory metals, and "pseudo-muscle" in the prosthetic field were examined closely. Everything from micro-actuators to the average life of a flatware motor and the durability of memory metals was examined and tested. Hidden away in black budgets were literally billions of dollars that DARPA burned through in the course of a few years. The new neu-plastics, hyper-alloys, and ceramics were examined for armor and exoskeleton properties, with the discovery that foamed vanadium/titanium alloy could be turned into a nearly indestructible chassis, despite being too heavy for armor. While it could only be produced in zero-G environments, the rapidly expanding space-race made sure that there was plenty of opportunities to not only build production facilities, but to then sell the resulting byproducts to the civilian space-race competitors. While DARPA worked on the mechanical side, the US government started a clever PR campaign. Military style first person shooters were still highly popular, even with the advent of VR systems. The latest "War-Front: Afghanistan" was a best seller, even though it was one of the most complex and immerse VR games out there, even being shown on television in competitive matches. PR took that fact and spent years using the Unreal 7 engine to create a "Future-Front" VR-FPS, where players got to use highly advanced mechs in combat against other players in wildly varying terrain. This allowed DARPA to test targeting algorithms, VR-Training sims, and other "infrastructure" computer programs. Despite reviewer complaints of the "complexity" of the system, it was a hit with VR-Gamers, and servers often say matches between hundreds of people in power armor. This allowed the PR department to see what types of armor were the most popular, and why. What caused irrational fear in players, anxiety, and performance loss. What armor seemed to inspire and encourage not only the player's comrades, but one another. With the addition of "Playable civilians" for refugee victims and other non-combatants (a widely criticized move that players loved), they were even able to gather further data about which armors visually reassured civilians and struck fear into insurgents. With the discovery of the very visually striking laser refraction armor, several suits were skinned with the armor, and the PR department was startled with the way it became widely popular despite the fact that it had massive concealment penalties. Thousands of hours of research into public perceptions were melded into practical engineering research, computer simulations, and testing out at Groom Lake. Things were coming together. "Future Front" was providing valuable feedback, the players totally unaware they were not only simulation testing experimental and theoretical hardware, but also refining and alpha/beta-testing combat software. On the electronics front the rapid minaturization of cell-phones, home computers (now reserved for high-end Home-VR-Gaming Rigs), the extension of battery life and the lowering of power consumption, and everything else that increased "ease of use" and "customer experience" was being critically watched by the various militaries of the world. Gone were the days of the military or government researching a technology and civilians using spin-off technology, now the constant competition of the market forced massive companies with billions of dollars research budgets to create cutting edge technology practically faster than the military could analyze and field test it. Most military electronics were 10-20 years behind civilian applications in many respects, although critical components seemed to be replaced monthly with new and improved models. While the first cybernetic eye had debuted in the 1990's, it had been largely ignored by everyone. However, the large influx of soldiers blinded during the War on Terror and the brushfire wars that followed had opened up a large market for companies involved in "advanced prosthetic research" and outfitting ex-soldiers via the Department of Veteran's Affairs bypassed that pesky law-suit business that civilians seemed to enjoy so much. A primary example was the artificial heart scandals of the 1980's where artificial heart producers were shut down not because the hearts had failed, but because they had the potential to fail. The 2023 "Eyegate" "scandal" where the new cybernetic eyes gave 10% of users motion sickness at periodic times had almost completely shut down the vision prosthetic research after the hundreds of millions of dollars were paid out during the class action lawsuits brought about by people who had the cybernetic eyes implanted, whether or not they had ever experienced any side effects merely because the could have. However, federal legislation made the Department of Veteran's Affairs immune to medical lawsuits, soldiers who had been blinded were grateful to get their sight back and didn't care about vertigo, blurred vision, or nausea, and the federal government had deep pockets. This revitalized the "advanced prosthetic" market, which pushed minaturization, low-heat electronics, long battery life, and low-energy use electronics to an all time high. Increased resolution was pushed just as much by the cyber-eye video hardware as it was by VR-Gaming hardware, until resolution bypassed what could be realized by the human eye. Advances in flat-ware motors, which were roughly the size of a quarter and could drive micro-screws or belt drives with enough force to simulate human muscle were advancing at a rapid pace. "Artificial nerves" were also in high demand, the quantum tunneling system used for high end consumer electronics, research super-computers, and medical systems were being used to replace damaged nerve sections, and much much more. All of this meant that the "infrastructure systems" of power armor, and yes, "Giant [CENSORED] Robots!!!" were being developed for civilian consumers at a fast enough rate that DARPA merely sat back and evaluated, rather than spend precious resources inventing the wheel again. This resulted in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of the Military Oversight Committee of both the House and the Senate being invited to a secure showing of "Project White Book" at the remote testing facilities of White Sands New Mexico. There the "Individual Amplification Program" got to showcase their new exo-skeletons, powered by micro-fission reactors. Everything from exo-skeletons that enabled a wearer to carry injured away from danger areas to robotic "mules" to carry equipment was shown off. While the "best for last" was two prototype armored vehicles and a nuclear powered interceptor combat jet, the two most important things that DARPA wanted their audience to see were buried in the middle of the presentation. The USA-XMG01A2 "Shockwave" Armored Assault Suit and the USA-XMT "Spanky" Mobile Assault Platform, both of the armors covered in a thin layer of the new chromium armor to make a definite impression. While the XMG01A2 was roughly the size of a man and packed a rotating magazine fed missile launcher as well as a plasma cannon, the "Spanky" was roughly 25 feet high and packed twin linear accelerator cannons as well as a pair of multi-launch rocket systems. As it was hoped, those in charge of the military remembered the chromium armored power armor and combat robot favorably and authorized classified budgets for development. The USA-XMG01A2 "Shockwave" eventually became the USA-G10 "Glitter Boy" AKA "Chromium Guardsman", the "Spanky" eventually became the Mastiff and Bulldog, and out of the turbine propulsion research came the "Silver Eagle" program that eventually produced the PA-04A US SAMAS. Nuclear power plants also became the primary energy source for main battle tanks, helicopter, military (and many civilian, although companies that produced those planes kept very quiet about it) planes, and other large vehicles. The higher energy output meant that takes could carry heavier armor loads, have high top speeds, and no longer have to rely on fuels that might explode due to battle damage. However, the release of the Chromium Guardsman and the Silver Eagle power armors represented a dynamic shift in battlefield tactics. Actually cheaper than a main battle tank, a Chromium Guardsman was actually more versatile. Military commanders were often tasked to send Chromium Guardsman and Silver Eagles into disaster areas to rescue civilians, work alongside emergency service personnel, and other high PR value operations. A suit of power armor is more mobile, often faster, and more agile than a traditional armored vehicle. Turrets rotate slowly to prevent major mechanical malfunctions, allowing a properly trained and alert pilot to "keep ahead of the bead" and avoid main gun attacks. They are more equipped to handle urban combat, as well as mountainous terrain (although boggy terrain still carries the traditional problems), and more than validate maintenance costs due their uses outside of the field of combat, where a main battle tank just sits there. This meant that the stockpiles of heavy tanks were instantly rendered useless. Advances in armor materials, hidden in advances in construction materials for many nations, meant that entire divisions of tanks had become virtually useless overnight. Advances in plasma, laser, and ion weaponry meant a tank that had been a fearsome opponent as little as ten years ago would now be a carbonized gutted wreck from some infantryman's sidearm. Many nations just built up-armored tanks, using the newer material and weaponry, as well as the micro-plants now being produced in such places as Peru, India, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and called it good. But for the old super-powers and the emerging ones, the fact that the United States had power armor meant that they all needed it. Espionage reached an all time high not seen since the end of the Cold War in the 2980's, with the Mastiff and Bulldog systems having been stolen by Uganda, Pakistan, the new Reunified Russian Republic (Triple-R), and the Chinese by 2055. This meant that "Man-Piloted Robotic Vehicles" and "Robotic Combat Platforms" were becoming more and more prevalent. A UN decree went out banning production of power armor and combat robots, but it was veto'd by the higher ranking members (most of whom already possessed power armor and robotic power armor) as well as many of the smaller nations (who had manufacturing bases devoted to producing the armors, or hoped to develop their own programs) that the authors of the bill had assumed would provide enough votes to over-ride a veto. In 2067 the "VR Blackout" occurred, with a super-virus tearing apart most of the civilian and even part of the military data-net. This spelled the death-knell for many Arab nations, as well as Venezuala and the wholly corporate owned Romania, when the world's economy took a major blow. Dubia, which was already in severe trouble, also suffered an earth-quake that ran in the 7.9 scale. UN and NEMA peace-keepers accompanied an emergency relief force, since the government of Dubia had allowed NEMA to hold a Joint Services Desert Training Operation. During the relief effort a force of NEMA Bulldogs and Mastiff's were attacked by "person's unknown" using late generation heavy tanks (investigators discovered these had been built in Rwanda but never delivered to the Triple-R, who had been financially strapped at the time and reneged on the contract). Despite being outnumbered sixteen to one, the four Bulldogs and two Mastiff's soundly defeated the tank battalion with minimal loss of life among the relief force. Without a doubt power-armor represented an entirely new paradigm in strategy and tactics, and the SAMAS meant that Air-Mobile had just taken another quantum leap forward. China, adept at penetrating American R&D systems were the first to get good schematics on the SAMAS and the Chromium Guardsman in 2072. In 2075 the "Congo Incident" occurred, swiftly followed by the "Panama Canal Incident". In 2089 the "Sudan Incident" occurred, showing that power armor and robot combat armor was becoming more and more prevelant, as was "cheap and dangerous" Man Amplification Technology. In was in this environment that the Mastiff, Bulldog, Chromium Guardsman, and Silver Eagle were produced. In December, 2089, the Time of Chaos occurred. During this time all the stops were pulled out. Variants that were kept secret, in final production, in final or intermediate testing were all put to use. Where did all these robots come from? To understand why there was such huge stockpiles and rapid deployment of power armor and robot combat armor, one must understand one simple line in the Rifts Core Book. "A Second Cold War" That's all I need to know. It goes like this: If the opponent has one tank, you should have three. If one of there tanks is as good as 4 of yours, you build 12. Up to 30% of your budget can go to military expansion, research, and equipping. You are at war and the guy who spends the least loses. With other nations starting to produce power armor, NEMA, and of course, the United States Military, would pull out all the stops to research better armor and weaponry, as well as tactical and battlefield control systems. As fast as it could be "test proven" it would go into production. Look at ARCHIE's capabilities. And he was a "Event Recovery System", not a full fledged fabrication unit. Even the fabrication plants in Quebec and Germany are the smaller plants. Those the self-sufficent plants that each military ensures they posses so that in case of war when their supply lines are disrupted they can still produce military equipment. The "peace-time" factories would be bringing in parts from dozens of other factories and assembling dozens or hundreds of units a month as the parts came in. A full HALF of these would go into what (During the First Cold War) was called "War Stocks", which was everything needed to fight the war if the already issued equipment was destroyed by enemy action. Additionally the War Stocks act as a reserve in case of interruption of supply lines or manufacturing. The rest is put into active military forces, given to reserve components, and sold/given to ally nations. A small percentage is put in "Deep Storage" which means that they are in bunkers built to withstand ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING so that the survivors have enough firepower to repel any type of invasion. If the enemy has one, you need three applies to "in service equipment" only. Now, for every suit of power armor or cyborg Russia or China built, the US and NEMA (separately) would build THREE for IN SERVICE! That means they'd build, in reality, Seven, with one for Deep Storage, Three for War Fighter, Three for Active, at a minimum. Yes, a LOT of the Robot Power Armor and Power Armor was destroyed during the Chaos Earth years. Bunkers collapsed, entire military bases vanished instantly, and much much more was destroyed in the long decades of combat, but not ALL of the stockpiles were destroyed. Some were found during the Dark Ages, others more recently, and even more are just sitting there, cold and dark, waiting to be found. Just ask the Coalition about Lone-Star. How fast you get shot in the back of the head is your answer. Where did the tanks and jets go? Tanks are slow. Sorry, tankers, but compared to the SAMAS and jets and even helicopters, tanks are slow. During the Chaos Years demons were just as fast or faster than powered armor and attacked in mass numbers. Any deployed tanks would be suffering from problems with the ash, and hover-tanks would be completely shot as volcanic dust sucked into turbines destroyed the engines. With the landscape being torn up so bad, all the ash, and problems moving, many tanks became static weapon emplacements (see the Iraqi tank defense attempt during the First Gulf War), and even those that didn't suffered the same fate, usually faster. One by one, each of them fell to the invading demons. Not to say that there wasn't any, but they were used until they were all destroyed, even the old M1 Abrams stocks held in depot yards and old IRR armories. Tanks could be put into service, and while much of America was reduced to snow-covered ashy mud, tanks were still useful, and put into service as fast as possible. Even museum pieces were reconfigued for use. This means that stuff as far back as the old Sherman tanks were put into service. Finding ANY 20th Century armored vehicles is a rarity, since any easy to find armored vehicles were used during the Cataclysm Years and eventually destroyed. Jets would have been a complete disaster. That fine volcanic ash sucked into jet engines would have destroyed them completely. They wouldn't have even gotten off the ground, and most pilots would have refused to try. (Remember, the Silver Eagles were largely grounded) Those jets that survived the initial cataclysm would have been scavenged for parts in the ensuing months. Their weapon systems, control systems, and even engines would have been taken for use by other military equipment. Even helicopters use air intakes, which meant they would have been grounded, and either destroyed or scavenged for parts. Tanks, jets, and helicopters couldn't cope one the Chaos Earth battlefield, and were stripped for parts and materials or destroyed. Very few of the advanced tanks would have made it, and those would actually take more resources to produce (more than likely requiring zero-G manufacturing) than a suit of power armor, which would be more effective against the supernatural threats released by the Rifts. The Zero-G manufacturing processes (made with near-earth orbital manufacturing facilities) being lost was the biggest reason that more modern tanks have not been tried. Despite the late generation tanks fielded by the CS military just prior to the Tolkeen War. All of this meant that nobody would have produced any to replace all of them that were destroyed.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:18
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The rough trail to the Glitter Boy In the mid to late 20th Century the limits of chemical firearms was reached. Bullets could only be so large, and there could only be so much propellant before the law of diminishing returns took effect. For the the Cold War embroiled nations this meant looking a little further. The Soviet Union, hampered by decades of mis-management in their scientific warfare department, got off to a later start, and mainly focused on directed energy and enhancements to standard conventional weapons. The United States, with its NATO partners, began research into "magnetically accelerated weapons". With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, most programs were put on the back-burner. However, the DARPA, with funding from the US Army and US Navy began to manage some breakthroughs. A "rail gun" for this discussion, means a linear accelerator that a projectile is moved down, rapidly gaining speed as it is magnetically propelled down a "barrel" by a rail system. This is done by having the magnetic force increase further down the "rails", "pulling" the projectile forward. This is opposed to the "magnetic accelerator", where there are "rings" of magnetics that switch on and off, pulling the round forward. However, these terms can be used interchangeably by the lay-man. At White Sands New Mexico, in 1993, was the first test-fire of what would come to be known as a "rail-gun". On March 2nd, 1993, at 1245 hours, the XM-1A1 was brought to full charge, and fired at a bunker a mile away. According to computer simulation and physics workups, the two foot long, 3 inch thick, tungsten steel rod should have hit the reenforced concrete with the equivalent force of 120mm APDSFSDU round at close range. However, the rod accelerated to speeds roughly three times what was projected, leaving the barrel with a sonic booms and a displacement shock that destroyed the acceleration frame and injured several soldiers. The effect on the bunker could not be denied, and it alone determined that the experiment was a success. In tests, a main 120mm cannon blast would cave in the front of the bunker at less than 40 feet. The rail-gun not only collapsed the front of the bunker, but the lime of the concrete caught on fire, the penetrator round liberated its energy completely, and the bunker vanished in a 1.2 kiloton blast. The plasma lance (that the tungsten converted into) then struck the hill behind the bunker, blowing a six foot deep, thirty foot radius divot in the hill in an explosion of dirt. It had proven its effectiveness. Now it just needed to be usable in a conflict and fired more than once. When the Force XXI Project wrapped up, the rail-gun system was determined to have passed the necessary tests to validate continuing research, and the Rail-Gun system went back to Fort Mead Maryland for further testing and enhancement under the Table-Scraps Project. While the project team knew what they needed was high-temperature superconductors, monopole magnets, and a high output steady small energy source, as well as improved structural materials, they had not reached that point, and began seeking ways to bypass the "wish list" requirement and deliver a functioning rail-gun to the US military. With budget cuts rampant in the mid-1990's, DARPA was forced to put the railgun in the "Applied Practical Energy Research" program and fund some of the development with Department of Energy funds. Despite keeping it out of general knowledge, the Congressional and Senate Armed Services Committees were kept appraised of the research, explaining that the "rail gun" was actually a "ballistic missile interdiction system" and part of the well sought after "ballistic missile defense system." In June of 1997 the second test firing took place. A new shock frame, rail system, and reinforcement were all used to make sure the frame survived initial firing. A loading system was put into place, since the goal was not only to fire it at a target, but then swivel the weapon and engage three other targets in rapid succession. The test was a complete success, despite some "warping" of the structural support elements. However, the weapon's size and energy requirements made it useless for the US Army, while the US Navy rapidly began adapting the existing DDX Destroyer plans to incorporate the rail-gun as a "kinetic kill weapon" that would enable the destroyer to kill ships its own size with one shot. In December of 2004, without much fan-fare, three DDX-LA (Linear Accelerator) ships were launched and quickly wrapped into Task Forces. Test firing at Bikini Atoll, home of the early atomic tests, showed that the XM-101LA was only limited by the curvature of the earth and targeting systems. The estimated range of the fully powered "war-shot" of the XM-101LA was around 20+ kilometers, and unlike the main gun systems of older models, this was a direct line attack rather than indirect fire, with significantly less "flight time" during the attack. In one test the USS Peabody struck the target ship five times in sixteen seconds, sinking the supercargo carrier when the other ship broke into three pieces. Additionally, the weapon could be used to direct attack shore emplacements. This meant it was great for the DDX Destroyers, which moved fast to get into range of the target, fired rapidly, and scooted away. Not so good for the Cruiser (Such as the Aegis Cruiser) type ships, which decided to forgo the rail-gun and stick with missile systems. One advantage the system had was in its ability to knock out incoming shells from other ships, since all three DDX-LA ships could sweep opponents indirect fire and missile fire from the air as soon as they were locked on with radar. The navy had their mid-range class weapon. In 2006 the "ring accelerator" system was tested on a 105mm cannon mount. Problems quickly surfaced with the fact that a tank could only hold enough power storage to fire the weapon three times before it ran out, with it taking up to an hour for the heavy-duty alternators on the engine to recharge the energy storage system. This meant it was useless in sustained combat or on extended operations. Once again, the US Army said "thanks, but no thanks". However, the USAF realized that it could be used in the same way the 105mm cannon of the A-10 was used, and began designing an airframe to wrap around the weapon and support it. In 2009 the first A-10A3-MAG was test fired. Capable of a sustained rate of fire of one round every two seconds for up to 275 rounds, two of the four jet engines had the sole duty of charging the electrical storage system. In 2010 the project was cancelled as it was decided that the current generation of A-10 Warthogs filled the same role and the A-10A3-MAG offered little in the way of increased battlefield superiority while adding thousands of work hours and maintenance to keep the plane airborne. During the Objective Force Land Warrior program, "ring-launchers" were examined closely as a way to increase the range on the 20mm launcher attached to the ill-fated OIWCS weapon system. However, it was discarded when the magnetic coils gave users headaches, attracted loose metal objects at high velocity toward the wielder, and were only good for one or two shots before the batteries ran out. The "man-portable" light weapon was discarded. In 2011 plans began being drawn up for the M1A3 Abrams Main Battle Tank, which tentatively planned on having a rail gun for the main cannon. Advances in room temperature superconductors, super-cooling systems, and battery charge made it appear as if the M1A3 would be the first US Army vehicle mounting a rail-gun. Fiscal Year 2011 ended up being a disappointment as far as the DARPA budget went, with most Senate and Congressional members feeling as if the "War on Terror" was over and there was no reason to continue research on "esoteric weaponry more suited to fight a super-power" and desired to use the money for other projects. The railgun system sat to the side, ignored except for the odd Air Force or Navy test out at the Groom Lake Testing Facility, until 2020, when the first rail-gun cannon was developed for the US Army and put into the all new M15 "Powell" main battle tank. Featuring a 90mm "gun" system, the weapon used a discarding sabot to act as the ferrous metal component, with the "penetrator" round being a fin stabilized depleted uranium round. Initial testing showed that a trained tank crew could spot, engage, and destroy a target from as far away as 15 miles, depending upon the terrain. At the insistence of the Joint Chiefs, the initial MACH 8.35 speed was dialed back to a non-orbit breaking speed of MACH 4.5, giving the round a 1 MACH variance in case of computer damage, battle damage, or "environmental charging." In 2022 a lightning strike on a M15A1 (with increased computer, ECM/ECCM, and Battle Tactical Network Interface, drone deployment, and indirect fire systems) caused the M-233 Electromagnetic Rail Gun System to rapid-fire the entire "magazine" in an overcharged capacity. War-shots hit as far as 70 miles away (ripping through the top of a skyscraper in Austin, Texas and blowing a massive hole in the structure, estimated t obe 32 million dollars in damage) This led to civilian outcry against "weapons of mass destruction" being used in tanks and attack jets. This lead to the M14A2 series being released, merely replacements for the fire control modules, and more safety cutouts on the M-233 main gun. China unveiled their "Tri-laser main battle tank cannon" in 2027. Three lasers, firing in conjunction, could tear through conventional armor in seconds, without the recoil or aiming problems that other systems were facing. Although US and Canadian and NATO military analysts stated that the laser system's actual battlefield reliability and that there was no known way to keep up that kind of power consumption with known power systems. However, those analysts were quietly hushed up, promoted to lucrative positions where they would be unlikely to rock the boat, and the US military told the Senate Armed Services Committee that with "a significant leap forward in warfare" unveiled by the Chinese made it mandate that the US research programs be refunded and given the "Skunkworks" approach. In 2028 the "Laser Protective Armor System" was mounted onto the M15A3 chassis, although this did not receive a new nomenclature, being considered much like the old "reactive armor system" of the Cold War. This armor was the KLS "laser reflective density enhanced chromium armor system" that was plated onto the new composite armor system. This required the tanks to undergo "SLEP" (Service Life Extension Program) for a cost of 1.2 million dollars apiece, as opposed to the 22.5 million dollar replacement pricetag that completely overhauling the tank divisions of the US Army and NATO. This initial armor has no weakness to any frequency. In 2030 the "NexGen Weapon and Armor Systems" study was taken. This included hundreds of corporations bringing their best prototypes to the field to be tested under rigorous conditions over a period of six months. The testing took nearly four years, and covered everything from small arms to artillery systems, to ballistic defense systems, to field rations, uniforms, body armor. While Colt Firearms took home the much sought after "small arms" contract, the tank main gun systems went to KLS Corporation, the same company that had designed the laser defeating armor for the M15 series tanks. With the Lightwell Compact Nuclear Fission System being used for all the power systems in the new tanks, KLS had no problems selling the US military on the M-10RL cannon. A 65mm linear accelerator cannon, that fired a projectile 65mm (roughly 2.5 inches) wide and 178mm (7 inches) long. Normally the round would be much longer, but the magnetic acceleration system did away with the propellant system. Remington Arms was handed the contract to develop ammunition types for the cannon, over KLS' protests, however Colt Firearms made it obvious they were willing to take over production of a magnetic acceleration system should KLS find its "contractual obligations too burdensome" as they'd already shown a main cannon that was nearly the equal of the Boom Gun. (Later tests showed that the Colt Linear Accelerator Cannon suffered serious design flaws that resulted in the weapon becoming less and less accurate with steadily decreasing range for each shot) In 2035 KLS released not only the RG-14 (The internal name) but the USA-G-10 power armor suit. It was initially designed to allow a single soldier to fire the RG-14, and was fielded as the center of a heavy weapons team. The initial release of the USA-G-10 was the M-29 Soldier Enhancement Suit and required the user to lay on the ground to fire the RG-14, renomenclatured as the M-10LA 65mm Electromagnetic Linear Accellerator Railgun. The M-10LA featured two superconductor rails made of high density magnetic plastic, powered by an external energy source, a plastic/non-ferrous loading system that was magazine fed. The initial M-10LA featured a mid-mounted tripod, with the firing mechanism in the rear (for mounted firing) or by a shoulder brace with a hand trigger in the case of armored troop use. The weapon was designed to by used as a fixed emplacement as well as being carried into battle by the power armor soldier. The rails were cooled by injection of nitrogen after each shot, and took approximately fifteen seconds for the nitrogen to vent and the rails come back "online" for us. However, under battlefield conditions the sensors that controlled when the rails came back online became fouled or misaligned, resulting in the weapon being unable to be fired. Within six-months a "local armorer fix" came available, replacing the entire sensor system and the injection system. While KLS assured the US military that a properly trained armorer could do it "quickly and easily, with no more than 20 minutes of work" in reality the weapon, which had often been fired dozens of times at the range, had shifted, expanded, and worn in ways that KLS could not have foreseen. Metal fatigue, ceramic cracking, and superconductor "stress line fractures" made it so the weapons were often severely damaged just by taking it apart. This resulted in KLS having to recall the weapons and fix them in 2036. It was at this time that approximately 200 of the M-10's were stolen from a freight shipping yard in Seattle by people unknown. Despite the CIA keeping a lookout for the weapons, they never surfaced. Later evidence showed that Canada had managed to acquire them and were busy reverse engineering them for their new main battle tank. The M-168 main battle tank cannon came under its first test under fire in 2037, when UN Peacekeepers in Darfur came under attack by warlords packing state of the art anti-tank weaponry imported from Romania. The tank crews found out that months of vibration inside the hull of the tank had damaged the weapons, many of them failing after the second or third shot. On two occasions the weapon exploded back into the crew compartment, killing the crew. KLS was in trouble, and they knew it. With Colt already showcasing the XM-31 railgun as the new squad operated weapon, KLS knew they had to do something, and do it fast. The military was already breathing down their necks, threatening to remove the contracts, which would drive KLS into bankruptcy. Already their stock was taking a major hit as rumors of weapon malfunctions spread as was the news of the lawsuit brought against KLS by the families of the killed and injured tank crews. In late 2037 KLS released the M-10A2LA and the M-168A1 weapons. (The M-10A1LA had problems with sonic baffling that would later become important to what would eventually become known as the Boom Gun) GM took the time to address some issues they knew existed in the M15 main battle tanks that had to be ignored in order for it to be brought into production in time, resulting in the M-15A1 being the platform the M-168A1 was mounted on. The M-10A2LA and the accompanying M-29A1 featured improvements over the original suit. First of all, the weapon could be fired from the shoulder, and used prone, standing, or kneeling. The M-10A2LA used a "submunition" approach, firing at 20mm x 75mm round in a three round burst. The suit used gyroscopic recoil compensation to handle the immense kickback of the weapon. However, this required the suit wearer to pause for up to 10 seconds before they were able to fire the weapon as the gyroscopes spun up to full strength. Gyroscopic malfunction resulting in the suit being thrown one way or another, and gyroscopes that moved out of synch became known as "The railgun shakes" as the harmonic made the whole suit vibrate to the point it could actually cause "shaken baby syndrome" in the users. On several occassions flaws in the manufacturing (KLS was using a Ugandan supplier for the gyroscopes at the time, as the emerging industrial economy of Uganda was a perfect place to put heavy manufacturing without worrying about the "Green Laws" the more developed nations adhered to) led to the gyroscopes literally exploding as they spun up to speed due to stress fractures and metal fatigue. In over two dozen different incidents in less than a year the wearer of the suit was killed or maimed by gyroscopic "malfunction". The M-10A2LA's linear accelerator was little better, microscopic cracks in the magnetic rails leading the rails failing during weapon firing. When this occurred more than a few times the submunition was fired through the side or top of the weapon, destroying the weapon and injuring the operator. In 2038 KLS added the "recoil compensation kit" that strapped on a pair of gyroscopes to the M-10A2LA itself. Supposedly this was to allow the firer to be able to move and fire without the weapon warm-up time previously required. Although KLS insisted that this improvement would improve the "move and fire" ability of the weapon handler, in practice the gyroscopes often kept the firer from making any sudden movements or reacting to any ambushes properly. In 2039 this lead to a UN Peacekeeper force coming under ambush and being unable to quickly take cover when RPG fire started. This lead to over a hundred deaths in a single month as "RPG sniping" became the standard tactic of the during the Nigerian Revolution. The US Army dropped the M-10A2LA system completely during their deployment during the humanitarian effort, reverting back to older weaponry until either the contract was awarded to someone else or KLS fixed the ongoing problems with the weapon system. The electromagnetic "surge" when the weapon fired disrupted the fledgeling BaTNI system, often crashing computers, disrupting communications, or even permanently damaging hardware. Unit armorers pointed at the substandard shielding in the M-10A2LA as the culprit. Alpha Company, 1/68th Armor, out of Fort Hood, stripped the shielded aerogel from shipping packaging of the BaTNI system and lined the inside of the weapon with it, replacing the "spun shielding" that KLS used, enabling the weapon to be used. However, KLS protested that the weapon was being used "out of specification and beyond recommendations" and threatened not to provide maintenance support. This led to the US Army forbidding all KLS personnel from the US Army bases and hiring former KLS employees to teach maintenance classes. KLS went to the Armed Services Committees as well as the Department of Defense Procurement Board to protest their treatment, citing that their orbital and under construction Lunar facilities showed that KLS was capable of handling large projects with slipping goals and "on-the-fly" adjustments. However, their testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee didn't quite go as planned, with Senator John Stacey remarking "If KLS showed as much care with their advanced weapon system development as they have with their space program, then perhaps many young men and women would be alive who were killed through KLS negligence." The Armed Services Committee demanded that KLS do something about the problems. In field testing, the weapon was perfectly serviceable and showed a lot of promise, but in actuality, it had a reputation for being a bigger menace to the operator than the enemy. Even when US Army units were being deployed to brushfire war areas in Africa and South America the units usually left the M-10A2LA behind, along with the M-29A1. Those units that did deploy with the weapons usually placed them in a fixed position for defense rather than depending on them for offensive capability. Even placed in a defensive position most unit commanders avoided even powering up the system, instead relying on older weapon systems, often tasking the US Marine Corps to use their heavy ion weaponry for defense. The M-168A1 was performing admirably in field conditions, including the 2038 "Syrian Occupation" where the UN, backed by NATO, faced off with the Syrian military on the NBC battlefield. The "upgrade kit" that increased the damage output of the main cannon. The "sonic disruption effect" of the M-168A1v2 was easily dampened by 89 tons of armored vehicle, but tank crews quickly learned to use it to break up infantry attacks, the sonic report leaving unprotected soldiers on the ground holding their ears. Tank commanders often fired "range shot", which was little more than a foil charge that was designed to get the weapon to fire while a laser designated whether or not the gunner's aim was good. The "range shot" caused the sonic boom effect, which worked quite well to break up mobs non-lethally. However the Human Rights Commission protested this action, citing the long term hearing damage, air compression cerebral contusions, and other health problems from a close range sonic boom. In a surprising move, Syrian civilians sued KLS in World Court, where KLS testified that the US Army had used the weapon "outside of operational intent", barely managing to avoid billions of dollars in damages. If it wasn't for KLS's space program, their Chromium Armor System, and a few other products, they would have been bankrupt following the Syrian Lawsuits. However, a breakthrough in foamed titanium alloy production gave them the lightweight exoskeleton needed for an armor design they had had for years. Combined with advances in aerogel shielding, quantum microcircuitry, and other areas, including the new Lightwell reactor, KLS was able to produce the first of the new armor systems. While the Chromium Guardsman went through almost fifteen reiterations before KLS was confident in showing it to the US military, the final version would be recognizable to anyone who had seen the venerable Glitter Boy power armor suits. In 2040 the M-29A3 was showcased for the fledgling NEMA, with the permission of the US Army, which was close to abandoning the KLS armor systems. The new weapon and armor system, which had been codenamed "Project Honey Rabbit" in KLS and US military internal documents, was a completely revolutionary system. This was a suit designed for long-term wear on the NBC battlefield, maximum mobility and speed (sticking with the US Army's "scoot and move" doctrine), the digital battlefield, and the modular weapon system design that the US Army had adopted in the 2020's. The initial M-29A3 was a stripped down version of the later models, lacking the refinements of 50 years of battle testing. The NEMA version of the M-29A3 was known as the USA-G10, reverting to its old name. It's the standard NEMA USA-G10 that is commonly known as the Legacy Glitter Boy on Rifts Earth.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:21
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RG-14/M-10LA "Boom Gun" In 2040 the initial M-10A3LA was released by KLS for the GL-10/M-20A2 Armor Systems. The RG-14 used for "rails" as well as the "ring acceleration" system. The rails were used for "flight stabilization" while the ring acceleration system was used to accelerate the projectile to a maximum MACH 12 speed. (The "Near Orbital Strike Package was only available to the US Army and the USAF, as well as the Canadian Air Force) The weapon had been designed for "in the field" maintenance, including by the suit wearer if the wearer was in a full NBC environment. A trained wearer could do a full launching mechanism replacement, without leaving the suit, within five minutes. The RG-14 was merely a cut-down sub-caliber version of the M-168 cannon used on tanks, with additional systems inside the RRG-14 that normally were inside the tank cupola. The M-10A3LA was heavily dialed back, with the velocity being only MACH 4.5, for the projectile that had finalized at 65mm (roughly 2.5 inches) wide and 178mm (7 inches) long for the power armor version instead of the heavy 105mm x 355mm projectile used by the tank cannon. For the version sold to the fledgeling NEMA the projectile velocity was dialed back even further to a meager MACH 2, slower than even 20th Century projectiles. The lower rate of speed would increase the life of the rail gun system for an unknown amount of time. Tests performed showed that the superconductor rail system held together for tens of thousands of rounds when the power was stepped down to MACH 2. While the NEMA version only fired at a maximum of MACH Two, the fire control circuitry contained over-rides to allow it to fire all the way to MACH 10. However, NEMA version were stored with the maximum velocity set to the standard for urban combat, MACH 1. The RG-14 had two settings for NEMA troops, MACH 2 for standard combat, MACH One for urban pacification. The urban setting was used with the tungsten steel flechette round, which had less of a chance of penetrating modern construction materials, or even the construction materials in less developed nations. Additionally, the flechette round only had a maximum effective range of a five hundred meters (roughly 1500 feet) with either power due to the flechettes spreading out. As NEMA wasn't expected to face front line units of modern militaries without the backing of the US, Canadian, or Mexican Armies, this was deemed plenty of firepower for the various UN missions. The initial RG-14 was a stable workhorse, without any of the frills that the modern militaries of America, Canada, and Mexico used, but that wasn't to say it wasn't without problems. The initial run used forced air compression into the barrel to clear it. In dusty areas that meant that the intake vents could become clogged on the first clearance. Since the weapon cleared the barrel before the round was fired rather than after (and risk the barrel being clogged between shots) this meant that the weapon could be rendered inoperative with a single shot. The belt fed mechanism had a tendency to jam under rapid fire conditions, however it could be corrected at operator level by simply removing the guide tray and bending it slightly. The laser targeting system had a tendency to become misaligned after several hours of travel, reducing the effective range even further. The lack of concealment was not a problem for NEMA, who stood by the adage that their mere presence would do more to deter violence. During field tests the RG-14 performed admirably, able to quickly and easily destroy 20th Century armored vehicles. They were also able to engage and destroy low flying aircraft and helicopters, however critics of the "low performance" pointed at that even 20th Century aircraft and helicopters could stay outside the range of the weapon and strike with impunity. Those critics were usually refuted by pointing at the chromium armor's ability to withstand any weaponry that an undeveloped nation could hope to field. It was also argued that the pilot could go to "Full battlefield power" and engage at ranges up to two miles. When it was pointed out that airfoil spread for the flechettes would render the round useless within a few hundred meters, that fact was just hand-waved away by pointing out that the NEMA suits could be quickly and easily armed with the war-shots of the United States, Canada, or Mexico. During the Groom Lake field trials in 2045 the RG-14 performed well enough the NEMA Procurement Board, a well meaning institution that knew less about the field of asymmetrical warfare than they did the politics of global conflict resolution. While a significant percentage of the sitting board members had military experiences, it was in limited to the brushfire wars of Africa and South America rather than any actual conflicts. This limited their experience to militaries fielding mid to late 20th century equipment, so the members of the board with military experience really had no grasp of "modern" combat. NEMA soldiers could expect to operate for long periods of time without the refit they could expect in one of the "First World" nations, so the RG-14 had to be durable, able to be "black boxed" in respect to maintenance, and easy to repair. This led to many of the features being disabled, since KLS found it easier to just turn off those features than to rebuild the entire line for the limitations of the RG-14. Meanwhile the Canadian, American, and Mexican military were pushing the absolute limits of the hardware. Design after redesign, full integration to the "mobile warfare" doctrine that the CMLL (Center for Military Lessons Learned) was rapidly hammering out to integrate power armor into the force structure. Overnight the M-29A3 had changed the face of warfare, and the three militaries in possession of the Glitter Boy began looking at every option and how it altered the traditional battlefield. In 2050 NEMA was officially formed and the "Chromium Guardsman" became not only the frontline unit of the para-military force but its icon. In 2051 NEMA got another brush-fire baptism when they came under fire in Turkey by forces unknown, carrying early 21st Century RPGs, during an earthquake relief and rescue effort. Each RG-14 fire dozens of rounds. While the two dozen armors withstood the task with only minor damage (mostly to auxilary systems), and the only pilot death a pilot that panicked and ejected while surrounded by a crowd with an inoperable weapon, in every single case the main gun failed. This prompted the US military, with forces stationed in a Turkish NATO base that had existed since post-World War Two to deploy M-29's (Nicknamed Harvesters) to back up the NEMA troops. Despite NEMA investigators initially deciding that the rail gun functioned well under the stresses of the chaotic urban combat, the US military and NATO sent in Canadian and German investigators and developed and in-depth report on the M-10A2LA and what went wrong. Despite public knowledge, the US Army had learned the hard way that stark uncomprimising analysis was better than a white-wash, and they fully intended on preventing NEMA from publishing their white-wash investigation into the failures of the GR-14. The report was published after two weeks of on-site battlefield forensics and six months of analysis. It highlighted several problems with the RG-14 that had so far gone unnoticed.
The report weighed in at over 1,600 pages, but as Senator Elizabeth Charleston put it to the rest of the Armed Services Committee: "Shouldn't an honest, proper report be longer than a LOLCat forward?" This resulted in the RG-14A1 being released. This one possessed magnetic acceleration deguassers, filtered air compression, but no change to the belt, as the NEMA Procurement Department deemed it too expensive to replace the ammunition stocks, and they had recently agreed to "purchase" the ammunition stocks of America, Canada, and Mexico. The US Army rejected the M-10A3LA offered and instead put forward the results of over two years of testing and feedback that KLS had not been invited on. KLS petitioned the Armed Services Committees to reject the US Department of Defense demands, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. The RG-14A1 had no deployed service between 2052 and 2063 that actually stressed the weapon. In 2063, August 19th, a NEMA patrol taking part in REFORGER 2063, to learn to operate in conjunction with the NATO militaries, came under attack by a force of Bosnian Anaconda robot power armor almost three times their number, supported by infantry clad in military body armor, artillery, and anti-tank teams. The "Bosnian" force had the correct encryption algorithms, ID codes, and were exactly where they were supposed to be, playing Opposing Forces Red Team to the NEMA Blue Team. Struck by surprise, with only token "Golden Eagle" support, and their radio traffic assumed to be part of the exercise, the NEMA forces found themselves pitted against what was marginally friendly forces in a ten minute firefight. During that 10 minute fight the NEMA forces expended 2,638 munitions against their opponents. Six Chromium Guardsman were badly damaged, and two were knocked out of the fight in the first 30 seconds. In the end the last four operational pilots closed to hand to hand range to defeat the last of their opponents. Once again NATO, NEMA, the US, Canada, and Mexico all published their fact finding missions after the battle. Once again, the NEMA after action report just spoke in glowing terms, glossing over what the Canadian military called "Unacceptable failures of primary weaponry." The reports and pressure from the NEMA member states on KLS pushed through the following changes to the RG-14, ushering in the RG14A2 with the following changes:
This weapon remained in service until the Panama Canal Incident, where again shortcomings in the NEMA version reared their ugly head again. However, this proved to be defects in the rail system manufacturing, rather than the weapon itself. However, the US Army and Canada demanded more changes which were barely put into service before the Cataclysm. Now, the NEMA version of the cannon, configured for urban warfare, is the "original" Boom Gun.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:22
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INTERLUDE "Lights." Hagan mumbled, sitting up in bed, breathing heavy and covered in cold sweat. He'd been dreaming of the Mechanoid Invasion again. Of burnt out lifeless towns, bodies torn into pieces, and weeks at a time locked inside a suit of power armor that quickly had begun to stink of sweat, body odor, and fear. The soft lights came on, illuminating his bedroom within the vast facility that made up the "body" of his best friend, the supercomputer known as Archie. He reached out, grabbing for the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand, and spun the top free with his thumb so he could take a long pull off of the bottle. The whiskey burned going down, but helped wake him up, helped push away the nightmare of that brutal war that most people in North America had no idea had ever happened. "Hagan, are you all right?" Archie's voice was low, worried sounding. "Your biometric readings show you to be under extreme stress, possibly engaged in combat, but my sensors show you alone." Hagan grimaced, that was one thing that was hard to get used to. Archie had access to all of his secrets, knew things about him that nobody else could merely through observation. "Just dreams, buddy, just dreams." Hagan answered, taking another long pull off the whiskey. It was a pre-Rifts brand, from Archie's private stock, from down in the deep vaults that Hagan had only visited a few times. Those vaults contained disassembled buildings, hospital equipment, fertilizer, building materials, vehicles, clothing, manufacturing equipment. All sitting in the cold and dark, silently waiting to be used. The few times Hagan had gone down there at Archie's insistence, as the supercomputer's sensors down there were sparse at best, Hagan had been able to feel the weight of centuries, the sense of loss and timelessness, and it made him nervous. "What did you dream about, Hagan? I find my dreams disturbing at times, what disturbs you?" Archie asked. "The Mechanoid War." Hagan answered honestly, another drink of whiskey going down. "Hagan, I can help you. I have extensive programming in trauma psychology, including specifics to help with combat post traumatic stress disorder." Archie said. "Your time spent fighting the Mechanoids has a 87% statistical chance of inflicting you with psychological trauma due to the short sharp nature of the conflict and your extended combat with little downtime." Hagan snorted and shook his head. "Short, Archie? It went on for weeks, months. Hundreds lost their lives. Entire towns were destroyed. The only larger conflict in recent history was the Tolkeen Siege last year and the Federation of Magic war several decades ago." "Limited engagements by small nation-states, Hagan. Although the participants have roughly the same statistical chance as you to suffer psychological trauma, plus or minus fifteen percent." Archie answered. Hagan frowned at Archie's dismissive tone. The Tolkeen Siege had involved hundreds of thousands of troops and lasted months, the largest war in history as far as Hagan knew. "Archie, mankind had been at peace for decades before the Coming of the Rifts. Erin Tan described it as a 'Golden Age of Mankind', full of cooperation and advances in all kinds of technology. There hadn't been a war in decades, so how can you call the Siege of Tolkeen a limited engagement?" Archie chuckled at that, and one of the monitors in Hagan's room lit up. "Hagan, my friend, mankind has never truly been at peace for any long period of time. There have always been what was once called 'brushfire wars' even when the major nations were at peace. What Erin Tarn speaks of is colored by her limited understanding of human history. Even during the so-called 'Golden Age' there were over three fields of conflict at any given time, from extermination pogroms to simple guerrilla warfare rebellions. According to my analysis, and the analysis of military experts at the time, even if the Rifts had not occurred, the world was poised at the edge of a major conflict that the likes of had not been seen since the mid-20th Century." On the monitor flashed grainy black and white footage of crude tanks and planes fighting, men fighting on the battlefield, and documentation of the aftermath of battles. "This is what was called World War Two, a conflict involving most of the industrialized nations of Earth at the time." Other images appeared, men fighting on a beach. Hagan flinched as a heavy cannon opened up and men were shattered into gobbets of meat. He stared, his eyes wide, as men, without armor, charged into machinegun fire, firing their own weapons. "This is what was known as D-Day, the Allied Forces landing on and establishing a beach-head in Europe. On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 34,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed (61,715 of them British): 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops. 11,590 aircraft were available to support the landings. On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties, and 127 were lost. In the airborne landings on both flanks of the beaches, 2395 aircraft and 867 gliders of the RAF and USAAF were used on D-Day. Operation Neptune involved huge naval forces, including 6939 vessels: 1213 naval combat ships, 4126 landing ships and landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Some 195,700 personnel were assigned to Operation Neptune: 52,889 US, 112,824 British, and 4988 from other Allied countries. By the end of 11 June (D + 5), 326,547 troops, 54,186 vehicles and 104,428 tons of supplies had been landed on the beaches." There was a pause. "Casualty rates were estimated, for the Allies, who attacked entrenched, fortified positions, at roughly fifteen percent dead and twice as much wounded. However, they succeeded in establishing that beachhead in order to further the invasion of Europe." There was another long pause. "That was one operation in a larger war, Hagan, that lasted only a few days in war that went on for over six years." The monitor then showed a mushroom cloud blooming. "This is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a city in the nation of Japan, one of the Axis nations. The Allied Forces dropped a crude atomic bomb upon the city, inflicting a death toll of between 150,000 and 210,000 in the first two atomic attacks in human history." Archie's voice turned slightly smug. "This is a prolonged sustained engagement, an actual 'war', Hagan." Hagan watched as the videos turned to color. "This is the Vietnam War, an American 'police action', something not even considered an actual war at the time." The next set of images showed sleeker, more modern tanks, troops wearing crude armor vests. "This is Desert Storm, another conflict. This one lasted less than 100 hours of ground combat and involved a total of almost three million troops. Thousands of tanks fought in nearly non-stop combat for over 72 hours." The picture shifted again, showing more desert combat, and Hagen noticed that the gear that the soldiers wore was better, more streamlined, and more in line with what he was used to wearing. "This was the War on Terror, a geopolitical conflict that lasted over a decade, where troops engaged in the war could come under fire every single day for over a year at a time." Hagan shook his head and took another drink. "What does this have to do with anything, Archie? Is it meant to show me that other people had it worse? I know that." Images of being minutes too late to stop the Mechanoids from killing even the children and infants in a small town by pulling them apart and throwing their body parts around in sadistic glee flooded his mind. "No, Hagan. It is to show you what kinds of conflict the human race has been involved in, and why the so called "Era of Peace" is easily misunderstood." Archie replied. New video cropped up, showing tanks fighting against crude power armor. "This is the Chad Uranium Field Occupation of 2047. It involved over 650,000 Allied Troops, of which 130,000 were direct combat troops. The Arab Union fielded over one point five million troops, of which five hundred thousand were combat troops. The conflict lasted twenty-two months, eighteen days, and destroyed six cities, displaced over thirteen million people and killed nearly two million civilians." Images of Glitterboys, an unfamiliair design to Hagan, appeared on the screen, fighting bulky half-finished looking robot combat armors. "This is the Brazillian Lockout Conflict of 2055, when NATO and NEMA forces first mounted a humanitarian mission to provide relief to a plague stricken nation. However, things went quickly downhill when hard-line elements of the government and military attempted an overthrow of the existing government. This conflict saw the deployment of 1,285 Glitterboys, 2,216 Silver Eagles, as well as supporting units, to total up to an NATO force of two point eight million soldiers. The conflict lasted fourteen months eight days, with a recovery and rebuilding period of five years, three months, six days until Allied forces pulled out. During that time there were, on the average, three attacks against NATO forces every single day." Hagan watched, transfixed by the footage that was obviously compiled from power armor data records. "All right, so the human race still fought, but why was it called a Golden Age? Everyone agrees that everyone was working together." Hagan argued. He was feeling better, his dreams swept away as his mind started wrestling with the difference between what he had learned over his life and what Archie had shown him, and was obviously working up to. "Everyone who mattered to historians who's records have been paid attention to worked together." Archie answered. "Observe." A map of the world came up, something that always fascinated Hagan. He knew that the area he had spent his whole life in was tiny on that map. The thought that he had thought himself well traveled when he'd barely traveled further than eight hundred miles in any given direction. The map went from contours to having borders drawn. Then colors were overlayed on the nations. Three different colors. "These represent what was known as 'developed nations' or 'First World Nations' at the time, with a large gross national product, international trade, long life expectancy, high medial wages, low infant mortality, and extensive infrastructure." Less than a third of the nations pulsed slightly in red for a moment, then the blue ones began to pulse. "These are the 'emerging nations' or 'Second World Nations', which were moving from basic manufacturing to higher standards of living. These nations all had mineral wealth, or could provide resources that the more developed nations needed." Then the green ones pulsed. "These were the Third World Nations, all of them with unstable governments, poor standards of living, a gross national product that was misused and mishandled." "So?" Hagan asked. Two thirds of the world were not the First World Nations, and in what Archie had taught him were Africa and South America, only six nations total were First or Second World nations. "Conflicts that took place in poverty stricken areas, areas with little voice in the United Nations, were not noted to have interrupted the 'Golden Age', and the small brushfire wars that occurred did not affect the standard of living of those in the First World Nations." He paused for a second, then dates and conflict names started popping up. Hagan watched as the names built up on the sides of the map. Over a hundred of fifty armed conflicts between 2025 and the Great Cataclysm. Hagan noted, with some irony, that there were less conflicts during the so-called "Second Cold War" than during any period of the "Golden Age", something that made him shake his head. "The sharing of technology and information only happened between the major nations. The lesser nations couldn't afford the technology, although major multi-national corporations, who's profits for reach of those companies would dwarf the entire GNP of the Coalition States, would use those nations as places to manufacture the high tech materials the other nations needed. In some nations those same corporations fought limited military engagements against other corporations or against local forces that disputed the corporations right to those natural resources. In the Third World Nations the population was often kept deliberately poor and ignorant to provide cheap labor for the major corporations who provided military and consumer goods to the major nations. Should a government become too problematic there were ways of making them more compliant. This included manufacturing excuses to have major military powers topple the existing government through military force and install a new government more amenable to the corporations desires." Archie paused for a moment. "The most egregious of those incidents was in the nation of Burma, which was found to contain a natural mineral important in the manufacturing in high density microtronic systems. In 2055 the Burmese government, which had elected officials who had promised fair labor laws, nationalized the corporate assets within the nation. Those corporations then arranged for the sale of illegal chemical weapon systems to the Burmese government, and later leaked that data to their northern neighbor, the Reunified Russian Republic. The Triple-R then invaded Burma in a five day six hour onslaught that destroyed the Burmese military and toppled its government. After a six year four month occupation, the new government, much more pro-Triple-R, and much more friendly to the corporations who had orchestrated the previous governments downfall, was installed. This war, driven entirely by the desire for cheap labor, no ecological restrictions on manufacturing and the disposal of waste products, and cheap access to a mineral for cellular phones and other microtronics, killed over two hundred thousand soldiers, eighty percent of them Burmese soldiers, killed three point six million civilians, and displaced another eight million civilians. It damaged the entire infrastructure of the nation, and set it back decades." "All right, so there was some fighting. I get it now." Hagan answered, his mind still reeling at the sheer death toll that Archie seemed to take in stride. "What would have a 'real' war been like, if these were just 'brushfire wars'?" Archie was silent for a long moment, something Hagan was used to when Archie was coming up with his own data. Finally he answered, and Archie's voice was cold, distant, almost mechanical. "In a conventional struggle toward the end of the Second Cold War, for example the projected Pan-African Pacific War, an estimated one hundred and sixteen nations out of one hundred and ninety five nations would have engaged one another. It would have pitted the Third World with some Second World allies against the First World Nations and some of their Second World Allies. The disparity between the First World and Third World had only grown larger, and the Third World was getting tired of creating the luxuries for the First World while being paid a fraction of a cent in comparison to a worker of the First World. The Third World was heavily relying on augmentation systems outlawed by the First World, such as Juicers or Crazies, as well as power armor designs gained through espionage that could be manufactured without relying on zero-G manufacturing systems." "The war would have been devastating. An estimated twenty-two nuclear detonations in First World population centers during the opening engagements, then massed attacks hoping to overwhelm the First World military forces. Conservative estimations predicted that the Third World Nations, which were beginning to coalesce into a coherent political body much like the UN and NATO, would have fielded over one hundred thirty million soldiers during the initial attacks, giving them a five point six to one advantage over the First World nations standing military forces, enough to allow them to emerge victorious at first. Analysis estimated that the conflict would last a minimum of six years and would result in the death of over one billion people, a significant percentage of the world population. Cleanup and rebuilding by the victorious nations would then take another fifteen to thirty years." Hagan shook his head at that cold figure. "Why? Why would so many people fight like that? Life during the time before Rifts was so much better, why throw away their lives like that?" Archie made a slight buzzing sound, which passed for shaking his head. "The First World had a better standard of living than the elite of the Coalition States, while the Third World lived in wretched conditions worse even than burb towns or shanty towns nowadays." "But there wasn't any monsters trying to eat them." Hagan protested. "Instead they faced death through disease, starvation, contaminated water, soil, air, and food. In some nations tribal or civil war meant that adults were conscripted into military forces, even children were forced into military forces. Civilians were brutally murdered, dozens or hundreds each day, by warlords or government troops." Archie told him, playing video footage that made Hagan's stomach roll. "In the Third World the infant mortality rate was roughly 36%, life expectancy was roughly 48 years, mostly because of pollution, and hourly wage was roughly one point six credits while a loaf of uncontaminated bread cost fifteen credits. This kept workers in debt to the company in basic slavery. Less then 40% of the population of the Third World had access to education, medical care, electricity, and uncontaminated water and food. The majority of the employed population lived in group housing owned by the corporation, their rent taking a sizable percentage of their wages." Archie told him, with footage of the conditions coming up. Hagan could see bare footed children walking through discolored puddles, dozens of people working on factory floors in the nude or just with paper gowns while armed guards watched over them. "Conditions worsened during the 'Golden Age of Man' for the Third World Nations as those nations were systematically exploited for cheap labor, manufacturing of dangerous substances, and their natural resources that the First World needed. While in the First World infant mortality was below 10%, average life expectancy was estimated to be 230 years old due to medical advances in longetivity treatments, and the median wage hourly wage was thirty eight credits an hour. A middle class individual in the First World made more annually than an entire town in a Third World Nation." Archie added. "Do you understand now why the old world was facing a major war when the Coming of the Rifts occurred?" Hagan nodded slowly. "It's a matter of perspective, isn't it?" Hagan asked, leaning back and taking another drink off of the half-full whiskey bottle. "Two kingdoms come to blows now, throwing a couple hundred power armor soldiers at each other over the course of a few weeks, and we call it a war, but back then it wouldn't have even been noticed by most people, correct?" "Correct, Hagan. If it was in Africa, the Pacific Rim, or South America, it would be doubtful that it would even be news in the First World. In my archives I have news programs where the news is more concerned over the sexual antics of several American Senators who were discovered purchasing genetically modified humans for sexual gratification then the fact that six hundred people were killed by chemical weapons in attack against a city by revolutionaries fighting against their own government. That particular incident never even reached the news services because nobody cared about it and it did not effect their lives." "So the Golden Age of Man is all a matter of perspective. This is what used to be called America, one of the First World nations, and what you called a Super-Power. The trade and technology sharing between the other Super-Powers and emerging nations made it so that America was having a Golden Age, along with the other nations like it." Hagan said. "While other nations would call it 'The Age of Exploitation." Archie added. There was silence for a long moment. "I was created during the Second Cold War. All of the history is contained in my archives, and I've studied it extensively." There was more silence before Archie spoke again. "Do you want to talk about your dreams now, Hagan?" Hagan shook his head. "No. I think I'd like to study what you are talking about a bit more." He waved at the monitor. "You were showing Glitterboys earlier, ones without the NEMA logo. Can I see those again?" There was silence again for a long moment. "Why? They're just Glitterboys." Archie sounded evasive to Hagan, who had known the self-aware AI for years now. "Yes, but I thought I saw something." Hagan answered. "Can I see that footage again?" "I forgot which footage it was." Archie tried. "Archie..." Hagan's tone was disapproving, and Archie made the noise that corresponded with a human shaking their head. "Hagan, there are some things that are better left in the ash of the old world. Those Glitterboy designs are best left dead and buried." "Why?" Hagan asked. "Because Glitterboys, as far as everyone knows them, are protectors. The Chromium Guardsman that are now known as Glitterboys are protectors, defenders, and the ones you saw are not." Archie sounded evasive still, almost worried. "Please, Hagan, just let it go." "Archie?" "Let the Harbingers stay in the past, where they belong, Hagan. Let the old world stay buried under ash and death, please." Archie pleaded. "You sound like they're dangerous, like you're afraid of them." Hagan said. "The Coalition States is building a better, stronger war machine now that Tolkeen is out of the way with plans on seizing all of the Mid-West, the minions of Atlantis are appearing more and more frequently armed with heavier and heavier weaponry, Germany is locked in a war with a foe that seeks to destroy all of mankind, but you're afraid of an old armor design like the Glitterboy? Designs that Quebec or Triax probably already has and have improved upon?" Silence again. "Archie?" "It's more than just the Harbingers, Hagan." Archie answered after a long moment, when Hagan had repeated Archie's name twice more. "It's what they represent." "What's that?" Hagan asked. "Go to sleep, Hagan. We'll talk later." Archie answered, and there was a metallic click.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:31
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Ugandan "Hyena" Robot Combat Armor In 2055 the emerging nation of Uganda needed to be able to protect itself from Zaire and Sudan, both of which had suffered economic collapse and largely devolved into city-states ruled by local warlords. Rwanda was seeing an economic expansion, but in 2058 had their government overthrown by a corporate consortium who desired the recently discovered natural resources needed for high end military/consumer electronics. With the discovery of the same minerals in Uganda, the Ugandan government realized it needed to be able to protect itself, not only from depredations of their neighboring warlords, but from the mega-corp that ruled Rwanda like a puppet-state. Industrial and military espionage along with bribery and other methods had allowed the Ugandan government to get the manufacturing specifications for robot power armors that had been superseded by more advanced models, most of which depended on orbital manufacturing methods that Uganda had only limited access to due to UN treaties. The Ugandan government spent several years designing a suit of robot combat armor to field, intending on creating a suit that could be fielded cheaply, with minimum support, and perform a wide variety of tasks, preferably with modular systems to allow the suit to be mission flexible. With Zaire having fallen apart and the UN, in conjunction with NEMA (rather than the American, Canadian, or Mexican military), Uganda offered to host the majority of the UN Peacekeeping effort, allowing NEMA to build military bases within the nation with the insistence that the military facilities would return to Ugandan ownership once the Peacekeeping effort came to an end. Part of the package deal was that NEMA would provide military advisers for their "Advance Weapon Systems Testing" program, as well as recognize Uganda's right to manufacture and possess robotic power armor systems to protect their borders. In 2061 the first testing of the Ugandan robot combat armor took place under heavy NEMA security, over Triple-R and Sinai Pact protests. While the system proved promising, the armor was ultimately deemed a failure, as the modular system proved to be overly complex, too prone to breakdown, and too difficult to maintain in the cost of manhours and money. While some in the Ugandan government claimed that the performance of that initial power armor system showed that Uganda would just have to import obsolete systems from other nations, the NEMA advisors encouraged Uganda by reminding Ugandan government officials that both the US and Canada had suffered repeated setbacks far worse than the Ugandan systems did. The Ugandan scientists went back to the drawing board, virtually "building" first what they saw as their ultimate design, and then beginning to pare away the system to get a more realistic system, following the old engineering maxim of "It isn't when there isn't anything left to add that shows when something is finished, but rather when there is nothing left to remove." The end result was the Hyena Robot Combat Armor. It performed well during tests, being able to act as a support platform, a rescue operation system, and a front-line combat system. While it was larger and bulkier than most First World Nations robot combat armors, it was the first and only suit able to fight on the front line that did not depend on materials manufactured in a zero-G environment or cutting edge manufacturing technology. Additionally the Hyena was able to be largely maintained by a well equipped maintenance shop normally used for hover-vehicles or consumer electronics. While Uganda used materials a generation or two behind the First World Nations, they used it in innovative ways, ingenuity and adaptability making up for the lower tech base. The armor itself was an older type, formerly designed for tanks for the European Union before the denser armors shoved it aside before it was ever used in large numbers. France sold the armor formula cheaply to the Ugandan government, thinking it to be obsolete, and knowing that the armor was vulnerable to plasma. The Ugandan version of the armor did not suffer the serious vulnerability to plasma, having been molecular bonded in using one of the newer procedures designed by Unified Korea. While it was bulky, the flexibility of the armor allowed it to be layered on exposed hosing and joint guards in a way that the more advanced KLS Chromium Armor System did not. The armor had a low radar signature, with a built in "radar scatter" a natural byproduct of the armor itself. The power source was a daul "micro-fission" system, with attachments to allow a third power-plant to be installed for more energy intensive tasks. This reduced the number of capacitor systems by having a backup power system at all times, and also allowed the armor to be stored in a "warm state" so that it could be quickly brought fully online and combat effective. While the reactors were several generations behind NEMA and EU power systems, advances in aerogel shielding enabled the Ugandan armor to pack two separate power plants into the space that normally would be required for a single reactor of the same type. As those powerplants had been used extensively in main battle tanks between 2030 and 2050 there were not only plenty to be purchased as military surplus, but Uganda also managed to procure the manufacturing plants and ship them to Uganda quite cheaply. This meant that Uganda had three manufacturing facitilies for the powerplants. Two of which were in plain sight, while the third was hidden in a secure location that contained everything necessary to manufacture Hyena Robot Combat Armor. Using vanadiun/neo-tungsten hyper-alloy for the main duraframe seemed a dubious thing to do, but the Ugandans had acquired a manufacturing technique from Japan that resulted in increased tensile strength at the price of increased weight and less flexibility. While Japan had discarded the technique as unsuitable for their own power armor and robot combat armor systems, this easily met the Ugandans need, since the metals needed for the duraframe were readily available natural resources. The frame was designed to be modular, to allow for upgrades at a later date in case of advancements that the Ugandans could take advantage of. While most nations used solid duraframes, the Hyena used a hollow frame structure to allow degausing systems to "discharge" the frame during extensive energy combat or for the nuclear battlefield. While other nations were experimenting with artificial muscle fibers for their power armors and robot power armors, Uganda chose to follow in the Chromium Guardsman/Harbinger system and use memory metal heavily seeded with piezo-electric crystals in order to provide locomotion. But where the Chromium Guardsman and the Harbinger power armors relied solely on memory metal "muscles" Uganda chose to augment their muscle system with advanced hydraulic systems normally used in construction equipment, primarily the new cranes being used by the member nations of NEMA to upgrade their architecture. This gave the Hyena slightly slower physical reactions, but much more physical power that was less energy intensive. Additionally, the Hyena could suffer extensive damage to the "musculature" while still being able to be fully mobile. In testing Hyena RCA's were able to carry out combat missions and return to the safe zone operating only with the hydraulic "ligament system" with the memory metal muscles taken offline for battle damage. Additionally the Ugandan system was coated with "stealth" composites that not only cut down of the sensor system profile, but also insulated the muscles, provided protection from shrapnel, and the slight superconductor properties of the stealth composite cut down on the friction. The muscle system was self sufficient enough that in one test a pilot used the emergency power capacitor system to power the hydraulics to return to "base" when her reactors were shut down from "battle damage" during testing. The Hyena possessed not only the main two arms, complete with articulated hands and fingers, but two smaller arms that were usually folded up into the chassis to protect them for more fine and delicate work. The hands were delicate enough that with virtual advice from a doctor, the hands could perform surgery on a patient cradled in the two "combat extremities". This design allowed Uganda to get supplemental funding from the WHO and the Human Rights Commission, as it would allow the Hyena to act as a disaster relief platform. The smaller hands were deliberately designed to prevent the use of weaponry being used by the hands, their data and sensor systems too delicate to expose them to combat conditions. Both forearms of the primary "combat extremities" were heavily armored, deliberately designed to be folded across the body to protect from missile attacks or cannon fire. The forearms were rounded and more than a foot thicker than they needed to be on each side, to allow the pilot to cover the entirety of the torso. This made it so the protective "boxer's stance" was one of the main defensive maneuvers of a Hyena pilot, as the heavily armored forearms could withstand two or three direct shots from the RG-14 of the NEMA GL-10, and even survive a direct war-shot from a US Army Harbinger. Much of this was due less to the heavy armor, but more to the way the forearms were designed for ballistic deflection. The heavy shoulder armor had modular bolting to allow mission variable packages to be attached to the armor, everything from long range missile systems, to direct and indirect fire weapons, to missile/rocket interception systems based on the old US Navy "Vanguard" systems. The legs were heavily armored with approximately double the musculature needed, with a unique self-repair system for the knees, hips, and ankles. Beneath the armor were robotic systems that would first put the leg and foot in "repair" position, and then withdraw damaged components, pulling the damaged component into an internal storage area, then withdraw a new component from internal storage and replace the damaged portion. This allowed a pilot to fix each joint up to three times. While at first the system was designed to automatically fix damaged joint sections, field testing showed that the system had a hard time determining "safe" times to do the repairs, often attempting to repair the joint while the operator was engaged in combat. Secondarily the system would often repair systems that reported damage but still functioned within combat tolerances. This led to the operator being able to override the system and keep on fighting with damaged joint sections. The increased "muscle mass" in the legs were designed for several reasons. The first, and foremost, was to allow the Hyena to carry combat packages that would be too heavy for normal RCA's of the Hyena's size, as well as giving more tolerance for future weapons packages to be designed without putting an emphasis on ensuring that the new combat package was lightweight. It also allowed the armor to be fully capable even after sustaining damage to the leg "muscles" to reduce its strength by up to 60%. The head of the RCA was where the armor got its name. Shaped like a hyena, the head was full of the primary sensor systems, and was heavily armored more than necessary with the belief that snipers would target the head as per standard combat doctrine. The eyes on both side of the head provided a 270 degree view, while the articulated ears were used for audio and radar sensor. The laws were full of teeth, and the jaw could be lowered to deploy a plasmathrower, modeled after flamethrowers, with decent range and high damage. Additionally the "nostrils" held lightweight laser systems that were more for cutting high tensile construction equipment then combat, although they could be used for anti-personnel work in case of emergency. The jaw also "moved" when the external speaker system was used, as researchers found that observes, particularly those in shock after some kind of disaster or battle, reacted more favorably to have a "mouth" to see speaking. Sensor systems built into the basic Hyena RCA consisted of low-light, thermal, infrared, magnetic anomaly detection scans, radar, sonar, energy output sensors, variable sensitivity audio sensors, ultra-violet, and "open air sonar" tracking and sensor systems. The armor also possessed the Ugandan and NATO versions of frequency agile compression enabled radio systems, satellite communications, "whisker" laser communications, as well as the ability to tie into NATO/UN BaTNI systems as well as the Ugandan proprietary BaTNI system. The armor was also built to detect incoming radar pulses, radiation bursts, as well as other sensor systems. The suit also contained sophisticated electronic counter-measures as well as electronic counter-counter-measures, and stealth systems. Uganda had purchased several dozen Apache helicopters in the early 21st Century, and the "Black Hole Suppression System", a stealth system that had been dependable and battle proven, and the Ugandan scientists re-purposed the system to work on the Hyena, making the power armor nearly completely silent when running under full stealth systems with the full modular stealth package strapped on. During testing the Hyena RCA was able to move past alert infantry without being heard at distances less than 20 meters. One tester described standing next to a Hyena running under full stealth as "Standing next to an empty spot, only a faint pressure." Ugandan pilots were taught to stay in stealth until they launched an assault, then break off as soon as possible, go to stealth, and withdraw to another attack position while the second group of Hyenas engaged the enemy. Without any of the modular combat system attached the Hyena had virtually no offensive weaponry. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the designers, who wished to avoid any appearances of "militarizing" and antagonizing their neighbors. The Ugandan government designed the Hyena with an eye toward relief efforts, as well as the peacekeeping efforts in Zaire. While the "claws" on the main hands were surrounded by the prototype "vibro-field", on paperwork it was to allow the operator to tear open the new hyper-alloy construction materials being used to update and modernize Ugandan cities. Pilots were taught to use the claws to attack enemy armor, and at the suggestion of several test-pilots, the field was also modified so that when the pilot made a fist with the hands it would also cover the hands in such a way as to add additional kinetic energy release to punches. This resulted in the early test-pilots designing their own form of boxing designed especially for the Hyena, a combination of offensive and defensive moves to allow any pilot who found themselves engaged in combat without any weapon's package to survive and defeat an opponent who had thought themselves facing an unarmed and defenseless opponent. The modular mission flexible equipment system allowed for the Hyena to have equipment added to it according the mission parameters. The Hyena RCA featured "mounting points" on several areas of the body. Inner calf, outer calf, rear calf, outer thigh, two at the lower back, three on the upper back, two per shoulder, outer upper arm, inner forearm, two on the outer forearm. While some of the modular components could be attached anywhere, most had to be attached at specific locations. Even with this restriction, the Ugandan Hyena boasted an impressive array of functions and mission configurable abilities. One thing that the designers of the Hyena approached differently from most power armor designers was the crew compartment. While most power armor designs at the time looked at the crew or operator(s) as an unpleasant necessity, the designers of the Hyena took a page from NEMA/US/Canada design program of the Chromium Guardsman and Harbinger armor systems. This meant that the comfort, security, and protection of the crew were made a priority. The main design philosophy was for a unisex compartment that the crew could be sealed inside, in moderate comfort, for up to six months if necessary, without undue hardship or mental stress. This meant comfortable, ergonomically designed combat couches inside of an "egg" that closed around the operator during combat operations, the ability to move the combat couches when in "travel" or "rest" mode so that operators could see one another, VR systems to provide entertainment, and an advanced meal dispenser systems purchased from Cyberworks and NASA combined together. The meal dispenser system used nutrient pastes with flavor additives that could produce over 1,200 different dishes, including 26 different pastries. The "eggs" that each crewmember resided in could have immersive VR systems, allow for complete "sensory deprivation" to allow sleep or medical recovery, had its own atmosphere and environmental systems as well as could function as an auto-doc for the crew member. The pilot suits included an electrical system that kept up muscle tone, could provide nerve stimulation or deadening, as well as track biometrics and other important data. The interior of the "operator station" was able to be "waterproofed" to allow the internal fire suppression system to provide a "hot shower" to the crew, allowing them to shower without leaving the cockpit. The Hyena cockpit was rated as "the most comfortable and user friendly" in 2063 by graders during the 2063 Combined National Armor Demonstrations in southern France. In a radical departure from most nations, who were undergoing "Cybernetic Phobia", Ugandan pilots were required to have a "Piloting Jack" as well as nervous system augmentation to operate the power armor without any need for movement. Cybernetic linkages were put into the spine to prevent the operators from suffering involuntary movements while operating the Hyena. The nervous system enhancements allowed the Hyena RCA to use the crew member's own autonomic nervous system to act as backups for the Hyena's primary systems. In more than one tests the crew was able to use their own nervous system and biological feedback systems to keep a Hyena RCA operational even after "catastrophic computer failure" and complete the assigned mission. While in full combat mode or under "cybernetic lockout" for extended periods of time the pilot's suit "muscle retention system" kept the operators from suffering muscle degradation. Standard crew of a Hyena numbers at four, although some Hyenas operated with a single pilot or a crew as large as six, with the inside of the crew compartment being able to be configured much like the external modular systems. A standard crew of four consisted of: Commander, Communications/Electronic Warfare specialist, Gunner, Pilot. Each member of the crew was cross-trained to be able to do the job of any other crew member, providing redundancy in case of crew injury or death. The Commander is typically an officer of at least Captain rank, with the rest of the crew being non-commissioned officers or enlisted. The Hyena Robot Combat Armor program was not without its critics, as it represented a measure percentage of Uganda's GNP at a time when Uganda was being asked to assist with the recovery of Zaire by the UN and NATO, as well as dealing with the fallout from the 2060 Central African Earthquake disaster. This disaster was a series of 22 earthquakes, each measuring at least 6.1, with accompanying aftershocks between 2.5 and 5.8, that took place over a period of three months, all of the earthquakes within a 1,500 mile radius. Critics of the Hyena cited the billions of dollars being spent as being desperately needed by the recovery efforts. However, the 2062 earthquake, which measured 8.2 on the Richter Scale, devastated northern Uganda and caused the formerly thought to be extinct volcano Mount Muhabura to erupt during the 2062 "finalization" testing of the Hyena radically changed public opinion. Thirty Hyena RCA's, virtually all of Uganda's force, were undergoing "Joint Services Training" with NEMA and NATO forces when the earthquake devastated the region. Unable to contact his commanders, General Mkumba ordered his men into the nearby towns to assist in rescue efforts. An APN photographer snapped the now iconic photograph of a Hyena RCA holding up an eight story building, bracing its shoulders on the second story main support girder and holding up the building long enough for rescuers to pull those trapped inside to safety. Those who had spoke out against the Hyena program found themselves facing enormous public backlash as that photo and more circulated, including holos of Chromium Guardsman bringing injured children to Hyena RCA's for the manipulative arms to perform lifesaving emergency surgeries. The Ugandan people felt safer knowing that the Hyena existed, and many local governments lobbied extensively to have Hyenas stationed in or near their cities and towns. The Ugandan government used this groundswell of public support to pass a levy to increase the number of Hyenas in the Ugandan military from an estimated 100 to nearly two thousand, which was upgraded to total of 6,000 in 2073, with over 14,000 handed over to law enforcement and rescue personnel with the rescue and relief packages. In 2064 the Ugandan Defense Ministry reported to NATO and NEMA that their high security R&D database had been penetrated by person or person's unknown, who had ignored Ugandan "black budget" accounts as well as the data on national security and other important targets to download the manufacturing and operation specifications on the Hyena power armor. Later investigation showed that the virtua-net penetration originated from Egypt by known crypto-anarchists, who then sold the specifications to multiple parties before one of the purchasing parties eliminated the crypto-anarchist cell. In 2067 espionage showed that Romania, Bolivia, and Bhutan were in possession of the specifications, with only Romania and Bolivia attempting to manufacture the Hyena. The Hyena RCA, in its final form, was able to replace Uganda's aging armored vehicles, artillery systems, and missile defense systems, thanks to the modular systems. By the time it was finally fielded in 2065 the modular systems had gone through multiple changes and upgrades that would have resulted in the RCA itself having to be redesigned for each role over ten times and increasing the development expense and time to unacceptable levels. Tests of the Hyena RCA in Joint National Operations showed that the Hyena was able to provide significant contributions even among the more advanced nations. The Hyena's capabilities rivaled or surpassed even the vaunted Mastiff and Bulldog RCA's in NEMA service, and surpassed the Triple-R and Chinese RCA's in the Hyena's weight and size classes. This led to a Russian attempt in the UN to ban the Hyena RCA from further production in 2067, attempting to levy UN sanctions against Uganda if they did not cease production of the Hyena and decommission the existing suits. However this attempt by Russia was blocked by many of the "elder" nations of the UN, and was one of the primary reasons behind the 2068 withdrawl of Russia from the UN. The Hyena modular combat packages consisted everything from offensive laser systems, to particle beam cannons, vibro-weapons, conventional 105mm cannons, 9.5" artillery shells, ion cannons, 4.5" mortar systems, as well as rail guns, magnetic accelerator cannons, and the Hyena's signature weapon, which was a pulse laser system mated with a 60mm rapidfire railgun. The Hyena could be configured to launch combat drones, chaff, flares, micro-prism mists, mortar or artillery shells, it could deploy secondary dog-brained AI robot systems for scouting, emplaced combat drones, and even repair drones. The law enforcement and emergency services modular packages included such things as enhanced sensor systems to locate survivors buried under rubble, deploy small drones to explore inside collapsed buildings or rush into burning buildings to locate survivors. The Hyena could also carry a water cannon with a shoulder mounted cannon and five two hundred gallon tanks (only the Hyena's heavy duty leg systems made it possible for the armor to move while carrying so much water), as well as deliver fire suppression foam. In 2071 the US Navy intercepted a cargo vessel registered to Liberia using the name and ID number of a ship that the US Navy knew had sunk in 2038. During the boarding action two Marines were injured when one of the ship's crew used a "Black Adder" man-portable railgun against the boarders. The Marines that boarded the ship also prevented the crew from scuttling the vessel, and it was towed to Pearl Harbor for investigation. In the hold were found thirty RCA's that appeared to be Ugandan Hyena power armor. When the Ugandan government was asked if any were missing, the Ugandan government invited UN, NATO, and NEMA inspectors to check their Hyena stocks, where none were found to be missing. Ugandan investigators discovered that while the Hyena's aboard "The Dawning Flower" appeared Ugandan at first glance, certain impurities in the molycirc's showed that they were manufactured somewhere on the Pacific Rim. Investigation cleared Uganda of any wrong-doing, and Uganda sued for and received the Liberian vessel under "economic piracy" laws of 2024. Third quarter 2073 NEMA purchased 250 Hyena's for examination and to train NEMA soldiers to operate the Hyena, as well as to practice combat operations with forces made up of troops using Hyena RCA. Additionally, the United States, Canada, and Mexico each took ten of the Hyenas for further examination, to compare them to the suits captured on the Dawning Flower and several other ships. Two were turned over to Great Britain, one to France, three to Germany, and one to Finland to allow them to compare the Ugandan versions to the half-dozen knock-off Ugandan found hidden in the Black Forest in 2072, and in the Alps in 2071, and captured by the British Navy during the boarding and capture of the Burmese cargo vessel "Brown Dog" in 2071. The Ugandan military fielded a wide variety of munitions, most of them depending upon the mission and objectives. Following the standard set by NEMA the urban modular setups use flechette rounds with the "magnetic adhesion" system to prevent flechette spreading as well as lower power acceleration curves, usually keeping the muzzle velocity between MACH 1.2 and MACH 2.2. Anti-armor war-shot for the direct fire cannons as well as the railgun or coil-gun magnetic acceleration systems are usually steel sabots with fin stabilized depleted uranium penetrator. Guided missile systems use either dog-brain AI or operator control for top-down anti-armor attacks, using a neo-tungsten explosively forged penetrator. Artillery and mortar rounds use a wide variety of munitions, from illumination bombs to STRIX system artillery shells to FASCAM types. In 2082 there were rumors that Uganda was experimenting with mission configurable warhead systems utilizing advanced nano-technology based on the IRMMS kit nanobots, but to date none of those types of rounds have been located. If they did exist or were in development by Uganda or NEMA, they were undoubtably used up during the early days of the Cataclysm. A Hyena configured as a command vehicle featured satellite uplink capabilities, acted as a communication processing node, coordinated artillery and mortar strikes as well as troop movements while outfitted with stealth systems, ECM/ECCM, and drone packages. While these vehicles were lightly armed they were never alone and were usually guarded by five to ten primarily combat outfitted versions. In addition there support strike packages that deployed smoke, chaff, prism-mist dispersal munitions, as well as minefield clearing systems, advanced ECCM capablities. Scouting units relied on ECM/ECCM, drone launches, stealth, fast movement, and secure communication. All of this was enabled by combining pre-set modular components in various arrays. A fully kitted out artillery Hyena usually possessed the following modular components: Inner right calf: Ground drone deployment, storage, and recharging bay. 2 40mm drone capacity. Inner left calf: Ground drone control module Outer right calf: 2 tube 6 shot 40mm laser defeating prism aerosol deployment Outer left calf: 2 tube, 6 shot 40mm smoke deployment system, high concentrate thermal masking smoke with chaff augmentation Rear right calf: Laser drill stabilization system Rear left calf: Laser drill stabilization system Outer left thigh: Frequency agile radio jamming system Outer left thigh: Electronic Counter Measures package Left lower back: 105mm ammunition storage, directed explosion system, 20 rounds Right lower back: 105mm ammunition storage, directed explosion system, 20 rounds Left upper back: 60mm drone storage, 25 drone capacity Middle upper back: 105mm external/internal loading mechanism Right upper back: Primary 105mm storage, 30 rounds Outer right shoulder: 105mm howitzer Inner right shoulder: 105mm howitzer (it takes both mountings to mount the howitzer) Outer left shoulder: Communication and control package, for enhanced communication systems as well as drone control Outer right shoulder: 60mm Drone launcher, 5 drone internal magazine Outer upper right arm: 105mm howitzer guidance and control system, including millimetric wave radar system and BaTNI interface Outer upper left arm: Electronic Counter-Counter Measures package Inner left forearm: Laser guidance system (emergency use, terminal guidance is usually provided by satellite systems, command vehicles, forward observers or combinations of the preceding) Inner right forearm: 60mm flare system, 1 tube, 6 rounds Upper right outer forearm: 40mm chaff storage, 12 rounds Upper left outer forearm: 40mm smoke storage, 12 rounds Lower right outer forearm: Single tube, 4 shot internal magazine, 40mm chaff dispenser Lower left outer forearm: Single tube, 4 shot internal magazine, high concentrate radar masking smoke As you can see, many critics of the Hyena made issue of the number of complex tasks a single Hyena unit could undertake. While most combat packages are much simpler, merely weapons and ammunition bays with up to two thirds of the mounting points left empty, artillery and command and control units packed complex packages which made them capable of handling flexible tasks. The above loadout is not only geared for extensive artillery operations (The external/internal loading mechanism not only moved the 105mm artillery shells from the onboard ammunition storage modules but allows the unit to be hooked up to a specialized ammunition transportation vehicle and accept ammunition loads from an outside source) but also carries defensive systems. While a skilled single pilot could handle everything, the standard Hyena crew of four increased the Hyena's effectiveness by over 240% as well as allowed it to continue to carry out missions non-stop for weeks at a time by having crewmembers sleep in shifts outside of combat. Of note is the fact that the Hyena does not contain internal magazines, apparently to prevent sympathetic detonations of internal ammunition supplies from destroying the Hyena. Ammunition storage modules were designed in such way that any internal detonation within the module are directed away from the armor and additional modules due to internal design of the module itself. The internal capacitance storage is designed to power the internal systems, not any type of attached weaponry modules. While this does limit the Hyena chassis to act as a combat platform without the supporting modules, it does make for ease up system upgrades as well as ease of module configuration without any wasted equipment. After the Cataclysm more than 100 Hyena RCA's saw service against the demon plagues in North Texas, piloted by Ugandan nationals who were taking part in a multi-national exercise at Fort Hood Texas. During that time the Hyena performed exceptionally, facing off against the demon plagues, their experienced and skilled operators using their modular components to outstanding levels, taking some of the pressure off of the NEMA forces. As time went off more and more of the modular systems were damaged, destroyed, or ran out of ammunition, although thankfully, for the Hyena operators, two of the Hyena's had been configured for "long term unit sufficiency", which meant that those two Hyenas had modular components that allowed the pilots to manufacture railgun, cannon, and machinegun ammunition, not only for the Hyenas, but for the NEMA forces they assisted with. In 52 PA the town of Gildren's Hope in Indiana found two Hyena RCA's in the ruins of the city of Gary and traded them to the Coalition States in return for a yearly stipend of beef and vegetables for a period of 20 years. While the power plants were dead and the armor had been heavily damaged, the modular design system resonated with several of the CS R&D scientists. Unfortunately for the CS none of the modular combat packages had survived in working condition. While many of the R&D scientists derided the systems as being less advanced that the materials and systems that the CS already possessed, some of the scientists saw a lot of potential in the way the Hyena used a lower technology base in innovative ways to be in some ways superior to more advanced materials. In 82 PA a group of explorers in southern Texas found eleven Hyena RCA's in a warehouse in a shipping and receiver center out in the desert. They sold these armors to the black market for a fraction of the true value, since the armor possessed intact "interlinked support and combat systems" that were even loaded with ammunition. Before the black market could get buyers for the armor the CS busted the black market ring and confiscated the armors, taking them to Lone Star for investigation and examination. In 102 PA a group of explorers found a suit of Hyena RCA configured for indirect artillery fire mode in a partially collapsed barn in Nebraska, where it appeared that it had been stored once it had ran out of ammunition and both reactors had run out of fuel. That example of the Hyena is the basis for the loadout detailed previously. Of even more interest was the fact that three 105mm ammunition supply vehicles were stored with the Hyena. The entire package was sold to Lazlo, who incorrectly identified it as a suit of alien origin due to the instrumentation being written in Bantu. The armor was displayed as being of unknown alien origin after being bought by an independent collector. That collector allowed examination of the robot combat armor as well as the supporting vehicles for the purpose of this article. Recently several sets of Hyena Robot Combat Armor have become available on the Black Market, however investigation of these suits have shown that they were manufactured in North America within the past two years. The armor is the same design as the Coalition States polyceramic armor, the capacitor systems are based off of the Northern Gun designs, and the laser systems are of Wilk's manufacture, proving that the armor was made of systems and materials available in the post-Cataclysm North America. These versions lack the modular combat system and come in the direct combat model, the indirect fire model, urban pacification and emergency services model. All weapon systems are all fixed and integrated into the Hyena itself, rather than being modular in design. Investigations as to where the armor has come from had returned no leads, and psychic examination of the armor has only given back the impression of a severe, intense looking man seated on a throne, wearing a crown of electronics, with robot dogs of unfamiliar design on either side of him. Leaving the statistics off of the Ugandan Hyena Robot Combat Armor was a deliberate decision. As you can tell, it's roughly the size of a UAR-1 or UAR-2, maybe a little bigger. The techbase was slightly cruder than the tech base that produced the SAMS and the Glitterboy, meaning that the tech took more space, wasn't as micronized as the NEMA armors. Suggested MDC would be in the range of the Glitterboy, and you can probably extrapolate the main body MDC by the article I posted. Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 07:32
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The effect of the Great Cataclysm on the RG-14 were primary considerations regarding the Glitter Boy becoming an "iconic" system, with an image that lasted centuries after the fall of man. Most people unfamiliar with the complexity of weapon systems just know that the RG-14 is "the" railgun and do not think of anything beyond that. However, those people have no real understanding of the complexity of modern weapons. Just months prior to the Cataclysm the Force XXII Project finished the upgrades on the NEMA, US Department of Defense, and the Canadian military, following years of examination of the weapon in field trials, the infamous Golden Papers analysis by the NEMA Armed Services Committee, and the US and Canadian military. Multiple operations in regions struck by volcanic disasters had shown that railgun systems had a problem with rhyolitic adherence on the rails and rings, as well as rhyolitic adherence to the interior of the firing chamber.1 This led to a redesign of the weapon to make the system more resistant to the rhyolitic coating, or allow the weapon to be firing even with the glass coating the system. This led to improved rings and rails being placed, that resonated with the "boom" of the RG-14, allowing the sonic detonation to effectively powder the glass, and then ejecting it from vents on the side of the weapon. The system was known to fail after extreme use in extreme environment, as was seen during the 2082 Yucatan Incident, where after the volcano erupted just offshore and began coating the Yucatan peninsula with ash a filter system failure left 122 NEMA (Mostly Mexican additions to the NEMA force), 38 Mexican, 6 Canadian and 12 US Army "Glitterboy" pilots suffering from mass delusion and hallucinations that caused them to engage "Demonic forces" the were supposedly within the ash-cloud. The pilots and their crews expended multiple full loads, forty suits vanished, presumably when the Mayan ruin of Ek Balam was destroyed when terrorist forces of the "Rising Dawn" detonated nuclear weapons stolen from the Mexican military, from the nearby Mexican military base. The blast destroyed most of the Glitterboy suits, the locally stationed Mexican power armor forces, the US Army "Harbinger" suits dropped in via aircraft, the ruins themselves, and the military base, as a "triple rosette" system was used of 21 nuclear weapons, each in the 500 kiloton to 1.5 megaton range. Strangely enough the blast seemed to have been mostly ineffective, with theories ranging from "ash compression kinetic bleedoff" and "timing offset" explaining away the lessened blast force detected by the orbiting satellites. 2 All of this resulted in a massive overhaul of the RG-14, leading to the RG14A4 system being fully deployed to the NEMA forces by the end of the Fiscal Year roughly a year before the Cataclysm, after a crash program of updating the Glitterboy and the related systems in the Mexican, Canadian and US military. The RG-14A3 was never deployed to active service, although several thousand were produced. According to research it appears that more than a few of the Glitterboys were armed with RG-14A3 during the Great Cataclysm, as well as the weapon system being pressed into service as a vehicle weapon or static weapon emplacement, so the weapon will be covered here. The RG-14A3 was produced after the Panama Canal Incident, and was largely state of the art and can be argued to actually be more advanced then the RG-14A4, but those advancements were the very problem that led to it not being deployed widely. The weapon system was built using orbital and Luna manufacturing techniques, using advanced polymers, hyperalloys, and aerogel components, Zero-G molycirc blocks, and advanced combat superconductors. The recoil dampening system had proven to be an excellent addition, however the expense of just replacing the recoil dampening system almost outweighed a complete Tier 3 overhaul of the entire power armor system and weapon. The recoil dampening system did no preclude the use of the recoil suppression system built into the armor, but merely kept barrel rise from happening to such an extent. However the Mexican Advanced Military Research Program developed a unique shoulder assembly system that was far superior to the A3's recoil suppression system as well as having many other advantages, such as cost, power armor strength, resilience, and ease of maintenance. The A3 came fully integrated BAttle Tactical Network Interface, with an "advanced processing node" that allowed the A3 to act as a forward data processing node in case of the loss of the data processing centers, satellite contact, or contact with the military intelligence groups. This "black box" system provided the operator of the armor to track up to 2,500 ground targets, 5,000 air targets, provide ECM/ECCM support, provide artillery counter-battery information within seconds of the incoming artillery rounds clearing the horizon, allow the RG-14A3 to be used as a "point defense weapon" against incoming artillery and rockets, and many other functions, including air defense, and near-orbit defense. However this was an expensive system, which provided a plethora of information to the operator, and required months of training and acclimation to avoid suffering from information overload. The system was also capable of single shot, three round "burst", and fully automatic, although the fully automatic was locked out. Since the lockout was accomplished by software overrides, it was trivial for the operator or the unit maintenance officer to override the software lockout and allow the pilot to fire up to 120 rounds a minute, which meant that the entire ammunition load could be expended by a panicked or ill-trained pilot in less then a second. The RG-14A3 also contained the "Fire Buddy TM" limited AI targeting assistance system. While this worked great in testing and the laboratory, the constant "Hey, hey, look! Hey, hey, look at this! I found something!" of the AI caused many pilots to become enraged at the system. Many quoted the high pitched voice, the constant speech, and the fact it was unable to be disabled as part of their hatred. One operator, a 20 year veteran of power armor piloting, with over sixteen engagements under his belt, pulled free the RG-14A3 and began beating it against a nearby Patton Main Battle Tank screaming "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" and had to sedated and hospitalized. The RG-14A3 also allowed the pilot to override the safety protocols and the weapon and fire at not only "full warshot" speeds, but also "emergency overcharge shot" speeds of up to Mach 45, more than enough to break earth orbit and strike at target in lunar orbit or even on the surface of the Moon. With the advanced targeting systems, the connection to BaTNI, and the "emergency overcharge shot", allowed two new pilots, both intoxicated, to shoot a Helium-3 Mining vehicle near Tycho Base. This resulted in increased tensions between NEMA and the Afghanistan/Pakistan/Indian Multinational Alliance. (APIMA) APIMA accused NEMA of doing it purposefully, despite the fact both pilots were court-martialed and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. The A3 suffered from a major problem that was rectified in the A4 and the A3A (Vehicle and static weapon mount) was that several different companies that produced components used substandard materials in their manufacturing. GeoSynch Orbitals in particular used flawed manufacturing techniques in the creation of the hyperalloy components used for the mounting of the superconductor assemblies that resulted in vibrational cracks appearing after it was fired as few as a half-dozen times. These cracks damaged the alignment of the system, as well as causing the "magnetic adhesion" used on the flechettes to be only partially applied, resulting in a significant percentage of the flechettes spreading too far. In post-damage tests to see the exact problems by Tier-3 system analysts the spread rate was deemed as unacceptable within as close as 20 meters. At a range of 500 meters over 80% of the flechettes had spread out to a 40m wide pattern, resulting in less than 1 flechette per square meter impact pattern. During tests with war-shots, it was discovered that the round would often hit sideways or start tumbling within 25m of the barrel. Twice the uneven pull of the magnetic accelleration rings caused the barrel to be jammed by war-shot as it was pulled sideways. This failure was the final straw, and the A3 was pulled from production, and GeoSynch was black-listed from any government or military contracts by the EU, NEMA, NAA, and the Pan-African Alliance. However, upgrade and repair kits were produced, mostly by Cyberworks (who capitalized on KLS's failures in their subcontracting overwatch), that fixed the component stress fractures, as well as the other problems. The A3 systems were relegated to depots and weapon storage, because the military rarely throws anything away they might get a use out of later. It is estimated that 3,400 of these units were produced and put in depots, and forensic examination of history shows that up to 80% of these weapons were deployed during the Cataclysm, possibly 60% of the remaining systems were destroyed by natural disasters, which still leaves almost 200 of them possibly in yet undiscovered storage. Over two dozen were found in use by Glitterboys who had no idea of the additional features, as most of them had been disabled during the Cataclysm, either by pilot preference or long term damage. The A4 system came in three different makes. The GR-14A4A was the standard NEMA Chromium Guardsman weapon, the A4B was used by several armored vehicles being deployed by NEMA, including the prototyped A-192 air to ground combat plane, which was basically a plane built around the weapon and its ammunition supply. The A4C was used for fixed emplacements, and was produced with advanced data processing nodes, link to BaTNI, robotic auto-loading systems, and remote operation systems. The GR-14A4A was largely the same as the original GR-14, featuring only semi-automatic fire selection, although thanks to the RG-14A3 many unit armorers knew how to modify the weapon to 3-round burst and fully automatic fire. Knowing this was a possiblity the system has "pre-charge" systems for the ring capacitors, making it so that fully automatic fire would only fire a maximum of 45 rounds a minute, and would automatically pause for "weapon cool-down" if a limit of 50 rounds were fired in a minute, rendering the weapon unusable for a full thirty seconds as the barrel was "cleaned" by the forced air and degaussing system and the software was reset to the firmware backups that were locked from alteration outside of a factory.3 The system was rebuilt with an eye toward extreme conditions that had caused failures in the RG-14A2, from thick volcanic ash requiring full environmental systems just to survive that would kill an unprotected being within a few minutes to forest fires to radiation areas to areas suffering chemical spills. This was in response to several man-made disasters, most notable the sad repeat of the Union Carbide spill in India in the late 20th Century. This time is was the Dow chemical spill in Burma that killed 1.3 million people, injured another 4.5 million, and put over 11 million poeple into the refugee status as the thick cloud of lomma-bromium-chloride used in the manufacture of consumer molycirc swept over Minbud and Magway in the pre-dawn hours. Chromium Guardsman as well as other nations moved into the city, which was engulfed in flames, to rescue any survivors. On repeated occasions the pilots discharged their weapons (The RG-14A2) to blow a hole in storage tanks in order spill out the contents rather than risk more explosions, where it was discovered that the thick chemical smoke left a residue on the interior of the weapon that eroded the weapon's superconductors as well as the magnetic rails. Ionizing radiation, as per the Tarija, Bolivia electrical power facility melt-down (A cascading failure in 2071 led to the nine compressed uranium fusion reactors melting down one after another over the course of 3 hours), showed that this could cause the failure in the onboard electronics, mainly in chips ALR-72 through ALR-92, as well as BUS-04, BUS-06, and BUS-13A, which led to cascading errors within the weapon's software. This resulted in six weapon discharges, two of which struck nearby refugee caravans, killing 238 refugees. Extreme overheating due to forestfires as well as when the city of Wa in Ghana caught fire, caused failure of the superconductor systems as well as discovering that stressed neo-aluminum parts suffered from "thermal exhaustion" when exposed to the high heats of modern city fires. Six Chromium Guardsman deployed to fight the fire who were on training exercises found that the neo-aluminum parts, which had suffered dozens or thousands of microscopic stress fractures, melted at temperatures far below the 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit normally needed to melt the lightweight hyperalloy. The discovery of the reduced melting point as well as the aligned crystalline structure of the neo-aluminum resulted in neo-aluminum being removed from the boom-gun in its entirety. The RG-14A4A had the following stats.4 Range: 3 Miles (firmware enforced, see blow) Muzzle Speed: Mach Two Weight: 925 pounds Height: 10.5 feet (3 meters) Primary Purpose: Anti-Personnel, Anti-Armor Secondary Purpose: Anti-Aircraft, Point Defense The RG-14A4 used the magnetic clustering effect to cause the flechettes to hold together up to 11,000 feet (roughly 2 miles), at which point the polarity immediately reversed, causing the flechettes to burst apart as well as causing the flechettes to be reduced to powder by the loss of the magnetic adhesion. While personnel could be injured by individual flechettes or powder impact up to 2.5 miles or 13,000 feet, it was rare and determined to be more acceptable than the risks of "war-shot" used by the militaries. Uniquely, the RG-14A4 was designed to fire a single flechette when deployed in "point defense mode", which allowed a single flechette to be stripped from the cluster and fired at MACH-2 with pin-point accuracy. This was designed to detonate artillery shells and damage incoming rocket attacks.5 This was also used on unarmored targets that needed eliminated or precise "sniper-shots" against light or non-armored personnel or vehicles.a This feature was adopted from the US Army "Harbinger" system, which often used the "sniper shot" to eliminate enemy personnel at long ranges without requiring the loading of a special munition. With problems with pilots and unit armorer's overriding the maximum range of the system, the firmware and software was "hard coded" to permit only a 2 mile range on the primary weapon, and the targeting software within the armor itself backed this up. The armor's targeting systems and the weapon's systems would easily detect most attempts to overwrite the software or firmware, and update the "corrupted" version with the "cold storage" EPROM system that contained a full backup of the Glitterboy and Boomgun's software and firmware. The "Cold Storage" system for the firmware and software was also added in case of heavy ionization radiation, sabotage, or "enhanced EMP attack" corrupted, damaged, or completely erased the software and firmware. The "Cold Storage" system (which was also in the RG-14A4) was an "information out, nothing in" system that allowed no incoming data to the system, preventing any alteration of the contents. It appears that this system is one of the primary reasons the complex software and firmware survived the Great Cataclysm and the lack of maintenance the Glitterboy and Boomgun suffered. The internal "rail system", consisting of superconducting monopole magnetic "rails" that guided and provided acceleration to the round had been reduced to four in the RG-14A3 system, but rail failure had proven a major problem. The Mexican Advanced Military Research Projects field tested a system containing 12 rails spaced evenly around the "ballistic area", each of the "rails" actually being a rotating cylinder of four rails. The system would rotate the rails after each firing, with the rear rail undergoing a quick analysis. Built in systems would "clean" the rails in the "back" of the system, including applying another "layer" of monopole superconductor to the composite rail. Each "rail" was actually dozens of layers that created a 1/2 inch thick linear rail. The system was able to recover "comprised" rail layers and "reprocess" them, resulting in an astounding 80% material recovery rate. NEMA and NAA and assorted military testing showed that the RG-14A4A could fire literally millions of rounds before significant degradation occurred. Even in the event of the total failure of the recovery system, the weapon was still good for over 750,000 full power shots in rapid sequence. Additionally, the RG-14A4 carried an additional set of six rails per rotating rail systems that would be used to replace any seriously damaged rail. The RG-14A2 and RG-14A3 used four magnetic acceleration "coils" to impart further velocity on the round, as well as cause the "magnetic compression" on the flechette rounds. The Canadian military and the US military experimented with six or eight rails, but it was the Canadians who designed the nine rail system that was used in the military version of the Chromium Guardsman.The last "ring" was what applied the magnetic adhesion pressure, while the others provided additional thrust. At first the RG-14A4 system for NEMA use was going to only use the standard and long tested 4 ring system. However, at the last minute the program decided to go with the 9 ring system, alternating the "firing rings" for each shot. This turned out to enhance the life and stability of the system. Additionally each ring was eight support points, and in between each support point was a "maintenance point", which cleaned the rings when the system rotated the rings in between shots. This provide shot by shot degaussing, cleaning of any foreign contaminates on the rings, as well as identified any damaged rings. The rings switched from Dupont combat superconductors to the Litton Compression System, using "enhanced density" rings, that actually consisted of dozens of mono-molecular layers of superconductors. The compress "core" was a solid mass that contained over twelve-hundred "layers" in a density collapsed "ring" in the center. As each layer degraded, the maintenance point shaved it off and pulsed the ring with a magnetic "code" that caused the density collapsed ring to "shed" another ring.6 Military grade version of the RG-14A4 did not use ammunition with cases, preferring the "caseless ammunition system" that most nation's militaries used. However, the NEMA version of the RG-14A4 allowed and preferred cased rounds to be used.7 The ejection system served two purposes, the first to eject any ammunition casing, the second to eject debris from inside the railgun system. As the system "cleared the barrel and chamber" both before and after firing the round, and some particles could be quite sizable, the weapon needed a sizable ejection port. As military pilots were taught to "hand load" rounds from easily available materials, and the venerable "soda can" could be used as a casing the system had to accommodate such extreme measures. Originally the system had a spring loaded cover that would blow outward on a hinge and the spring system return the cover to its proper position over the vent, but it appears that during the Great Cataclysm most of the covers were either removed for some unknown reason by commanding officers of NEMA or lost due to damage.8 The internal chassis systems were initially neo-aluminum, but were replaced by a special non-magnetic neo-tungsten during the production of RG-14A4. The external chassis was made of neo-tungsten and then advanced chromium armor for the outer-two-thirds of the chassis. Inside the chassis is aero-gel designed to absorb and disappate the electromagnetic pulse of the weapon firing, the magnetic "strobe" of the firing, as well as cushioning the internal structures from the sheer violence of firing the weapon. It appears in later years operators replaced damaged aero-gel with any available non-magnetic padding (It appears common mattress stuffing was the most common) when the aerogel succumbed to age and cracked apart or turned to powder. Some weapons were left without padding, but these weapons often failed within a few years or a decade of use as the additional vibrational stress upon the components caused systems to shift or vibrate out of alignment with power leads.9 Up until roughly -25 PA most places could not produce the necessary aerogel to repad the system, much less manufacture the specific type of aerogel needed to absorb the EMP as well as keep the detonation and vibration from damaging the parts. Originally the RG-14A4 had an internal millimetric phased radar system built into the weapon system. This system was capable of identifying hundreds of airborne and ground targets, tracking them, as well as tracking and projecting artillery and rocket trajectories. This was used for the point-defense role, as well as to create an inter-locking battlefield information system, and was quite capale even in an urban enviroment. Pilots often used it in low visibility areas to create a real-time updated map of their surroundings, and all pilots were trained in piloting the armor system and using the RG-14A4 completely blind except for the radar mapping. This system was largely a casualty of the Great Cataclysm, as the high ferrous content of the volcanic ash as well as the sheer thickness of the ash rendered the radar system almost completely useless. Examination of many "legacy" RG-14's has shown that the system is still there, intact and operational, but disconnected from the system by software lockout.10 The system used extremely precise radar to create a 3D map of the area, as well as track mobile objects. The system had a thirty mile range in an oval shape. To the forward arc of the weapon the range was 30 miles, with fifteen miles to the sides and ten behind, giving any operator plenty of time to track incoming missiles and artillery shells. Additionally "overhead cover" was provided by the radar at a distance of five miles, considering plenty of distance. Unsupported by the armor's combat computers the radar's support computers could track up to two hundred ground and air targets, and identify and track up to 1,500 airborne artillery and rocket rounds.11 The weapon itself had the software loaded for counter-battery solutions, however this data was never fed to the pilot and instead was merely relayed over the BaTNI system.12 Direct fire is quickly pinpointed and the information relaying to the pilot as "incoming fire-source", however only for the fire directed at the armor itself. The RG-14A4 also had software to quickly identify any incoming fire that used the frequency that would damage the armor. The laser targeting system on the RG-14A4 is still in use by most pilots, however it is sadly used only for "point and shoot" assistance common to the "modern" battlefield, even though the system is capable of much much more. It appears that the laser targeting system was largely disabled during the Great Cataclysm due to the ash-fall causing serious atmospheric attenuation of the beam. The system was originally designed to allow the pilot to "paint" targets for supporting indirect fire systems, be used a low-power cutting beam to get through modern construction materials, and even act as a light anti-personnel weapon. However the thick ash of the Great Cataclysm made using the weapon difficult, and the long periods between maintenance made it so that the power leads between the Glitterboy and the RG-14A4 became both corroded and knocked out of alignment. As the armor could work with the laser in "low power" mode, software was modified to leave the beam within the visible light range and reduce it to non-damaging power, as those leads were made of superior material and did not require the heavy conduits that the cutting/antipersonnel system required.13 b The original system was a multiple frequency agile system, which allowed the weapon to flicker hundreds of times a second over a narrow range of wavelengths so that the beam was difficult to back-trace and did not pose a danger to the pilot. The RG-14A4 had twelve different laser systems, each wavelength and frequency programmed into the armor's sensor system so that they could see one another's lasers. The RG-14A4 contained a wireless communication system with high bandwidth and extremely short range that transmitted via a extremely short range frequency agile system. This wireless communication system served three purposes. To allow the weapon's computer systems to communicate with the power armor's computer systems, to communicate with nearby allied power armor systems, and to communicate with the unit's BaTNI system. This was added after the 2075 Congo Incident, where snipers made the weapon's data cables a priority target, as well as disabling the power armor's communication system. The internal system uses the weapon's entire chassis as an antenna, making it almost impossible for enemy snipers to render the communication system inoperative. However, this appears to have been disabled during the Great Cataclysm for reasons unknown.14 The RG-14A4 originally had a "hopper" in the side that allowed the operator to drop metal debris into the hopper, which would then grind the metal into powder, which would then be "fashioned" into flechettes via physical and magnetic compression. The constructed flechettes would be magnetically compressed into a servicable round, which would then be loaded into the weapon. Non-metallic debris would be expelled through the ejection port, and the system was capable of producing a single round every two seconds. The hopper could hold up to 1 cubic meter of material, and would use the entire hopper inside of 15 seconds to produce eight fire-able rounds. This system was disabled during the Great Cataclysm as the system became rapidly fouled with ash. However armors that survived until the air cleared apparently used the system to produce rounds, allowing the system to be combat capable. Additionally, the system could also craft frangible links for an ammunition belt when ordered to, allowing the pilot to create a new 100-round belt of ammunition over the course of an hour. Examination of the "emergency fabrication system" on "legacy" weapons showed that the system was literally used until the grinders ceased to operate anymore. Testing shows that a whopping 10,000 rounds of ammunition had to be crafted before the system began to degrade.15 Examination of modern construction RG-14A4 systems show that while most weapons do not possess them, a few that appear on the Black Market contain the system even though the weapon shows evidence of being manufactured sometime after -25 PA. Finally, the RG-14A4 had a "autonomous repair system" that repaired structural damage by the use of the small robots ranging from the size of the head of a pin to the size of the average human palm (1/25th of an inch to three inches) that would examine areas that the internal system analysis had identified as suffering from damage or wear. The robots would perform an in-depth examination of the system and report to the onboard repair system what materials were needed, which the armor's onboard computer would then suggest possible sources of the material to the pilot for insertion into the "emergency fabrication" hopper. This would allow the repair system to fix damage inside the weapon (however it could not repair the chromium armor or molycircs) and even use civilian or scavenged military supercondutor to repair or replace damaged components of the magnetic accelleration system. However, it appears that this system began to fail after nearly a century of use, the robots "dying" and being expelled from the weapon. The system was not reproduced once construction of RG-14A4's began once again in PA times, as it was mistaken for a simple damage diagnostic system and found to be redundant.16 The RG-14A4B was designed for vehicles such as the Patton Main Battle Tank. The system vents from the sides of the weapon and does not have a rear venting system. The system is loaded from the vehicles internal ammunition bay, and the weapon is "cleared" by air filtered by the vehicle itself. It does not contain the hopper, the laser, or the wireless communication system, as all of these systems are built into the vehicle that the weapon is built into. The system's range is also increased up to twenty miles, allowing the armored vehicles to engage indirect fire as soon as it crests the horizon, as well as near-orbital targets. The system also does not possess a targeting/welding laser nor a radar system, again, these systems were built into the armored vehicle. Finally the weapons usually fired discarding sabot "war-shot" rather than the urban/AP round common to the NEMA forces. These weapons are rarely found, and less than a hundred have been located since the Great Cataclysm, usually on vehicles that were heavily damaged and taken to a makeshift repair facility, or were put in storage before the Great Cataclysm and never pressed into service, so data is sparse on these weapon systems. The RG-14A4C was designed to be deployed in fixed position and possessed several major differences from the RG-14A4A system. Sadly less than a handful of these have ever been found, and all of them damaged, so information on this system is sparse at best. First and foremost is a "mounting post" allowing the weapon to be mounted on either a "pintle mount" or a tripod or quadpod. Second was an minaturized fission reactor the size of a toaster, even though the weapon has a primary energy port and two secondary energy ports to allow the weapon to be attached to an outside power source. Finally the system can be powered by e-clips, but requires four e-clips to be slotted in and even then it will only operate for eight hours or twenty-five shots.c Additionally the weapon has data communication ports allowing the operator to wear smart-goggles or simply deploy the holographic display screen from the compartment inside the weapon. The RG-14A4C also possesses advanced processing nodes allowing it to operate a full BaTNI, or act as an advanced processing node for the local BaTNI. The internal systems can track up to twenty thousand ground and air targets, and a whopping five hundred thousand rockets and artillery, as well as provide counter-battery information and act as a point-defense processing node. This node is state of the art molycircs, blackboxed, and use seperate molycircs to operate a "virtual node" where operating software is loaded into the "virtual node" from the black box systems and data calculations are performed by the "virtual node" until the job is finished. Every seven to ten seconds the "virutal node" has its data-processing and code wiped out by the system and rapid loaded a new software package and the information reaquired from the sensor system's buffers. This prevents data corruption, visible light laser virus uploading, and other cyber-warfare attacks from taking the RG-14A4C system offline, while still allowing it to operate as a full BaTNI node.17 Built into the RG-14A4C is a powerful sensor system, integrating phased millimetric wave radar, laser scanning systems, magnetic anomaly scans, energy source scanning, as well as visible light spectrum analysis. Intensely detailed scans are only out to two miles in radius, but the radar and laser scanning system are another oval. The 90 degree arc in front of the weapon extends out to fifty miles, to the sides it has a range of thirty miles, and behind the system it only has a five mile range. This system requires an operator to wear advanced protective armor to protect them from the close range radar exposure, but as the weapon would be deployed to a combat zone, this was seen as a no-brainer. Research has shown that in two cases scavengers located these weapons, activated the system, and suffered massive fatal internal burns. Indirect fire mode is possible with the RG-14A4C, as the range allows it to loft a shell in a parabolic arc with a range of sixty miles, but this requires mission configured "shells" that to date only two example of which have been found. One exploded when it was mistakenly loaded by the scavengers into the accompanied Glitterboy, destroying the weapon's internal systems, the other sold as an artillery round for another weapon.18 Finally, the RG-14A4C is capable of a high rate of fire, up to one hundred rounds a minute. The RG-14A4C contains a larger hopper and ammunition fabrication unit that is capable of creating 50 rounds a minute and has a hopper capable of handing up to fifteen cubic meters of material, and possessing its own systems to eject the unusable debris. The robotic loading system is capable of attaching new belts and new ammunition canisters to the weapon. The loading system can attach a new belt from a large volume ammunition container in less than six seconds. One hundred round "drums" commonly used by Glitterboys are usually placed in a rack of ten to one hundred "drums", each drum pulled forward by the rack, used till empty, and "ejected" to the side. Very few of the ammunition racks or "extended volume ammunition magazines" have been located, and their existence is largely drawn from schematics found in military databases, as well as legacy Glitterboy "deep storage" memory systems. An intact RG-14A4C is often purchased for less than 10,000 credits by the black market, which then rebuilds the weapon into a "proper" RG-14A4A, while those who know what they have and sells it to the proper purchaser are able to recieve as much as 1.5 million credits for the weapon. Recently four of these weapons, in pristine condition, were available on the black market in Austin Texas for 5.5 million credits each. These were purchased by CS agents out of Lonestar and have since vanished. 1 This caused by volcanic dust becoming superheated by the passage of the round and adhering to the nearest surface as it first turns gaseous and then cools. This often leans a shiny coating, black or rainbowed, and often "tears" where it is black obsidian droplets. This can seriously effect a weapon. 2 Battle EPROM and ROM systems recovered from what few armors survived show a brilliant blue light sufficing the area, warped figures, massive static, intermittent radio contact, complete loss of GPS system, and loss of satellite contact. Additionally investigators believed that the pilots may have been up to 130 miles off course at one point due to the jungle terrain that was seen in the footage. 3 The ability to activate the additional fire modes on the RG-14A4 would require someone who is extremely knowledgeable in the RG-14's onboard software, is an expert in software, and knows what they are doing, as it requires additional commands to the loading system, the degaussing systems, the air compression systems, and the capacitor rings. 4 Field statistics are presented here, as controlled environment laboratory testing statistics were quite different. 5 This ability was removed from firmware and software during the Dark Ages. Examination of old battlefield wreckage from during the Cataclysm shows evidence that the removal of this ability happened sometime in approximately 2135 (according to the armor and weapon's internal clocks) during a widely spread firmware and software update. 6 With the loss of orbital Zero-G facilities, the "density collapsed" rings are no longer avialable. However they can be found now and then for sale on the black market by people who think they only possess "Golden Age" armor and weaponry parts. From someone who knows what these rings are, the rings often sell for as much as 1.5 million credits per set, or 250,000 credits each. 7 Ammunition will be covered in a later installment. 8 Examination of Chromium Guardsman disabled and destroyed during the Great Cataclysm around Old Bones show that the RG-14 had the ejection cover removed, bent slightly, and added to the feed loading to allow for a smoother loading due to volcanic ash deposits on the belt causing the ammunition belt to hang up on the unaltered feeder port. A document recovered from several power armor's long term data storage modules showed that this was a memo from the 24th Armor Defense Division of NEMA dated 6 Jan 2099 and signed Lieutenant General Sawyer, Commanding. 9 Weapons disabled by non-padded use can be repaired and re-shielded for a rather minor cost, however this must be done at a facility capable of producing or acquiring aerogel and neo-tungsten parts, takes 4d6 hours of work. 10 The system, if it is present and undamaged, only requires 1d4 hours of software coding to bring back online. 11 The artillery point defense radar computer quickly and accurately identified any artillery rounds or rockets that were likely to endanger the armor, highlighting only those rounds that posed any danger to the armor, rather than all the incoming missile systems. Those capable of a "top-down" attack were given priority over thermobaric blood weapons or crude EFP weapons. 12 Counter-battery computation result in measuring the arc of the in-flight artillery shell or the path of the rocket and identifying the originating location of the artillery shell, allowing support artillery and rocket batteries to engage and destroy attacking indirect fire units. To enable the pilot to see the data would require 1d6+2 hours to override the lockouts, identify the data output coding modules, and rewrite software to send the information to the pilot. This would require another 4+2d8 hours of programming to add in the software needed on the armor side to display the data in a meaningful way to the pilot. 13 The laser would require 2d4+12 hours of software reprogramming to get past the overrides, as well as recalibrating the system would require 1d4 hours of physical work. 14 The wireless system was disabled during the Demon Plagues when units around Chicago began reporting hearing an "alluring song" over the wireless, and several suits of armor walked off in the middle of the night, some without operators. The system can be brought back online with 1d4+4 hours of electronics work, and 1d4 hours of programming work. This will also bring online the BaTNI software and computer systems. The long range portion of the system has a maximum range of 22 miles, while the armor to armor system has a range of one mile. 15 To repair the system would require 14 hours of work, as well as 15,000 credits worth the custom made parts. 16 This can be replaced/repaired with 4d6+48 hours of work, requiring 125,000 credits worth the material, 1d4+2 RMK kits, and 3d6x10+50 hours of programming work. It will repair the weapon at the rate of 1 MDC per hour, and was originally programmed to do maintenance when the system was on "down time", or unless the weapon suffered a critical component failure. 17 The RG-14A4A does NOT have this system, as it was never designed to act as a primary BaTNI node. While it can process data, the data is kept in stored buffers that the system "scans" without loading the data into memory, sending the data the "resolution buffers", without ever allowing the data to enter the RG-14A4A's systems to prevent cyber-warfare from disabling the weapon. 18 This round is known about by scavengers, who view it as a dangerously unstable round of an unknown type, and as such they are either left behind or destroyed by the scavengers. a The "sniper dart" does 2d6 MD to a single target, has a 1 mile range, and can hit a target as small as a softball. It takes 20 uses stripped from a single shot to drop the damage from normal to 3d4x10 and 60 shots to reduce damage to 2d4x10, anything over 80 will reduce the damage to 1d4x10 as long as there are at least 10 left. After 10, unless the pilot overrides it, the armor will eject the "spent" round. b The laser does 5d6 MD per shot and is powered by the reactor. It is capable of defeating laser resistant armor within 1d4 shots, less during sunny days where the combat computer built into the weapon itself can extrapolate the frequency based on visible light scatter. c Each shot depletes twenty minutes from operation time. If less than twenty minutes of power remain, the system will not fire and instead will automatically eject the e-clips and begin beeping four short beeps with a 1 second silence, and then repeating. The insertion of an e-clip will pause it, then it will begin beeping again. A single e-clip will only allow 30 minutes of operation or two shots, with two clips providing three hours or ten shots, and three e-clips providing five hours or fifteen shots.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:35
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The Great Cataclysm posed signifigant challenges, not only to civilians attempting to survive, but to the military forces and NEMA. Power armor, military vehicles, and advanced weapon system require air intakes and circulation, which require filter systems that can provide applicable air pressure and volume to the system. Despite Cold War 1 planning to fight on the nuclear battlefield, practical experience with volcanic eruptions, Cold War Two theory regarding "Brillian Pebble Strike" battlefields, both power armors and military weapons and vehicles had be able to handle ariborne particle debris, including the presence of "microfines" which was dust so small that when it pooled it took on the properties of water rather than normal dust. The biggest challenge of a "microfine environment" was the fact that even ceramic air-filters, normally used in P-3 Biological Containment Facilities, would become clogged the near-microscopic particles and require changing to return the equipment to service. Tests at White Sands and Groom Lake as well as the Canadian and Mexican equivelants showed that a "Brilliant Pebble Strike" attack would fill the atmosphere with microfines that would remain suspended up to eighteen days in the air, as the cloud created a very slight static charge that would keep the cloud somewhat coherent even in the presence of wind, which simply acted as another "current" in the microfine cloud. The microfine cloud acted more like a very dispersed water than a cloud of debris, wind just moving through the cloud, with the microfines simply arcing out and then returning the cloud, much like a solar flare. Charge difference between the ground and the cloud meant the cloud stayed airborne for long periods of time, but also did not drift very far, merely staying within the large area as a drifting hazard. To get rid of the cloud required ionizing the cloud, which caused it to "rain" to the ground within one to four seconds. This cloud was found to be a particular hazard to particle beam weapons, ion weapons, and railguns, with a common effect on lase weapons. For ion weapons the ion charge was absorbed by the cloud in less than fifty feet, the charge either absorbed by the cloud, or causing an "explosion" less than 20 feet from the weapon as the conflicting charges caused a critical failure. For laser weapons the problem was more simple and largely regarded as impossible to stop: The laser's intense energy would cause the microfines to fuse into volcanic glass within ten feet of the barrel for particularly "dense" clouds to one hundred feet for "thinner" clouds. Railguns suffered "magnetic adhesion" of the ash onto the accelleration components, the heat of the round's passing fusing it into iridescent glass. Each shot lined it thicker and thicker, and although the glass only thickened by micro-meter or so each shot, for "rapid fire" railguns that depended on armor ablation techniques, the rail would quickly become "insulated" by the microfine generated glass. Particle Beam weapons was where the real disaster occurred. If the cloud contained the same positive or negative charge as the particle beam consisted of, the cloud would suddenly compress around the weapon and instantly turn to glass from the heat. This would coat the weapon, and the firer, inside up to two meters of glass, coincidentally eliminating the microfine field. If the charge was opposite, a disasterous result occurred. Suspected of being a nuclear detonation, in 2072 a "microfine capable firing test" took place inside a cloud, which unfortunately had the opposite charge as the particle beam. This resulted in not only the energy in the cloud being suddenly released, but a measurable percentage of the potential energy of the microfines themselves being released. This resulted in a 8.4 megaton blast occurring at the firing point. Satellite imagery and other sensor data allowed the researchers to determine warning signs that would prevent the weapon from being fired in a microfine cloud, which lead to the installment of expensive and complex millimetric wave radar systems into vehicles and advanced weaponry. Larger particles had several problems inherent that were common with the microfine clouds: Mainly increased atmospheric attenuation for laser, ion, particle beam, and plasma weapons, as well as what became to be called "particle compression" on railgun rounds as passing through the ash degraded the range. Additionally ash inside the barrels of weapons was often superheated and ended up coating the internal structures of the weapons. All of this was a major problem during the Great Cataclysm as the sheer volume of ash put into the air over the course of ten years seriously comprimised the use of military weaponry. Common geology and vulcanology held the belief that even if the entire "Ring of Fire" would go off, it would merely throw ash in the air that would, for the most part, settle within a few weeks, sooner if it rained in the regions. While it was recognized that this would bring on a "nuclear winter" for up to a decade, what happened during the Great Cataclysm was far far worse. First of all, the continent of Atlantis returned, which caused the continental plates to buckle around the Atlantic Ocean and those plates connected to it. Japan vanished, resulting in the Ring of Fire separating, ripping open the crust of the earth like a pie crust. (The Yucatan is NOT missing according to geology and continental plate pressure) Finally, the increased pressure by the reappearance of Atlantis put additional pressure on the mantle around the earth. The constant pressure inward on the planet as the planet adjusted to the increased ocean pressure, continental plate pressure, the fracturing of plates, and the rest caused the volcanoes to eject ash for a period of ten years and trillions of cubic meters of magma were slowly pushed into the chambers of the volcanoes, throwing up gigatons of ash into the air. Several oceanic volcanoes and sub-oceanic volcanoes caused explosions measured in the megatons as cold seawater hit calderas and consequently exploded. This caused additional ashfall, debris, tsunamis, and earthquakes. The big problem with the major earthquakes is that it shook back up the finer the ash into the air across areas measuring in the hundreds of square miles, as well as stirring up drifting clouds. The Earth had already been undergoing global warming to a serious degree, with rivers drying up or changing course, the permafrost melting, and other major problems, which meant that while nuclear winter did kick off with a global warming change already in effect. Sea levels had already risen by 25 feet, but Atlantis surged it by another five feet globally. The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, was permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe that dropped temperatures drastically and resulted in snowfall as early as October with thawing occuring as late as March or April. Glaciers and permafrost in North America, Europe, Russia, and Asia provided a signifigant amount of fresh water, and with those thawing the loss of fresh water was devestating. During the early 21st Century major corporations bought the water rights to what climatologists had determined would be surviving fresh water sources, creating even greater shortages where people began having to pay a measurable percentage of their income just for fresh water. In clean water strapped third world nations, this meant even worse conditions, and led directly to the Second Cold War. Globally, the temperature had increased by 11 degrees Fahrenheit on average, year round, with the ocean temperature increasing by nine degrees. This led to the loss of over one point five million species, and a global die-off of oxygen producing algae in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. During the Mid21st Century a lot of steps were taken to reduce this problem, but as it had taken centuries to occur (starting with the early mini-ice age burning of forests in Europe, Asia, and Africa) it would take decades to reverse. And then the Rifts happened. When the volcanic ash eruptions occurred, initially the earth cooled over 16 degrees Fahrenheit. This increased the mini-Ice Age that Western Europe was facing, brought about a second Ice Age in the Mongolian Steppes, South Africa, Southern South America, Canada, and Siberia. Within two years of the Coming of the Rifts the Bering Strait was icelocked by ice that was between thirty feet thick in summer and over a hundred feet in the winter. The world had been built with Global Warming in mind, and an Ice Age had befallen mankind. Millions froze to death, as they did not possess nor did they have access to cold weather protective gear. Crops, many bio-engineered to survive global warming, died off entirely, bringing about mass famine in places that might have been widely untouched by the Rifts themselves. Water froze in the perma-frost zones, crushing subterranean piping, and caused water shortages around the world. In the Ice Age zones the snow piled up year after year, with the ice no longer thawing as south as Edmonton Alberta in Canada. Many cities that had largely survived the Coming of the Rifts in Canada were buried beneath ice and snow, and even in 108 PA are still entombed the same way. The snow did not stop falling in Chicago Illinois until March of 2099, and did not fully thaw away until mid-April of the same year. Unfortunately, snow began to fall in late August, early September in 2099 and did not thaw until June of 2100, with snow starting in August of 2100. In 2101 the snow fell year round or did not melt away, meaning that by 2007 the snow level in Illinois was at eight feet during the summer. In 2012 the snow levelled dropped from 16 feet in the summer to 14 feet thanks to the end of the volcanic ash expulsion by the major volcanoes, and rapidly melted off over the next five years as the ash was swept out of the air by snow and rain. Luckily, by 2045 the climate change had reversed to the point where it was roughly at 1700's level. Even without the Rifts and the invaders from those Rifts, mankind teetered on the edge of extinction for decades. In Europe, Russia, Asia, and other places, the vast forests that primitive man burned to stay alive had been harvested over the decades, leaving them no way to stay warm once the utility grid went down. Millions froze to death, starved to death, or died of thirst and disease. It is estimated that at one point the total global population of Rifts Earth was less than one million people, mostly clustered in a few areas. It was the biggest die-off since the Xang-Wie Event in 40,000 BC. Tens of millions of species died off, many of them ocean species as the oxygen levels in the ocean plummeted as cold water absorbs less oxygen and the kelp beds were almost entirely wiped out. In some ways the climate change, earthquakes, tsumanias, and the earth itself was worse than the demon plagues, which could be fought and beaten. One cannot fight a blizzard that lasts for two months, but one can shoot a Brodkil in the face with a boom-gun. Over 85% of human population was killed off due to natural disasters, contrary to what modern holo-shows portray. There were 16 billion people on Earth on December 22, 2098. By 2052 the estimated world population was 900,000. A total die-off of 99.994375% due to climate change and predators from beyond the Rifts. This is compared to an estimated world population of 264 million humans world-wide, assuming a growth percentage of 22%. For the NEMA and military forces in North America this all caused serious problems. For the first two years the snow was black and during the "summer" the rain was black and gritty. This meant that the permafrost layers actually had striations of ash and snow once the snow no longer thawed. In some ways the permanent presence of snow made it easier to fight supernatural menaces, as even invisible enemies left behind footprints in the snow. Eventually the decision was made to allow the snow to pile up, as it provided a measure of insulation to the inhabitants of the lower floors of the buildings. Those multi-floor buildings whose roofs collapsed cue to the weight of snow were just allowed to collapse, as few people lived on the upper stories, as it made them vulnerable to aerial attacks. During the first few years even if it was raining or snowing, ash was still falling, as rain or snow form around tiny particles to which the moisture adheres, and the ash levels in the air meant that predominately the particle that the rain or snow formed around was ash. Additionally the ash was so fine in several categories that ash was uptaked into the atmosphere inside of water vapor droplets, meaning that the situation continued for years. Into one of the harshest environments ever conceived the forces of NEMA not only had to handle refugees who were faced with starvation, lack of drinkable (potable) water, disease, and a destroyed infrastructure, but they had to face off against creatures from beyond space and time, many of them supernatural threats that could absorb as much damage as a First World state of the art main battle tank or light armored vehicle, and could put out the damage potential of the same. It was into this environment that the RG-14A4 "Boom Gun" was fielded and saved the day again and again, often defeating overwhelming odds and creatures that seemed to shrug off lighter weapons. NEMA had two version available, the MA-14A4E 60mm Magnetic Acceleration Combat System on the M-10A5 Power Armor Assault Suit nicknamed "Harbinger" from the old field trials and top secret design phase (Sub-Project Harbinger) that had resulted in the "Chromium Guardsman" power armor, and the RG-14A4A, RG-14A4B, and RG-14A4C railgun systems. These systems were built to handle the most extreme environments. From the theorized Lunar battlefields, Mars exploration and defense, and to even allow troops to fight after a Third World War, where it was assumed that orbital strikes, nuclear exchanges, chemical and biological weapons would have been unleashed. This meant that off all the power armor systems, the Chromium Guardsman and the Harbinger Assault Suits were best qualified to fight on this terrible battlefield. Possessing a full suite of weapons, enhanced sensor systems, the ability to perform rescue operations and refugee operations, and designed to survive not only the battlefield, but inside the very fireball of a nuclear detonation and the world after World War Three. The RG-14A4 systems were deployed by the surviving members of NEMA and the North American and Mexican military in a combination of the post-Third World War battlefield and the "enhanced battlefield" where demons took the place of enemy tanks and power armors. The NEMA forces had logged literally hundreds of man-hours of combat against power armor and robot combat vehicles under terrible conditions over the last several decades, commanders who had overseen operations under various conditions for decades, and armor that had undergone repeated revisions to fix errors discovered under combat conditions. Premier among the NEMA arsenal were the Chromium Guardsman and the Silver Eagles, pound for pound hardier, more versatile, and packing a harder punch than any other weapon system in the world, and the RG-14A4A was the weapon system of the Chromium Guardsman that could defeat even the strongest creature from the Rifts. Keep in mind that the PPE level of Rifts Earth at the time of the Great Cataclysm were of a magnitude higher than 108 PA, with most of the rifts being permanently cycling open to bleed off PPE and the ley-lines themselves lit up with such power that they could be seen from miles away and actually created electrical discharges around them all of the time. This meant that supernatural creatures were present on Great Cataclysm Earth that could not manifest in the comparatively weak PPE environment of 108PA. Creatures recorded on Battle-ROMs and other video and written recordings have never been seen since and have not been identified by even the most learned multiverse traveling researcher. More than a few creatures were able to still fight while withstanding the concentrated and massed fire of entire brigades of Chromium Guardsman and Harbingers, a level of fire that would destroy even the most tenacious foe now. Problems with the RG-14A4A were not unexpected problems, but with the loss of the repair and maintenance facilities, supply depots, manufacturing plants, and War Stocks meant that what had been assumed to be "acceptable performance loss" when resupply and maintenance could be expected meant catastrophic failure for weapon systems not designed with extended operations in high threat environments. Thankfully the RG-14A4 had been designed to operate for months without even the most basic of maintenance, with potentially years of operation with only the minimum of maintenance. Ash adherence was a known problem that thankfully the RG-14A4A was designed to counter-act. So where other power armor's weapon systems were beginning to suffer "fusing failure" the RG-14A4A had counter-measures to keep it combat operational. However ash caused filter clogging in the air systems, and performance suffered. The loss of the the War Stocks and the maintenance depots and parts depots resulted in either the filters being cleaned and reused, or taken from other vehicles. A particularly enterprising mechanic discovered that the Nissan Trueflight hovercar's primary intake filters would work just fine of the RG-14A4A. A Canadian mechanic discovered, before communications with Quebec went down, that taking the linear rails in the hands of the Glitterboy and flexing it into a 14 degree angle bow at 230 psi over a period of 45 seconds would result in the volcanic glass shattering free. The circular superconductors could be cleaned by spraying it with cryo-fluid (commonly scavenged from civilian air-car blade coolant systems) and then hitting it with a teflon covered sledgehammer, which would shatter the glass. This was entered into the "Maintenance Database" in the Cold Storage database and is still used this day to clean the coils. For degausing a mechanic with NEMA Third Armored Division discovered that running a second set of power leads to provide a reverse feed, and then "pulsing it" in alternating currents by activating first the primary sets and then the installed sets at 0.5 second intervals for 6 seconds would provide acceptable degaussing. This field modification was done to all operational M-14A4A weapon systems, and the degaussing method was added to the weapon and the suit's functions. Aerogel proved to be particular susceptible to ash clogging. Blowing it out with compressed air (usually at 215 psi) would work, but broke the microfibers as well as caused microfractures. After close to ten cleanings the aerogel would be shredded and almost useless. However a civilian mechanic discovered that standard mattress stuffing soaked with standard fire retardant foam from civilian building tanks and then baked in a civilian conventional oven for three to four hours at 500 degrees, and then put on high in a 450 watt microwave for 120 minutes would create an acceptable substitute that would need replaced far less often. This procedure is the one that survived the Great Cataclysm, and indeed, many robot repair facilities as well as legacy Glitterboy power armor pilots use to replace the shock padding. Superconductor failure became an issue several years into the Great Cataclysm, for two reasons. The constant sub-zero temperatures, combined with rapid reheating by a fired round and then sub-zero air being used to clean and flush the system caused micro-stress fractures from thermal fatigue. While the superconductor power-leads were specially designed for the Boom Gun, in order to provide the high powered 20+ MACH "war-shots", the much less power-intensive MACH-Two limit made it so that superconductor taking from the motor windings of civilian electrical cars and hovercars. This scavenging technique was put into the Maintenance Database and in the Cold Storage database. Internal heu-tungsten sections also suffered thermal fatigue and vibration fatigue, however a desperate mechanic from the US Army 8th Infantry Division noticed that nearly anything could be used for the structural systems, including simple carbon steel, providing that any ferrous metals be lined with anti-magnetic coating. This coating could be found in any stocked electronics or automobile mechanic garage. Additionally the components were a close match to the Mitsubishi-Ford Sternhauser cargo truck's forward fan guidance assembly and could be adapted to use within 20 minutes of work for anyone with a high school machineshop. This information was put out as quickly as possibly, and once again was put into the Maintenance Database. Molycirc failure was extremely low, but one component that became known for failure was the radar "tracking and identification system" within both the weapon and the armor. As the armor's system was considered priority, the weapon's computer circuitry was removed and used to replace the armor's systems. As those failures did not start occurring until approximately Year Six (With some units, roughly 19%, and 80% of those manufactured in Germany by the Triax Corporation) through Year Fifteen, the second set of failures did not happen until Year Fifty through Eighty. By that time the Tier 3 Maintenance Shop for 2nd Armor Division out of Fort Hood had identified that the tracking module for police and ambulance hover-vehicles was not only as capable as the military-grade system (with some reprogramming) but would fit with some adjustment to the housing in the weapon and the removal of some shock dampening material inside the Glitterboy. Additionally another mechanic (who was well over 140 but still considered late middle-age thanks to Pre-Cataclysm longetivity medicine) formerly with 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force discovered that with several component adjustments as well as a copy of the firmware from the Deep Storage Module, the circuitry for game AI's out of late generation gaming consoles could be used to replace the system without the removal of the shielding. These molycirc systems were actually able to be manufactured by anyone with a "Bubble Circuitry Forge" in several hours, and the Bubble Circuitry Forge could be crafted by a nano-forge that most home computers used to create easy to craft systems. By piling these together the aging woman was able to start the manufacture of Glitterboy molycirc systems that, while they didn't perform to military specifications, manage to get within 70% of NEMA standards. Field expedient fabrication and repair techniques were refined over the decades, and pilots were trained by their parents or mentors on how to repair the systems from easily scavenged or purchased materials. Several towns gathered up all the techniques and gathered the repair materials from nearby ruins before beginning to offer Glitterboy Repair Systems to those who many had come to view as "humanities saviors" during the long decades. Up until 85 PA the CS supplied those repair facilities. However several towns found out they were able to order repair parts from irregular caravans coming out of the American South-East. These parts were all Pre-Cataclysm, still in the original packaging, and many people figured someone had hit upon a maintenance depot containing a large store of parts. Investigation shows that these parts caravans stopped in 90 PA after CS investigations tracked them to near the location of the American Empire Fort Bragg. Several scavengers have located parts of Pre-Rifts manufacture in old ruins, and while most of them looked as if they had been stored there Pre-Cataclysm, one scavenger knew for a fact that the bunker had been cleared by his father over sixty years before. Examination of lots of the parts have shown that while they bear all the proper markings and manufacturing marks, as well as original packaging, certain discrepencies have shown up in those components. The largest ones is that the superconductor accelleration systems were manufactured in a gravity environment by the use of advanced manufacturing centrifuges to simulate a Zero-G environment. The hyperalloy for the chassis also use several materials that are found in North America, where Pre-Cataclysm systems used an element only found in Central Africa that was not as high performance but much cheaper and freely available. Companies that produced flechette ammunition for the Boom Gun did so either by careful manufacturing, Pre-Cataclysm computer nano-forges or 3D Printers, or by using a scavenged RG-14A4C ammuntiion hopper. More than a few Legacy Glitterboy Pilots used "The Ammo Machine" in the barn of their homestead, completely unaware it was the Emergency Ammunition Fabricator Unit taken from the M-14A4A and set up as a standalone system.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:36
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That's it. That's the writeups I did for the Rifts official books. The Glitterboy and the Boom-Gun gave me loving fits. I'd barely started the entries when my login got disabled due to using two different computers on the forum at the same time. Maybe I'll finish the writeups soon. Hopefully that wasn't too big of an infodump.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:38
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Yeah, I should have either consolidated it a lot, or just put it in a document. Naw, I've never submitted to the Rifter. I've thought about it, but never really got around to it. Just... laaaazy
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Sep 29, 2014 12:00
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2014 15:24
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