Avenger MBT
Name/Type: Avenger MBTDesigner/Manufacturer: The New Order
Combat Role: Main Battle Tank
Crew: 2 (Driver, Commander, Gunner)
Length: 8 meters
Weight: 60 tons
Propulsion: Treads
Max Speed: 90 kph
Hull Armor: 150 RU
Countermeasures: Shtora, Mirage Sensor Deceiver
Armament: 1 120mm Rail Gun, 2 Concussion Missile Launchers, 2 Laser Gattlings
Cost (with fuzzy dice): 50,000 credits
As the SS rapidly expanded and developed it’s tank forces at a breakneck page, generals and marshals across the Empire watched with great interest. For years, marvelous light vehicles such as the AT-ST, Century Tank and the Chariot Command speeder have served their Imperial designers well, but their heyday is long past. Now, as armies across the galaxy expand develop their own armored vehicles, Imperial army commanders have found it becoming increasingly difficult to cope.
As they had hoped, from the project came several different vehicles that hadn’t quite made the SS’s final cut for a wide array of reasons. The general army resumed development of the canceled vehicles, and within months the resulting vehicles, often radically changed from their original forms, were on a par with their SS brethren.
Premier among these designs was the Avenger-class Cruiser tank. Built to serve as a general purpose battle tank, it ports impressive armor and weaponry for a vehicle it’s size. The downside, naturally, is it’s mobility. Due to the sheer weight of it’s armor, it was simpler for the Avenger to use tracks instead of more common repulserlifts, allowing for a simpler and more rugged design. As a result, while fast for a tracked vehicle, it’s slower than most hover tanks or other repulsor vehicles that it is likely to come into contact with, whether as a friend or a foe.
Armament The Avenger’s main armament is a 120mm Rail gun. Auto leveled (like the gun on the modern M1 Abram) and capable of launching shells at velocities exceeding 5 kilometers a second, the Avenger’s rail gun is the finest weapon of its kind known to Imperial Engineers. In combat, the gun can fire a wide variety of ammunition, giving the tankers superb tactical flexibility. First and most important of all the Avenger’s ammunition is it’s Depleted Uranium KE penetrators (wiki link). At the astoundingly high velocities the rail gun can throw slugs at, none but the heaviest armored vehicles, such as Juggernauts and AT-ATs can withstand direct hits. Additional ammo types are the same as those deployed recently on SS tanks such as HE, Incendiary, Flechette, and Guided.
Backing up the main gun is a pair of Concussion Missile Launchers, each with a magazine of six missiles. These are useful for shooting down aircraft and other fast moving vehicles such as speeder bikes, and a sustained barrage by several Avenger tanks can take down even the heaviest of ground units.
Lastly there is a pair of laser Gattlings mounted on the turret roof controlled by either the vehicle commander or the driver. Though capable of some limited anti-air and anti-vehicle duties (though in the latter case, they are effective only against lightly armored vehicles, such as most APCs), their primary purpose is anti-infantry. With their fast firing rate, they can mow infantry down like grass.
Shields/Defenses For protection, the Avenger has a few more tricks to it than just the armor itself. Active defense systems are used to minimize the risk of the tank being hit in the first place. The first of these is called the Shtora. Mounted on the back of the tank’s turret, the Shtora is a defense system designed to neutralize missile’s threat by jamming their seekers with microwave and infrared lasers, causing them to lose their target lock. This system has proven itself 60% effective at ranges under 5 kilometers, and just under 80% effective at ranges over this mark. Naturally, however, as the number of potential missile threats increases, the efficiency of the system decreases. Against single or dual threats, however, the Shtora has proven itself to be very effective.
The second active protection system deployed on the Avenger is the Mirage sensor deceiver. This device is basically a scaled down version of the XP-110 Illusion sensor deceiver employed by the Imperial navy, and works on the same principals. Incoming sensor beams are magnified and sent back to enemy receivers. The effect is such that when viewed via enemy sensors, the tank appears to be not one, but a dozen Avengers, all of them interlaced with one another. By making it far more difficult than normal to successfully target, the Mirage sensor deceiver reduces coordinated fire against the tank dramatically.
By far, however, the tank’s most important asset is it’s nearly impenetrable hide. The Avenger’s composite hull is made up of multiple layers of some of the most resilient materials in the galaxy, leaving it well protected from both energy and physical attacks.
The first layer of the tank’s composite armor is made up of Hyperbarides. Used within turbo lasers for the parts that will suffer the most thermal and radiation pressure, Hyperbarides can withstand incredibly high temperatures, flux densities, and radiation levels without being damaged or weakened. This Hyperbaride shell protects it from lasers and other energy weapons thanks to its ability to withstand extreme temperatures, but since many Hyperbarides (including the ones used) are rather soft, this layer doesn’t add much protection against physical penetrators.
Behind the Hyperbaride outer shell is a titanium matrix containing Titanium boride ceramic disks reinforced with carbon-nanotubes designed to stop or impede both shaped charges and KE penetrators. Backing this is a thick layer of perforated Titanium, with Titanium Boride ceramic “pencils” (nicknamed such due to the fact they are approximately the size of a pencil) inserted into the holes. These cause penetrators and shaped charges to experience different amounts of resistance in different areas (due to the differences of heat and physical resistance between the ceramic and the titanium). This causes penetrators to yaw and shatter, and makes shaped charge jets deform thus robbing them of their penetrative power. Behind the Titanium is another matrix with ceramic. Reinforcing this is a Titanium backing plate with microscopic holes that allow it to serve as a Faraday cage, protecting the vehicle from Ion cannon fire, and then a Kevlar spall liner on the inside to protect from concussion and squash head missile charges.
Sensors The most important step in combat is detecting your enemy. If he sees your first, you’re dead. Information is power. Therefore, the Avenger is equipped with a modern sensor suit including ground radar, FLIRs, sonar, magnetic sensors, laser rangefinders and DERs. For long range recon, a small, unmanned arial vehicle (in the range of a foot long) is carried.
Called the Eagle eye, when in flight an Eagle eye can fly up to an altitude of 1,000 meters to observe the tank’s surroundings with it’s minimal sensor package, allowing it to detect threats that might need to be avoided or ambushes it might not have been able to otherwise until too late. Thanks to it’s small profile, an Eagle Eye is nearly impossible to detect with most sensors, since it leaves no thermal emission (it is propeller powered) and registers as only a small insect to radar systems. Even if detected and interception is intended, it’s small size makes it nearly impossible to hit, and any attacker would have to do this while avoiding a storm of missiles, guided shells, and Gattling fire from the launching tank below.
Communications On any battlefield, the key to victory is communications. The commander who has better control of his forces the quickest and the most precisely has a critical advantage that is hard to match for an opponent who does not, therefore on the Avenger a major effort to maximize the speed and communication between both commanders and the units themselves was made, with the results being superior to any other vehicle yet developed.
For communication with the “high and mightys,” the generals or admirals directing the operation, both the leader and assistant leader of every unit from squadrons on up have special transceivers designed for encrypted long range communications with both ground units and orbiting vessels, allowing orders to be sent right where they are needed in a secure form and be read and obeyed right away. For standard video and audio communication between vehicles, each tank has standard communications gear and an SS-developed Stealth comm as used on the TIE Phantom II. Even if intercepted (unlikely, thanks to the tight beam unless they’re at close range with the enemy) the transmissions are highly encrypted and all but impossible to break.
To speed and ease communication between tanks, a datalink between all deployed vehicles is maintained, allowing commanders to pull up information about every other deployed tank, including it’s position, assignment, and sensor data, giving commanders (both tank and unit level) when considering how to deploy forces. In addition, terrain and data on enemies from orbiting vessels can also be brought up. In addition to easing organization, this system also allows commanders to focus radio conversation on important things.
Due to their sensitive nature, the datalink communications are more highly encrypted than even the standard stealth comm transmissions. Based on the sums of two hundred digit prime numbers, Imperial Intelligence claims that even the fastest computer in the galaxy could not crack it before the big crunch and the end of the universe. To prevent the code from falling into enemy hands, it is impossible to access it in the tank’s computer system. It is permanently blocked off and any attempt to remove the blocks, no matter how subtle, will result in the immediate permanent deletion of the code data with no chance of recovery.
Deployment and Tactics While quality is in many cases certainly better than quantity, designers believed quantity has a quality of it’s own. The base Avenger unit, a squadron, is six tanks. Three squadrons make a platoon, with the addition of an artillery squadron, and three platoons make a company. Three companies make a battalion, and three battalions make a division for a total of 566 tanks (your math will not add up without the knowledge that at every step (x3 multiplier) two tanks are added as well, one for the – leader and one for his assistant leader.
Due to the tanks small size and (relatively) low weight, the AT-AT and AT-ST complement on a star destroyer can be replaced with a division of Avengers and their accompanying artillery.
The first Avengers deployed will be as part of forming panzergrenadier divisions in the Borderland protectorate. With a full division of Avengers, supported by Administrator artillery (108 pieces) and IFVs (972), plus twelve thousand infantry, these divisions will be a force to be reckoned with on whatever world they may show up. A division can be loaded onto a single [URL=http://www.therebelfaction.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6451 ]Venator Troopship[/URL] , giving divisions superb mobility both on a planet and in space.
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