THE WEAPONS I
Hierarchy: Small Arms and Support Weapons
The small arms design of the galaxy prior to First Contact had principles rooted in the strategic conditions faced by the armies that had fought in the Krogan Rebellions. In that conflict, many worlds found themselves isolated from the rest for extended periods. The Krogan themselves were responsible for this, as they attacked recklessly and got lucky as often as not, whereas their defences were not well organised and thus were exploited at first by the asari and then by the turians. Some planets went for decades behind enemy lines, though most only for a few months.
All sides recognised a need to keep the logistical needs of their armies to a minimum. It was during that war that two developments in small arms were almost universally adopted by all spacefaring species. These were the solid-form magazine and the heat sink.
The former was the newer development, pioneered by the salarians during the course of the fighting. Weapons were designed that could create aerodynamic splinters from a solid block of metal or other materials, which were then projected forwards using mass effect fields. This was more efficient than individual bullets, which took up more space and weight, particularly compared to chemically-propelled bullets. This allowed a soldier to fire hundreds of rounds without reloading, more on average than they would have fired usually in the course of a single engagement.
The new system did have a disadvantage, in that the bullets were considerably lower in mass. To compensate, they were fired at higher muzzle velocities and they were shaped for maximum penetration. However, a new advantage was discovered in that the personal kinetic barrier systems available at the time were less able to detect incoming fire, something that would remain the case until the late 2170s and early 2180s.
By contrast, high efficiency heat sinks had been around for centuries, as a means to increase the service life of rifle barrels and mass effect components. Most weapons of submachinegun scale and upwards had some sort of heat sink system before the Rebellions. But with the development of the solid-form magazine, heat became the primary limitation to small arms. The higher muzzle velocities required for lethality also produced tremendous thermal energy, particularly when firing fully automatic.
The fruit of the marriage of these two technologies dominated small arms design galaxy-wide until the development of the M-8 Avenger in the 2170s.
M-18 Vindicator
The primary armament of turian ground forces assigned to the New Territories in 2157 was the Vindicator, designated the M-18 in Alliance service post-war. It had been in service for two centuries by the time of First Contact, with almost every military in some role. The asari used it as a battle rifle for their spotter-sniper teams, and humanity would buy the Republics' existing stock in 2158 as a stopgap measure, topping up the number of examples they would capture in the course of the war. Only the turians used it as their primary infantry weapon, however.
Manufactured by Elanus Risk Control Services on Palaven and Taetrus, and later by Kassa Fabrication for export to the Terminus, it is a selective fire weapon for three round bursts and single shot, with an integrated 2.5x scope and backup ironsights. Its heat sinks allowed for twenty four shots in burst sequence before requiring a cooldown. It has three configurations; short-barrel for use by some vehicle crews, standard length for riflemen, and marksman with a bipod and rails for attaching improved optics.
There is a popular suggestion that the Hierarchy abandoned the Vindicator for the Avenger due to its lack of automatic fire. This is largely false. Turian small arms doctrine of the day favoured longer range engagements, with grenades and heavy pistols considered the primary armament for close-quarters fighting. Given the rural nature of Shanxi and the entirely undeveloped nature of many of the other worlds that would be fought over, this doctrine fit the circumstance quite well.
Predator Heavy Pistol
The Predator, designated the M-3 in Alliance service, was another creation of Elanus Risk Control. However, unlike the Vindicator, it had only begun manufacture a few years before. The New Territories was the first turian military sector to adopt it, General Arterius himself having approved it.
Due to the aforementioned requirement for a close-quarters heavy pistol, one that could balance firepower, magazine size and the ability to be fired with only one hand, the turians would later adopt it en masse. Humanity, having felt the sharp end of it, would too. This in turn led to the rest of the galaxy doing so, as the turians remained the foremost military power and humans were the only species to have humiliated the turians in living memory. The other species quickly understood the benefits. With the reintroduction of thermal clips, the pistol's status as the number one sidearm would be solidified as almost all of its competitors were unable to adapt their designs in a reasonable time period. The Predator's design allows switching between heat sink or thermal clip firing with a simple mod kit to be changed out while the weapon is field stripped.
The pistol itself is relatively bulky, like most heavy pistols, although it is no heavier than the larger concealable pistols on the market today. The scalability of the solid-form magazine/heat sink system downwards is limited, more so then than today. However, its size allows it to fire full-sized rounds at velocities almost equal to that of a rifle. Ideal for urban fighting.
Mantis Sniper Rifle
The Mantis rifle was originally conceived for police use by Devlon Industries in 2092, a hanar-volus-turian consortium that was more famous for creating armour at the time. Their first foray into precision military armament was diversification of their portfolio, but the weapon's service history is a case study in organic marketing. Police units loved the Mantis immediately, and soon, turian and asari militias that shared policing roles began to adopt it too. Those militias located in the Traverse soon used them to great effect against Terminus pirates, drawing the attention of the galactic military establishments. By 2122, twenty three asari republics and all seventeen major turian clusters had adopted it as their sniper weapon of choice.
The Mantis fired one shot before it required time to cool down, although not long. It could reach out and effectively neutralise targets up to a kilometre away.
Reflecting its history as a civilian weapon, the Mantis is not a rugged weapon, requiring near-constant calibration. However, its accuracy is unparalleled, and before the development of cheaper kinetic barrier technology, its lethality was unquestionable. It would become more obsolete in its unmodified state in the mid-2170s as infantry barriers became more commonplace.
Two variations to the design were created in the late 2170s. The first was a rare but effective conversation to allow it to fire a larger projectile and thus overwhelm barriers with greater energy per hit. This was called the Mantis-4, but was not very successful. The only government contract that Devlon received for the Mantis-4 was from C-Sec. The weapon was most famously used by Garrus Vakarian, whom was issued one by the organisation. The other variation was the Viper rifle, which became ubiquitous in the 2170s and 2180s, and was the favoured weapon of Commander Shepard.
Raptor Designated Marksman Rifle
The Raptor was designed to fill the gap between battle rifle, represented by the Vindicator, and sniper rifle, represented by the Mantis. It was originally created in the 2140s, but was not adopted until 2153. That year saw a successful seizure of the low gravity world of Amar by turian separatists, and the repulsion of the force sent to retake the colony. The post-mortem of the Hierarchy's operation drew two conclusions. One was that the separatists had been underestimated both in terms of numbers and skill. The second was that the turian military required a designated marksman weapon.
The Vindicator did fill that role when given a higher powered scope and a bipod, but because its original scope was integral and could not be removed, it was unnecessarily heavy. This slowed down the redeployment of the trooper carrying it, which had cost lives on Amar. The Raptor was manufactured and issued to units to replace the marksman version of the Vindicator, and fulfilled the role with aplomb, aiding turian forces to swiftly eliminate the separatists still using the Vindicator in the role. The colony's populace was returned to the Hierarchy's jurisdiction unharmed, in part because of the Raptor's capabilities. The turian military adopted it in 2155, supplementing it with the more powerful Viper in the 2170s.
The weapon is a semi-automatic, with a 4x IR scope typically mounted in-factory but removable in favour of higher or lower powered optics as required. It could fire 15 shots before overheating its heat sink, and was used by the turians on overwatch in the cities of Shanxi. Alliance soldiers would soon learn to fear crossing the streets or proceeding down alleys, often relying on smoke or heavy suppressive fire to even attempt it.
Support Weapons:
The Hierarchy relied exclusively on missile weapons to do their suppression, anti-tank and anti-vehicle work.
These came in a great variety, but were all based on a common optics-launcher package; the Claw guidance system. This allowed the firing of up to four warheads simultaneously or in sequence, either in fire-and-forget mode or manual SACLOS mode. The size of the warheads and propulsion systems varied hugely, ranging from 177mm artillery missiles to cluster rounds dispersing 33mm grenades, the latter being far more common.
The turians did not issue light machineguns to its infantry, placing heavy machineguns on their vehicles instead. This was yet another inheritance of the experience gained during the Krogan rebellions, as the Krogan were unperturbed by suppressive fire from a light machinegun but could not ignore high explosive rounds. Privately, the turians may also have thought them less effective against asari too.
Due to the Alliance's highly developed active defence systems, this doctrine would work against the turians on Shanxi and elsewhere, greatly increasing the cost of the engagements beyond what the Hierarchy had ever feared possible. Indeed, there was to be much self-examination after the conflict had ended on the role and types of support weapons, but that need not concern us at this juncture.
Hierarchy: Fighting Vehicles
All three Council species had the same doctrine of armoured warfare in 2157, one that emphasized mobility and barriers over heavy armour. The logic followed was that armour took up weight that could be used to carry bigger reactors, which could power more capable kinetic barriers and better engines. Physical armour was more vulnerable to infantry anti-tank weapons, and barriers were all-round protection against threats ranging from ATGMs to mass accelerators, at least according to the design mindset of the Citadel. These theoretical concepts would be sorely tested during the war.
There were three primary armoured vehicles in the turian arsenal of the New Territories at the time, tanks, tank destroyers and infantry fighting vehicles. The tanks and tank destroyers were built for mobility and firepower over protection, the IFVs for protection and firepower over mobility; firepower being the common denominator of any turian vehicle, armoured or otherwise.
Pattern 39 Tank/Tank Destroyer
The Pattern 39 T/TD was the last development in a long line of turian hover vehicles, so named for being the thirty-ninth iteration of vehicles going all the way back to the pre-contact era of the Hierarchy. Prior to contact, the chassis provided what the Alliance called main battle tank and tank destroyer roles, although they did so with far less protection than any human MBT design.
The vehicle itself is arranged around a main weapon in an assault gun configuration that would later influence the StuGM-44 Hammerhead in the mid-2180s.
It consists of a wedge-shaped hull the size of a large aircar, the heavily sloped armour on the front and sides aiding in survivability should the its barriers fail. The anti-grav repulsor plates and drive engines are attached to the sides, allowing the vehicle to 'crabwalk' from side to side at speed if necessary, but as the turians would discover, this also left them vulnerable to human countermeasures. The barriers were capable of deflecting two hits from the main gun of any Alliance MBT before failure, or up to thirty three hits from the gatling weapons of an Alliance walker. The ammunition magazine and reactor-core compartments were at the rear of the vehicle.
The crew sat in a 1+1 arrangement on the left side, inside a more heavily armoured secondary hull that is capable of ejecting to allow the crew to escape. The driver-commander sits in the back, the gunner in front, although both are capable of operating all functions of the vehicle.
The armament is what defined the difference between the two chassis types. Mounted in turret with 360 traverse and a full sensory package, both variants primary armament was a multiple rocket launcher system, though they were of differing types.
The tank destroyer versions, called the 39TD, mounted smart missiles, which targeted vehicles in pairs. The first to strike carried a shaped charge designed to either deplete the target's kinetic barriers or soften up the armour. The second consisted of an uranium-tipped high explosive shell with an eezo-core at its base to increase its mass just before striking, for maximum penetration and maximum damage inside the target. Against vehicles relying on kinetic barriers alone, this combination was utterly devastating. This arrangement was specifically designed to counteract the Krogan Tomkah IFV and self-propelled artillery vehicles, which are very large, with multiple redundancies and very powerful kinetic barriers. The MLRS could fire up to twelve missiles at a time, with an autoloader replenishing the amount in 80 seconds from a magazine in the rear section and capable of snap-loading one missile in a mere seven.
The 39T tank variant also fired twelve missiles from an MLRS, but they were exclusively dual-purpose HEAT rounds. It mounted a 21mm mass-accelerator autocannon co-axially, primarily for use against gunships and light vehicles. Ironically, this made it more suited to take on Alliance armour than the tank destroyer version was, and post-war calculations have indicated that had the tank variants been properly utilised in that role, Alliance armour losses on Shanxi may have been significantly higher than they were. The doctrines in use were entirely inadequate to tackle a more disciplined and technologically-sophisticated opponent than the Krogan, and this would show.
The Alliance captured many examples of the Pattern 39, but did not rate them for much more than reconnaissance work. They stripped some of the chassis of their weapons, were of much more interest, and used them until the 2160s in that role. Post-war, the Pattern 39's failures would see it eventually replaced by the far more formidable Jiris Fighting Vehicle, with almost the entire stock being mothballed or sold to turian Terminus warlords as surplus. In the midst of the Reaper War however, every available weapon was required and vehicle was pressed back into service.
Armoured Infantry Transport
The turian's armoured personnel carrier was the Armoured Infantry Transport. It had been in service for only thirty years by the time of First Contact, replacing cheaper ground transport vehicles that had preceded it. The vehicle was the brainchild of engineers in the Outer Reaches Military District, the turian exclaves in the Traverse near asari space. The generals there found that their tanks and tank destroyers could easily outpace the infantry support assigned to protect them, especially on rough ground. This was not because of any absolute difference in speed between the vehicles, but rather that the hover capability of the combat vehicles allowed them to ignore obstacles. Thus, the Outer Reaches commissioned the Palaven State Arsenals to design and produce a vehicle that had the same capability, with the characteristics of the existing APCs.
The AIT was the result of that project, and it came to be adopted by all of the Military Districts save for Palaven itself. The engineers there took the request quite literally. They ripped the wheels off their most advanced design of APC and replaced them with repulsor sponsons, adding a set of thrusters at the sides near the rear. This in turn freed up space inside the hull, allowing an upgrade of kinetic barriers to the same standard as that of a full tank. It was originally called the Armoured Infantry Transport (Hover) or AIT(H), as its immediate predecessor was also the AIT. It was still in service at the time of its commissioning, but soon all examples were converted to the new type and the distinction became irrelevant.
The vehicle possesses a wide, sloping and angular hull, with an equally angular turret on top at the front. Alliance troops would dub it 'The Flying Pyramid'. The armament of the vehicle is considerable. The turret mounted the same 21mm autocannon as the Pattern 39T, with a coaxial machinegun. Like an Alliance IFV, every one of the six passengers was given responsibility for a light machinegun. They are arranged to face every outward angle, with one in each corner and two in the middle with 360 degree traverse behind the turret. The purpose of this was to enable the vehicle to enter urban areas to fight, preferably after they had been softened up by tank and artillery strikes.
The vehicles had disadvantages, however. It was tall by Alliance standards, due to the need to take turians' natural height into account, presenting a considerable target profile to the enemy. It shared the same side-mounted repulsors as the Pattern 39s, and so shared the same vulnerability to Alliance countermeasures. Its autocannon carried high explosive rounds only, making it incapable of taking on Alliance tanks despite the weapon's obvious capability to do so in the later stages of the conflict. It was used more as a battle taxi than an infantry fighting vehicle despite its armament, turian doctrine relying more heavily on the discipline of their infantry. A great number of the AITs on Shanxi would be knocked out before the Alliance even surrendered. The turian infantry that survived were later forced to rely on unarmoured transports or aircraft, something that greatly advantaged the Alliance counterattack.
Post-war, the AIT was retired completely, with many examples scrapped for weapons, electronics and raw materials. The exceptions were turned into battlefield ambulances, or donated to divisional museums in working order for posterity. Some of the latter were pressed into service in the Reaper War in a variety of secondary roles. Remaining AITs captured by the Alliance gutted for technological research, while the hulls were given dummy weapons and turned into victory monuments across human space. One such example sits outside the ruins of the original African Parliament to this day, another outside the provincial legislature at Chang'an on Shanxi.
Hierarchy: Ships
The Turian Navy was the largest military fleet in the galaxy at the time of First Contact, and operated a hugely diverse array of ship classes of all sizes. Human naval theorists have categorised the turians' refusal to decommission any ship that may still be marginally useful regardless of obsolescence as something akin to hoarding. Add to this the sheer size of the navy, and it becomes clear why the turians had so many.
Lacking humanity's love for modularity, this had serious advantages for the turians. It meant vessels were squeezed for every last drop of service, which kept the naval budget lower than it might otherwise have been. It also decreased maintenance costs due to economies made on spare parts, which outstripped the increased need for maintenance due to the age of vessels. It also meant that a turian fleet had a greater spectrum of capability than a human one, at least once carriers were put aside from consideration.
Every ship classification had at least three subclasses of light, medium and heavy variants. For cruisers, there were as many as six. Each was designed for a particular task, to eliminate a particular kind of target but with adequate capability to adapt as well. Against the diverse array of threats faced by the Citadel in 2157, ranging from Terminus pirates to possible geth attacks, this worked well. However, it was somewhat of a disadvantage against humanity's doctrine of quality over quantity.
Regarding carriers, it is important to note particular facts about the turians attitude towards them. The concept had existing in theory for centuries, although the asari were the leading theorists on their use. Turians, having no significant maritime tradition due to the more arid nature of their homeworld, primarily began their naval history in space. The mass relay dominated their thinking. A capital ship that could not fight in a relay jump zone was not worth considering. The salarians and most asari admirals agreed.
Thus, the lynchpin of the turian fleets were their dreadnoughts.
Menae-class Dreadnought
Named for the primary moon of Palaven, the Menae-class was the line dreadnought of the Hierarchy Navy, the mainstay of the fleets. It was developed for two roles; the destruction of enemy dreadnoughts and cruisers, and for command and control. At the time of their conception in the 2130s, the Hierarchy foresaw a great conflict with the Terminus or the Batarian Hegemony, or indeed both. As such, they predicted huge gun duels across the relay jumpzones against a great mass of heavy cruisers and less sophisticated dreadnoughts, which both potential enemies had in relative abundance. So, the turian fleet yards over Menae proposed a ship that outmatched their enemies, without much out of the box thinking or engineering.
In service to this role, the class possesses five main spinal mass-accelerators, three in the hull and two smaller ones tucked just under the wings. In addition to this, they mounted eight GARDIAN batteries for point defence and had a squadron of twenty fighters accompanying them. The number of point defences has been noted as a key weakness; eight batteries is the same number a Belfast-class Alliance gun cruiser, and is four less than the escort carrier variant of the same class carries. Needless to say that this defect would be swiftly addressed post-war.
The ship is shaped in the same manner as all turian military vessels, looking something akin to an atmospheric fighter or a bird of prey. Indeed, 'Bird of Prey' is the name the Alliance Navy would give turian cruisers in lieu of bothering to name all six variants. Its kinetic barriers were powerful enough to provide more than enough survivability to break the traditional blockades of relays. In fact, the Menae was designed specifically to try and prevent the sort of deadlocks that had drawn out the Krogan Rebellions for centuries.
There were six Menae-class dreadnoughts in the New Territories at the time of the war, of which three would orbit over Shanxi, preparing for the next push into Alliance space. The other three were denied to Arterius, as they were part of independent fleets on Citadel peacekeeping duties, until the defeat at Shanxi. They would fight in the larger skirmishes in the aftermath until armistice. The losses of these ships would be near total by then, either being destroyed or crippled.
Post-war, the Menae-class would be refitted and would continue in service into the Reaper War, although by that stage only being a third-rate dreadnought due to the development of the Resurgent-class in the 2170s. The class suffered greatly in that war, being the only dreadnought class not upgraded with Reaper-derived armaments like Thanix weapons or particle-beam weapons. However, it provided firepower when firepower was needed, and cannot be dismissed as useless in that conflict, scoring victories as often as could have been expected.
Palaven-class Superdreadnought
Contrary to its smaller cousin, the Palaven-class was not aimed at the lesser powers of the galaxy but at the turians' own allies. Designed at the same time as the Menae, the conceptual development of the hugely powerful Destiny Ascension class by the asari had already begun, and the turians had learned of its proposed capabilities from the volus. However, due to financial constraints, the Hierarchy had no plan to compete with the behemoth budget that the Republics had allocated to their project, and viewed doing so as unnecessary to begin with. Instead, the existing Primarch-class dreadnoughts that played the role of the heavy hitters of the dreadnought classes were to be replaced with a class that could specialise in the destruction of enemy dreadnoughts.
Of course, for the toughest opponents, one dreadnought was not sufficient, so the turian doctrine provided for the superdreadnoughts to be paired off. This had the advantages of doubling the intimidation factor as well as the firepower. It also provided redundancy for fleet command; the commanding-admiral and his second-in-command were always on separate ships, which were identical for all intents and purposes. This made it far harder for an opponent such as the asari or the salarians, both of whom preferred to cut the head off the snake, to destroy turian coordination. And far harder for the likes of the batarians or Terminus pirates to get lucky.
The Palavens possess almost exactly the same layout as the Menae-class, being scaled-up versions of the Menae to the untrained eye. However, they possessed still-more powerful mass-accelerators, and would be the only ships that could reach out and touch the Alliance carriers over Shanxi. But they could not change the outcome. They possessed exactly the same flaw as the Menae-class did; too few point defences. Although they had ten rather than eight GARDIAN batteries, the cooling system for the bigger weapons required a change in orientation of their mounting, which led Alliance pilots to discover a blindspot in their coverage during simulated attacks. This would be ruthlessly exploited by Admiral Drescher's frigate and fighter pilots over Shanxi.
The Palavens have continued in service to the present day, through the Reaper War and into the chaos of today's galaxy. It received point defence upgrades in 2159, and Thanix-weaponry in 2184. Classed quite rightly by the Reapers as the turians' most dangerous weapon platform, the Hierarchy exploited that fact to set highly effective ambushes with fighters and frigates. The dreadnoughts would draw in the Reapers, and cooperate with squadrons or wolfpacks to destroy the baited targets. This tactic cost the genocidal machines very dearly indeed when they came to destroy the turian homeworld.