Immediately after the Australian attack, world leaders were at their wits end on how to combat these monsters without having to nuke their own countries. There had to be an alternative way to deal with these threats. One that would also give mankind an upper hand over the Kaijus.
Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld is credited with creating the Jaegers of which his inspiration came from an unlikely source…his son's robot toy.
He imagined machines, which could go toe to toe with the aliens, stopping them before they advanced through whatever city they had emerged at. These Jaegers would be equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry mankind could offer, and knowing what we know from dissecting and experimenting on the remains of slain Kaiju, we could piece together armor and weapons that could inflict serious damage on them.
I was part of the press delegation when Dr. Schoenfeld made his announcement public. He had already pitched the idea to the PPDC (Pan Pacific Defense Corps), who were at first reluctant, but running out of options themselves, decided to give it a shot. This would be the game changer humanity so desperately needed, our own monstrosities that could stand up to our would be eradicators. The good Doctor's ideas weren't met without skepticism. There were lots who thought he was crazy. His fellow scientists claimed he was diverting important resources to create massive toys. Give the man credit, defiantly he took on all his critics. Stating time and time again that we had a responsibility to try. If the Jaegers worked humanity would be saved, if not, at the rate the aliens were popping up, we might as well just prepare for our eventual extinction.
As I took pictures of him during his press conference, I wondered how he would pull this off. Nothing of the sorts had ever been undertaken before. There were no guarantees this would ever work. Even he admitted they still had to figure out how to move machines as big as sky scrapers. Prior to the production of the first Jaeger, the project hit a snag. It wasn't until he recruited a former colleague of his, Caitlin Lightcap, an expert in brain-machine interfaces that he got the answer he was looking for. It was she that suggested the drift, a neural interface that would give man the ability to merge with machine and move it like an extension of his own body. It was highly dangerous but it was also our best shot at moving these massive constructs.
The PPDC balking at how much a Jaeger would cost, would only give Schoenfeld funding to create a single arm. Unfortunately this was where Schoenfeld faced his first true snag. With limited resources, he could not go out to get test pilots for his pet project. Things were looking bleak, until a former Royal Air force Pilot now a PPDC member, by the name of Stacker Pentecost stepped up to save the day. He would go on to play a pivotal role in the man vs Kaiju war, but this was the start of many a miraculous feat from said character.
He was able to get the arm to work after connecting to it, though with much difficulty. This incredible deed of his was what green lit the Jaeger program and got the PPDC brass to fully commit to creating the Robots.