Chapter 9

The new armor

4/18/2503

UED Los Andares Base, Brazil, South America, Earth

Building 2901, 1st R&D Battalion

Office of the Commanding Officer

0918

The testing of the RX-01 was successful. Everyone from the UED top Brass, GOA Hayward, Fleet Admiral Cartwright, Fleet Admiral Turner, Marine Corps Commandant Gillespie, The Joint Chiefs, and even the UED President Harding, attended the testing which was held at the Los Andares Artillery Range. In addition to the testing of the 105mm Machine gun, the 180mm Cannon, and the 60mm Vulcans, we also test a new weapon, the 150mm S-000011 Accelerated Beam Rifle. The beam rifle was designed by Dr. Sanders of the UED Weapons Research Bureau. The Beam Rifles systems were original supposed to be used on the next generation of wraith fighters, which could have the same amount of firepower as a Behemoth Battlecruiser. However the systems were still too big for the fighters, however he was able to adapt it to be used for the Mobile Suit. The Beam Rifle was able to completely destroy an Arclite Siege Tank in one shot were it would normally take a Battlecruiser two shots. This was due in part to the acceleration of the beam particles. The power cells used were modified to resemble an ammunition magazine similar to the magazine of the 105mm Machine gun, which was able to give the beam rifle a maximum of 60 shots. When the test concluded, the Joint chiefs and the commandants complimented me on an excellent weapons system and the President even complimented me on letting see what exactly the MS Project was all about.

After the test, General Hayward authorized the formation of the 1st Research & Development Battalion at Los Andares. With myself as the Battalion Commander and Madison as the Battalion Executive Officer. According to General Hayward, the 1st R&D would be one of the few multi-force units in the entire UED, meaning that not only would UED Army Soldiers be assigned to the unit, but also, UED Navy Sailors, UED Air Force Airmen, UED Marine Corps Marines, and UED DOD Civilians, would be assigned to the unit in order to get input from all of the forces for all of the various projects the 1st R&D would take on. In addition to the redevelopment of the MS Project, the 1st R&D would also conduct Research and Development on current UED Military Assets in order to improve their effectiveness in the field. The 1st R&D was assigned twenty new buildings on the base, one administrative building, one mess hall, one conference center, five 100 person barracks, two science facilities, four large factories with machine shops, one metal foundry, and five large aircraft hangers. We were also given a large field, which could be used as a landing zone or testing grounds. The hangers were large enough to house a full sized Behemoth Battlecruiser. One week after the construction of the 1st R&Ds area, the first of the 1st R&Ds officers arrived for assignment. They were all hand-picked by myself, Madison and General Salinas, due to their education at the UED Military Academy and experience in the field. The first one we picked was Marine Corps Major Reginald Waters from the 34th Mechanized Infantry Brigade. Reggie was assigned as the 1st's Operations officer. Second was Army Captain Frank Luther from 503rd Military Police. He was assigned as the Battalions Security Officer. Third was Navy Lieutenant Samantha Bloomfield, who was assigned as the Battalion Supply and procurement Officer. Fourth was Air Force Sergeant Major Geoff Hollister, who I promoted to the rank of Command Sergeant Major, and assigned him as the Battalions Chief Enlisted Officer. We also selected about 45 other officers from the various forces, based on education, and experience. We held our first meeting on February 10th at 0800. I explained to the officers who I was, what they were here for and what the UED expected of us. According to General of the Army Hayward, he stated that the brass do not car how the job gets done, but that the end results help the UED Military become the greatest military force in the Galaxy. That gave us a lot of breathing room in order to complete our projects. On February 20th, we received 300 enlisted personnel, Welders, Machinists, Metal Workers and Mechanics, as well as fifty civilian researchers. During our first few weeks, did nothing except for familiarization of the facilities as well as getting to know everyone. On March 15th, we received our first assignment from UED Command. We were assigned to improve the reactor and weapon systems of the Behemoth Battlecruiser. The UED sent us the UED Battlecruiser, Charleston, A decommissioned ship that was originally going to be scrapped. The idea was to make the Behemoth at least twenty percent faster in terms of overall speed, and make the weapons about thirty-three percent more powerful on their Air to Air Laser Batteries and the Yamato Cannon, and if possible modify the computer systems to provide at least forty percent more computing power.

The Battalions staff officers and I had just finished the morning meeting. According to Dr. Johansson, A Civilian Contractor assigned to the Computer Enhancement project, they were able to take the current Computer core on The Charleston, completely rebuild it and were able to get almost fifty percent more computing power out of the Core, and his team was is the process of upgrading the rest of the computer systems in order to handle the amount of data from the upgraded core. 1st lieutenant Robert Tillman of the Weapons team, reported that they were able to modify all of the weapon systems to provide thirty-nine percent more power, and Captain Tony Lieb of the Engine team reported that they were able to safely increase the Engine output by twenty-five percent. Overall we were able to do a total upgrade to the Charleston making it not only faster but far more powerful than what was thought possible for the Behemoth. I was able to call Fleet Admiral Cartwright to report that the Charleston would be ready for testing in three day when the communicator chimed. "Colonel Radford?" "Yes?" "I have Commander Usarian from the Mars Sanctuary Base 2 online for you sir." "Patch him through." I wated for about five seconds until a man in his middle forties appeared on my desktop viewscreen. "Commander Usarian, This is Colonel Radford at Los Andares 1st R&D, How can help you?" "Nice to finally meet you Colonel. We just made an interesting discovery here at MSB2. Our research teams have looking into the digging into the Asteroids of the asteroid belt and the crust of Luna, Phoebes and Deimos. We discovered some very interesting metallic ores that you might be interested in for your MS Project." "How's that, Commander?" :On Luna, We discovered an metal alloy with similar properties to Titanium. According to my metallurgists, the alloy is about five times lighter in weight, twenty times more durable than titanium and about thirty times more heat resistant. We have dubbed it Luna-Titanium. There is a great abundance of the alloy in Luna and Deimos. We also discovered another alloy similar to titanium in the asteroid belt, however it seems to be fifty times more durable than Luna-Titanium, is ten times more heat resistant, ten times lighter and we found that it is electrically neutral. We have dubbed this metal Gundanium. Unfortunately we have only managed to found about 2000 tons of the Gundanium, and we have searched the whole system. I am going to be sending a cargo vessel to Los Andares with fifty tons of each metal for you to test with. It should be there in about two hours." "Well alright then. Send me the Technical readouts for the alloy and we'll find a way to use them. And thank you, Commander. Radford out." I shut off the view screen and then called in Madison. She came into the office about a minute later. "You wanted to see me sir." "MSB2 found some new titanium alloys on Luna, Diemos and inside some asteroids. Commander Usarian said they may be of use to us. We have a shipment of fifty tons of each metal coming in on a cargo vessel in about two hours. Get two teams ready to receive the shipment, Madison. Have them send the metal to the foundry, but tell the foundry to do anything with it until instructed." "Understood, sir." After she left I want over to the planning table and started on and rendering for a new mobile suit and a new class of Battlecruiser.

2047

I had just finished the renderings for the New Mobile Suit and battlecriuser and was about to go to the barracks when the door chimed. "Who is it?" "Staff Sergeant Reyes, Welding team 2, Requesting permission to see the Colonel, sir." "Come in." the door opened and a young man of about 22 entered. He saluted me and said, "Sir, I have a possible situation to report sir." I saluted back and back and said, "At ease, what's going one." "Well sir, lately I have notice some of the guys in my barracks have been a little off. I mean more than usual. I thought about talking to the Medical Officer when I had seen something earlier today. I was heading to the barracks when I had seen three guys go behind 2907. I decided to look in on them. I kept hidden, what I saw shocked me. Two of them give Credits to the third, whose name is Hayfield, and he gave them what looked like a drug patch, to which the two placed it on their arms. I saw the effect and I believe they are addicted to the drug "Bog." After I went away, I thought about it and the other guys in the barrack are showing the same effects of Bog addiction. Sir." I was floored. How dare someone sell drugs in my battalion. "This is ill news indeed Sergeant. Thank you. Dismissed." He saluted me and walked out. I immediately notified Madison, General Salinas, Captain Luther and the Los Anadres MP Command. I did ask them to not take any action but to quietly investigate the matter as to avoid any evidence from being destroyed. After the notifications, I loaded the renderings into the computer in order for them to be processed in 3D Models, and then I went to my quarters and went to bed.

4/22/2503

Building 2903, conference center room 1

It had been four days since Sergeant Reyes had informed me of the drug problem in my unit. I had Captain Luther coordinate with the Los Andares MPs to conduct an operation into arresting the seller and getting those were addicted medical attention. In the mean time we had demonstrated the various upgrades on the Charleston and the brass was thoroughly impressed. They decided to implement the upgrades into the next generation of Behemoth Battlecruisers and decided to leave us with the Charleston for testing purposes. On April 22, I was briefing the Brass on a new type ship and three new type of mobile suit. The ship itself was classified as an Assault Carrier. The ship was dubbed the Pegasus Class Assault Carrier. I was about one-half the size of the Behemoth battlecriuser, but was able to employ about three and a half times the firepower and was three time faster and more maneuverable than the behemoth. It was also capable of carrying twelve mobile suits and launching them into battle. The three new types of mobile suits were just as impressive. They all employed more firepower than three Goliath combat walkers and were constructed used the Luna-titanium . One was a ground combat only mobile suit, the RX-04 Guntank, which used caterpillar treads instead of legs for mobility. This made the Guntank slow be able to handle terrain better than the Arclite Siege Tank. It also boasted two 180mm long range cannons mounted on its shoulders, and two 4-tube 40mm rocket/missile launchers in its arms. The other two could be used for both ground and space combat. The RX-03 Guncannon was a bipedal mobile suit that used a beam rifle similar to the RX-01 but was slightly larger and had more ammo capacity. It also used two 240mm, medium range cannons mounted its shoulders, and it had two 60mm Vulcan cannons mounted in its head. The RX-02 GM was a mass production version of the RX-01, which was dubbed the Gundam, after the Gundanium Alloy that it was re-armored with. The RX-02 used Luna-titanium for armor. Its weapons included the 60mm head Vulcans, and an S-000010 beam pistol. It had three-fourths the fire power of the Gundam's Beam Rifle and 2/3 the ammunition, but it was at least two times more powerful than a Goliath Combat walker. In terms of production, a factory could pump out four GMs for the cost of one Gundam. At the end of the briefing, GOA Hayward asked me, "Colonel Radford, while I'm sure that the RX-02, 03, and RX-04 will be approved for production, I'm going to need a little more convincing for why the UED should authorize the creation of a dedicated platform for launching mobile suits, rather than modifying a behemoth Battlecruiser to house and launch them." "The reason is cost, Construction speed, and in-mission support, sir. The Behemoth Battlecriuser, while a very capable and powerful weapons platform, is a very expensive and resource heavy unit. It is also very slow and its maneuverability is very under powered, sir. The idea for a dedicated Platform for launching the mobile suits is not only to deploy, retrieve, repair and re-deploy mobile suits, to also be able to adequately provide fire support for the mobile suits as well as any other combatants on the front line. While the Behemoth battlecriuser could also accomplish this, the Pegasus is providing three and a half times more firepower and three time more speed in a much smaller package and at just over half the cost of a Behemoth. Sir." The General sat back in his chair and was silent. General Salinas looked around the room and asked, "Are there any further questions?" seeing none from the Brass, General Salinas announced, "Very well, Thank you Colonel Radford." "Thank you sir." Just then Captain Luther came in and walked up to me and whispered, "Sir, we have the drug dealer in custody."

A/N: Hey guys, I'm back. Sorry for the long Hiatus. But Work, School, and Writers block kept me from continuing. Hopefully I'll be able to get more chapters out in the near future.