M-35 Mako All-terrain Infantry Fighting Vehicle
Overview
The second generation of IFV developed by Devlon Industries for the Systems Alliance Navy, the M-35 Mako All-terrain Infantry Fighting Vehicle is a 6-wheel dive, 4-wheel steering all-terrain combat vehicle that entered service in early 2183. Designed as a more compact version of the previous M-29 Grizzly. Only half the size of it's older brother, the Mako incorporated designs and technologies emphasising rapid deployment, mobility and flexibility which has increasingly become the focus of Alliance military doctrine. The Mako maintained the same crew capacity, but with a slightly smaller gun. It compensates for it's reduced armour with a more robust kinetic Barrier system.
Unlike the Grizzly, the Mako was designed to be small enough to be carried in a frigate's cargohold and be safely airdropped from high-altitude, rather than relying on specialized dropships that could only be carried by fighter carriers. This design feature made it easier for the Alliance to provide ground forces with armour support.
It would eventually turn out that the reduced firepower of the Mako was a minor inconvenience when compared to the vehicle's enhanced mobility and broader range of capabilities. Within a years, the Mako completely replaced the Grizzly as the primary combat vehicle of the Alliance Navy.
Though it had less endurance than the Grizzly, the Mako still possessed considerable combat capability for it's size. In addition to it's role as an IFV, the vehicle would also go on to fill the roles traditionally fulfilled by a Main Battle Tank, troop transport, scout vehicle, exploration rover, force application vehicle and even a limited dropship role. The Mako swiftly became a symbol of Alliance military doctrine and a perfect reflection of Alliance military tactics.
The M-35 Mako would go on to play a key role in Alliance ground support. Most famously, one of the earliest Makos ever built was assigned to the Alliance prototype stealth ship, SSV Normandy, commanded by first human Spectre, Commander Shepherd during the Eden Prime War of 2183. To this day, the original vehicle could still be found at the Normandy Memorial Crash Site on the planet Alchera along with what remains of the legendary ship.
Hull
The M-35 Mako is 8.6 meters long, 4.7 meters wide and 2.8 meters tall. With a weight of 18 tonnes.
In terms of hull, design, the largest difference between the Mako and Grizzly is the location of the wheels. The Mako's wheels are mounted external to the main hull. Making them more vulnerable, but also allowing Devlon to reduce the overall size of the hull without sacrificing too much internal space. it also gives the suspension more room to move.
The front of the Mako is almost identical to the Grizzly. With a sharp nose with headlights above a self-tinting windscreen that is located on the "chin" of the vehicle.
The hull is covered with heavy ablative ceramic composite armour plating providing up to 80 millimeters of protection against directed energy weapons like lasers that aren't blocked by the shields, by boiling away when heated. The vaporised armour material scatters the DEW beam, rendering it ineffective.
The armour is intentionally sloped back with very few flat surfaces facing forward. This helps against directed energy weapons by increasing the surface area a beam would hit, distributing the heat. It also put the kinetic barrier emitters at an angle, meaning that unless the projectile was traveling at a perpendicular angle to the surface, it was more likely that the kinetic barriers would slap it aside, rather than absorb the energy directly, reducing shield strain.
If the hull is compromised, a manually activated auto-repair program can repair major damage and bring the mako back to fighting condition long enough to complete it's mission before going for proper repairs.
Wheels
The Mako is a 6-wheel drive vehicle. Each wheel measures 1.6 meters in diameter and 1.2 meters in width. Each wheel operates on an independent in-wheel motor and sophisticated, high-performance, VI controlled suspension system. When combined with jumpjets and mass effect fields, this suspension system is powerful enough to absorb the impact of a high-altitude drop.
Though the Mako's front and back wheel sets are steerable, the independent wheel motors also give the vehicle the capability to turn on the spot by having it's wheels spin in opposing directions.
The on-board VI automatically adjusts the suspension of the wheels on rough terrain, ensuring a tank's level firing line even if every wheel is on a different level of terrain.
The VI automatically adjusts the traction and power of each wheel as the terrain changes. Ensuring perfect distribution of power even if every wheel is on a different surface extream. It also automatically adjusts the vehicle's mass effect fields to provide the best speed and traction no matter the degree of incline or surface gravity. Under the right terrain conditions and with booster assistance, the Mako could theoretical scale up inclines as steep as 80 degrees.
It is actually perfectly safe to drive the Mako off cliffs. The VI's fine control over the mass effect fields makes it incredibly difficult to flip the Mako and the shock absorbers can take the impacts.
The wheels themselves have armoured hubcaps with alloy track tires that are almost impenetrable.
Power and Propulsion
The Mako's powerpack is located on the roof at the rear of the vehicle. It's powered by a hydrogen-oxygen power cell which feeds power to the motors in each of the 6 wheels and powers the other core systems, including the eezo drive and weapon systems.
A power cell consists of two electrodes, a negative electrode (or anode) and a positive electrode (or cathode), sandwiched around an electrolyte. Hydrogen is fed to the anode, and oxygen is fed to the cathode. A catalyst at the anode separates hydrogen molecules into protons and electrons, which take different paths to the cathode. The electrons go through an external circuit, creating a flow of electricity. The protons migrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, where they unite with oxygen and the electrons to produce water and heat. This engine design is standard with most air and ground based vehicles in the Alliance, having replaced fossil-fuel engines over 70 years ago.
The Mako carries a small eezo drive core. Eezo drives consist of a core of element zero. An electric current from the power cell is run through the element zero to generate energy fields capable of altering the mass of a bubble of space-time. A positive current increases mass and a negative current decreases mass. This is used to power shields, weapons and the mass effect fields. The Mako can reduce it's mass enough to be safely airdropped. As the Mako drives the onboard V.I. constantly adjusts the weight of the vehicle to maintain the best balance between speed and grip possible no matter the terrain or planetary gravity.
The ventral side of the vehicle mounts four helium-3 jumpjets that are primarily used to decelerate it during airdrops, but can also be used to help it extricate difficult terrain.
Two fuel-injection booster nacelles are mounted on either side of the power pack, capable of providing the Mako with short, but powerful bursts of speed.
Shields
The Mako features a kinetic barrier array linked to a Model 5 kinetic barrier shield generator.
The exterior layer of the hull is covered in tiny emitters spaced evenly across the armour plates. An object with mass traveling above a certain velocity trigged the barrier's reflex system, generating a localised repulsive mass effect field around the point of impact, deflecting it.
This is not without risk, however. The emitters themselves can only repel objects up to a limit. Sufficiently massive objects traveling at a high enough velocity can pass through the barriers unimpeded. Additionally, the kinetic barrier generator takes power from the vehicle's mass effect drive. Even if the projectiles do not penetrate, consistent impacts can put strain on the generator, this strain in turn is carried back to the drive. To prevent potential drive failure, the drive is designed to temporarily shutdown power to the shields until the field stabilises once again. The sudden, abrupt shutdown of the generator causes all emitters to discharge residual energy build-up. Triggering the characteristics "shattering" effect.
This allows the vehicle to withstand impacts from kinetic-based weapons, but doesn't do anything against Directed Energy Weapons such as lasers.
The strength of the kinetic barrier depends on the size of the mass effect drive, the amount of element zero used and overall design of the drive and generator. The more powerful the mass effect fields the drive generates, the more powerful the shields can be. The Mako's knetic barriers are far more resilience than the Grizzly and could stand up against most modern anti-tank weapons. Though repeatedly impacts can put strain on the barrier system.
Crew Compartment
The Mako has a crew capacity of eight. A driver and gunner at the front and six passengers in the troop compartment. Between the first and second wheel on both sides of the hull are Manually operated doors to enter and exit the vehicle.
The Mako also has ammo stores and rations for long-term ground operations.
The Mako is environmentally sealed and pressurised. The hull is rated for atmospheric pressures ranging from 0 upto over 300 Earth atmospheres. And can withstand extreme temperatures of from at least -200 degrees Celsius to 400 degrees Celsius.
Internal momentum dampeners reduce the force of large impacts when being airdropped or driving on rough terrain.
Armament
The turret houses the Mako's main gun and coaxial machine gun, as well as targeting sensors and an autoloader fed by an ammo magazine stored just below the turret. The turret can perform a full 360 degree rotation in around 4 seconds and has a barrel elevation of 60 degrees and a depression of -20 degrees. Compared to the Grizzly, the Mako's turret is smaller and sits more flush with the hull. This decision was made due to the tendency for enemies to easily destroy or disable the large turret of the Grizzly.
The gun in question is the M-372 155 millimeter Subordinate Mass Accelerator cannon. Mass accelerators reduce the mass of a solid metal slug then accelerate it to high velocities using precisely controlled electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. Mass accelerators are able to achieve such high velocities that slugs had to be designed to deform on impact to increase the amount of energy transferred to the target. Otherwise it would pass right through, doing minimal damage. The M-372 fires a 6 kg 60x252 mm sub-calibre armour piercing round at 32 km/s every 5 seconds.
The turret's coaxial machine gun is mounted just below the barrel of the main gun and is about equal in length. The machine gun is a high-powered M-378 rapid-fire micro-scale mass accelerator designed to serve an anti-infantry role. Stored in the turret behind the machine gun is a 3 kg block of ferric titanium alloy. The VI calculates the mass needed to reach the target based on distance, gravity, and atmospheric pressure, then shears off an appropriately sized slug from the block. The slug is accelerated to 70 km/s with a fire rate of 1,200 rounds per minute. A single block can supply roughly 7,000 rounds.
Virtual Intelligence
The Mako utilises a Maria-class Combat VI, which is an integral part of the vehicle's operation. Responsible for controlling the suspension, maintaining and adjusting the shielding, providing steering assist and operating the mass effect fields.
The VI is vital for the operation of the armament. Responsible for loading, aiming and firing the main gun and machine gun under instruction from the gunner, who first designates targets and then waits a moment for the VI to aim the turret. Sensors in the turret calculate the range, wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric pressure and humidity and adjusted the barrel trajectory slightly to compensate before providing the gunner with a target lock. This all happened in the less than two seconds it takes for the turret to rotate and find it's target. Once receiving the target lock, the act of actually firing the gun is left to the gunner's discretion. This operation ensures that the Mako rarely misses it's shots, no matter the speed of it or it's target.
The VI also operated and administrated an array of sensors on the exterior hull, including thermal sensors, motion detectors, ground-penetating radar and laser targeting detectors to warn against incoming laser guided munitions.
Variants
- The M-35AA is an anti-air variant of the Mako that replaces the main cannon with a quad-barreled rapid-fire micro-scale mass accelerator.
- The M-35Z is a drone controller variant of the Mako that replaces the turret with sophisticated technical equipment.
- The M-38 is a military ambulance built using the Mako's chassis. Nicknamed "Moby" due to the fact that it's painted white during peacetime.
- The M-44 Hammerhead is a hover tank built using a heavily modified version of the Mako's chassis.
