Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/M16 "Lee" AA Halftrack

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The M16 "Lee" AA Halftrack. is planned to be voiced by *TBA*

History
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One of the most numerous and under-appreciated vehicles of the Second World War was the M16 half-track, a rugged and dependable half-track originally produced in Aquila for their own army to get around post-war armor restriction, but swiftly licensed to the rest of the Allied powers and manufactured worldwide. After experimentation with wheels, air cushions, and even early walkers, the Aquilan government officially backed half-tracked designs. In addition to the advantages in power and all-terrain capability the half-track held, the vehicle could be driven by anyone with knowledge of the operation of automobiles, cutting down training time, and allowing the Aquilan to build up the industry related to tank engine, suspension, and track production. In the event of war, conscripts with minimal training could drive the half-tracks, while factories could easily be switched to manufacture the new tanks.

The Aquilan developed a great many half-tracked designs prior to the war; by 1945, nearly every vehicle the army officially possessed was some form of tracked hybrid, including motorcycle-like designs, staff cars, and even a bulldozer. Of these many, varied designs, by far and away the most common was the Sd.Kfz. 500 series, which was something between a truck and an armored car. Endlessly flexible, the machine could be used in any role one could think of, armed with any weapon that would fit on the chassis, and operated with ease. Like with their Garand rifle, the Aquilan stockpiled a massive number of the vehicles, far more than their tiny army could hope to operate; thus, if war broke out, they could field them as fast as they expanded their ground forces. The huge number of these vehicles meant that for the first years of the war, they were omnipresent on the front; the Aquilan government gave them away by the thousands to any infantry force in need of mechanization, meaning that soon every nation in the young Alliance was well versed in their use. Soon, other countries were manufacturing them, under the "M16" name based on a nickname given to it by President (insert) himself, simply due to the familiarity and good reputation they had.

The M16 was a tremendously versatile chassis, and variants served as troop carriers, anti-aircraft vehicles, artillery support, direct fire support, ambulances, engineering vehicles, powerful towing machines, and much, much more. After the war, the M16 was retired from mainline Allied military service in favor of more specialized vehicles like the Riptide and Multigunner designs, but the dependable half-tracks continue to serve in the Allied Reserves across the world, mostly in non-combat roles.

The Aquilan, on the other hand, mothballed most of its M16 fleet and sent them to the New California Commonwealth, favoring its homegrown Ranger design instead. As a result, most of the M16s given to the NCC were the anti-aircraft variant, one of the few M16 designs the Americans admitted was superior to the attempt at a similar Ranger design. Of course, after the nuclear apocalypse, it only meant that the NCC storage facilities was a one-stop shop for Minutemen looking for mechanized and armored equipment. The burgeoning army rebranded the machines Lee Half-Tracks and stole them in great numbers in preparation for dealing with the Aquilan and Alliance feared air power.

The Lees aren't quite the same as the M16 used during the Second World War, however. M16 crews had complained of the tracks' hard and uncomfortable seats from the opening days of the war, and the first modification the Minutemen made was to replace the seats with recliner chairs taken and repaired from wrecked local furniture stores and bolt them to the floor. The second modification was to install sophisticated electronic countermeasure equipment smuggled out of various Sprawls by Farsight rebels. Developed in the Sprawls to make gang vehicles invisible to Syndicate eyes in the skies above, the "scramblers", as the less technologically savvy Minutemen have taken to calling them, proved just as useful for combating Allied air power. Finally, the Minutemen have also taken to using Lees as platforms for deploying so-called balloon mines, devices which consist of a high explosive bomb designed for maximum fragmentation, a crude proximity detector, and a literal balloon. Generally, these are obvious enough for pilots to spot and avoid them, so the Minutemen have taken to using them with other anti-air weapons as well.

Today, Aquilan airmen may scoff at the idea that relics from the Second World War could possibly be a threat to the famed Aquilan air squadrons of today, but the steady rise in aircraft losses over the Embry islands is its own testament to the skill and determination of Lee crews.