Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/SU-100 "Bulldog"

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The SU-100 "Bulldog". This unit is planned to be voiced by

History
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When Voshkod lost the First World War, it was forced to accept the Treaty of (something). Among other things, the treaty placed numerous restrictions on Voshkod military, limiting the Voshkod army to 100,000 men, severely restricting the size of the Voshkod navy, and banning such weapons as armed aircraft, armoured cars, and tanks.

With such restrictions in place, the Voshkod military was hobbled. However, though Voshkod could not break the treaty restrictions imposed on it, it could try to find workarounds, by exploiting loopholes in the treaty. One such workaround was with regards to the restrictions on tanks; though Voshkod could not have tanks, there were no restrictions prohibiting it from using tank destroyers. This line of reasoning led directly to the development of the SU-100 Tank Destroyer, considered one of the most successful tank destroyer designs employed during the Second World War.

When the Bulldog was first introduced in (insert)V.C., it was only one of several different designs then in service with Voshkod at the time. Its 75mm gun, though impressive for a period when most tanks had guns of 50mm calibre or less, was considered by some to be unnecessarily powerful, while it was lacking in other areas such as speed or armour in comparison to other designs.

Things quickly changed, however, when the Second World War broke out. In the first few weeks of the war, as it shattered countless tanks the Allies could throw at, grinding their advance to a halt while the Voshkod began making the Ursa.

Though the 115mm armed Ursa tanks were even more powerfully gunned than the Bulldogs, they were too few in number at the time; only the Bulldogs were available in any bulk. Voshkod forces soon turned to employing these tank destroyers in ambush scenarios; a platoon of Bulldogs could lie in wait for an unsuspecting Mastiff/Bernard column, before springing the trap and opening fire on the vulnerable rears of the Allied heavy (though by Voshkod standard they were medium at best) tanks, which were considerably less well armoured. Such tactics helped to slow the Allied advance throughout Voshkod, giving time for them to properly set up their tank manufacturing.

The Bulldog continued to be employed extensively by the Voshkod forces even after they had gotten Ursa production up to full speed; indeed, several steps were taken to improve the effectiveness of the tank destroyers, such as the development of high-velocity armour-piercing ammunition that boasted greatly increased armour penetration. The most game-changing of the improvements made to the Bulldog, however, was the development of fibre-optic camouflage.

Even before this, Allied Mastiff and Beagle crews already had difficulties spotting well-concealed Bulldogs; now, it was nearly impossible for them to do so, particularly when taking into account the poor conditions of visibility that Mastiff crews already suffered from. Even infantrymen unhampered by the limitation of being inside a tank would have a hard time picking out a fibre-optic camouflaged Bulldog from a distance.

Fortunately for the Allies, the expense of fibre optic camouflage, combined with the Voshkod general disdain of stealth (if you wanna kill someone, do it like a man in face-to-face combat! as most Voshkod soldierspopulary says), meant that, even by the end of the war, only a fraction of Bulldogs were ever equipped with such systems. Despite this, the Voshkod had a tank destroyer that was powerful and effectively invisible. For Allied tank crews, the war had become a nightmare, with the ever-present fear that a Bulldog tank destroyer might be lying in wait somewhere nearby. By the end of the war, Bulldogs were accounting for a significant portion of Mastiff kills, and had even claimed a few Bernard tanks.

After the end of the war, thousands of Bulldogs were retired in favour of proper tanks, though others continued to remain in service. Like countless other vehicles, these Bulldogs were consigned to Red Line Union to help them in the Civil War. And when the nuclear dust finally settled many Minutemen forces, including former Voshkod soldiers, took as many Bulldogs as they could alongside blueprints and factory parts.

They remain hellishly effective at their task; though their 75mm gun, since upgraded to 88mms; is no longer all that powerful by modern standards, they compensate for this with an impressive rate of fire; additionally, the Bulldog's camouflage allows it to ambush tanks from behind, striking them in their vulnerable rear armour. Already, the Bulldog has proved its worth many times over to the Minutemen and is particularly suited to their guerrilla tactics. Indeed, with the utter decimation of the 3rd Mechanised Brigade by Minutemen Bulldogs, Voshkod vehicle crews in Embry are starting to feel the same fear and trepidation that their Allied counterparts must have felt back in the days of the Second World War.