From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 400: Battle between Main Battle Tanks and Multi-legged Chariots

"All crews, pay attention to the surrounding situation and collision warnings, don't crush the surrounding infantry."

The platoon leader's voice on the communication channel sounded a little nervous to Montana, but he was not surprised. As the lead vehicle in the team, Montana himself was even more nervous than the platoon leader.

After the tasks were assigned, the armored company that was temporarily reinforced to the assault force in the ATT followed its own attack routes and led its infantry along the streets to advance into the city of Garibal.

Montana is now wearing a protective helmet with an integrated head-mounted display function, so although he is in a fully enclosed passenger compartment, he can still clearly see the situation around the vehicle "through" the vehicle body.

At this moment, a circle of red dotted lines with warning meaning is displayed around the car body, which represents the area affected by the gravity control unit.

Although the main range of the gravity control area is still directly under the vehicle body, the area drawn by the red dotted line has been expanded a bit for safety reasons.

The infantry advancing along with the main battle tanks are now sticking close to the periphery of the red dotted line and maintaining vigilance of the surroundings.

Montana knew that this dotted line would also be displayed synchronously on the tactical visors of these mobile infantrymen to prevent them from accidentally walking into the gravity-controlled area.

As a member of the third batch of Roma "trainees", Montana was selected for intensive training in the Atlas Combat Vehicle Training Camp along with a group of other companions due to his relatively outstanding driving talent after completing the recruit training.

Later, as the "top student" of the training camp, he was transferred to the ATLAS TEST TEAM, which was the desired team of the Roma soldiers and was able to use various advanced equipment at the first time.

For Montana, this is definitely a recognition of his technical and tactical level.

After all, this "rabbit group" that likes to spray various cartoon rabbit graffiti on the external armor of vehicle equipment usually selects its personnel from teams with actual combat experience.

Not long after joining ATT, Montana became the commander of a new type of suspended main battle tank, designated T-740 'Thor's Hammer'.

This new tank, which will be one of the main vehicles of the future Atlas ground heavy armored forces, is based on the new main battle tank "Project 12" that was tested on the Rubion V.

However, after the equipment research and development center used the pioneering technology discovered through "archaeology" to develop the gravity control unit, the walking mechanism of this main battle tank was transformed from a traditional tracked type to a suspended type.

Since the gravity control unit is much lighter than the traditional crawler walking mechanism, the weight of the entire vehicle was reduced a lot. In addition, the design team boldly abandoned the gas turbine that was originally the main power source and replaced it with a scaled-down superconducting battery stack, directly upgrading the T-740 from "hybrid" to "pure electric". This also caused the main battle tank to reduce its weight from 60 tons to just 50 tons.

After testing the gravity control unit and finding that there was still a lot of load redundancy, the design team began to add more batteries, more ammunition, more sensors, and a large number of electronic countermeasures equipment.
These things ultimately make the T-740 Thor's Hammer no longer a simple main battle tank, but an important support node on the front line of battle. After multiple vehicles are networked, they can not only share situational awareness information with friendly forces, but also independently launch electronic warfare attacks as offensive cover.

Especially with the help of the combat assistance AI developed by Lilith, the crew was reduced to two people - driver and commander/gunner.

The large amount of information collected by the sensors will also be filtered in real time by the combat assistance AI, retaining only some key information to prompt the commander, and the electronic warfare will also be led by the combat assistance AI, that is, the crew only needs to be responsible for decision-making, issuing instructions to the AI, moving, and firing.
In addition to these combat auxiliary means, the design team also delivered an excellent answer in terms of the T-740's "main job".

It has a combat weight of 55 tons (additional armor can be installed), a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour, all-terrain mobility, and the ability to overcome obstacles up to 4 meters. At the same time, the unmanned turret can accommodate an electromagnetic reconnection gun with a track inner diameter of 180 mm, or a plasma gun that has also completed testing and finalized its entry into mass production.

Although the latter has lost the ability to switch to the 'inflection' mode, the high-temperature plasma group it launches cannot be underestimated for units that are not equipped with a deflection field or whose deflection field is not powerful enough, due to its high temperature and electron bombardment.

Especially in street fighting, it is extremely effective against "soft targets" such as mobile infantry and ordinary power armor.

It can be said that in this era when main battle tanks are gradually declining, Atlas' equipment research and development center has found a new track for this "veteran".

Montana did not realize the combat effectiveness of this new main battle tank at first. He was even a little disappointed when he saw the allocation information sent by the ATT personnel dispatch center.

Because he has always been more interested in another heavy vehicle that ATT tested on Rubion V, the heavy multi-legged tank code-named "Project 14" at the time and now designated T-600 "Chimera".

In the eyes of many Roma people, multi-legged chariots and other mechanical equipment look more powerful and have stronger combat effectiveness.

However, after personally driving the T-740, Montana was quickly impressed by this new equipment and immediately felt that multi-legged tanks were nothing more than cattle and horses.
This is also the problem that the Atlas Equipment Research and Development Center is currently struggling with.

Currently, the ground vehicle design group of the Equipment Research and Development Center is divided into two factions. One is the "main battle tank revival faction" that emerged after the gravity control unit was developed, and the other is the "multi-legged tank firm faction" that still believes that bionic multi-legged tanks still have the ability to fight.

Coincidentally, the T-740 'Thor's Hammer' and the T-600 'Chimera' were also developed by these two factions.

However, due to the excellent performance currently demonstrated by the T-740, and the advantages of the main battle tank have been magnified after solving the problems of mobility and obstacle crossing, the T-600 heavy multi-legged tank has been temporarily overshadowed.

"Warning, an abnormal electromagnetic signal has been detected in the window of the building marked at 1 o'clock, which is suspected to be the start-up feature of the anti-vehicle missile fire control radar."

The voice of the combat assistance AI suddenly sounded, causing Montana to quickly focus his attention on the marked window in the distance, but due to the perspective problem, he could not see the situation inside the window for a while.

"It seems that the swarm of bees didn't clean this place up well either."

Montana muttered to himself as he glanced at the infantry 'beside him', then pressed a few times on a touch screen at hand, and the warning message of the combat assistance AI was synchronized to the squad beside him and the other two tanks behind him.

Then he saw a mobile infantryman who was searching forward turned his head and made an OK gesture to a sensor somewhere on the T-740. Then a single-soldier drone mounted on his back took off and quickly flew towards the marked window.

Soon, a small window popped up on the integrated head display showing the drone camera image, and in the window was a heavy anti-vehicle missile launcher that should have been placed on the ground. "Fuck, they used the cold launch mode indoors???"

While Montana was "amazed" by the actions of the imperial defenders, the image in the camera suddenly flashed. He looked up and saw that the drone made an emergency lateral movement to avoid the shooting in the window.

The vital signs detection device carried by the drone also confirmed that there were no other soldiers or civilians in the building except this anti-tank team.

"OK, confirmed there are no civilians in the building, crew 172, prepare to fire!"

"Received, permission to open fire."

The T-740's 180mm inner diameter electromagnetic reconnection gun was raised under the guidance of Montana's pupil aiming, and the electrically driven turret also slowly rotated to a certain angle.

"Gavin, keep the car steady."

Montana gently kicked Gavin, the pilot sitting in front of him in the longitudinal passenger compartment, on his butt. Gavin immediately acknowledged the message on the communication channel and added:
"You don't have to kick me in the ass every time."

The buzzing sound of the main gun charging was heard. After the 'hot gun' had been charged in advance, it didn't take long to charge before firing.

I saw a streak of orange fire flash across the street, and then the marked window was covered with smoke, and then a shrill scream and explosion sounded at the same time.

However, the vehicle crew and mobile infantry that have turned on the noise reduction mode of their equipment will not be affected by the loud noise.

When the smoke and dust cleared, the original window had turned into a huge gap in the building, or in other words, a corner of the entire building was cut off by the kinetic energy impact of the electromagnetic reconnection cannon.

"strong enough!"

Montana subconsciously wanted to punch the air, then realized that he was in a compact crew compartment.

At the same time, the drone that had just dodged flew over again to confirm the effectiveness of the attack. When the sign of "suspected threat target location" originally marked on the integrated head display disappeared, Montana breathed a sigh of relief.

But just as he was about to move forward, the drone suddenly detected a large number of enemy units in front of the street, and a series of red inverted triangle signs were also marked.

The next second, a series of dense barrages swept over, and the drone was shot down in an instant.

An accompanying anti-aircraft vehicle equipped with multi-barrel electromagnetic machine guns!

Montana immediately realized why the suicide swarms and cruise missiles were not completely effective. It turned out that the enemy had so many accompanying terminal air defense units, which were indeed one of the natural enemies of densely-packed drones in street fighting conditions.

"Enemy contact! Enemy contact! MBT number 2! Polypod tank number 4, infantry and power armor number 33!"

While yelling on the communication channel, Montana adjusted the deflection field from 'adaptive' to 'high power' mode, and then subconsciously kicked Gavin on the butt.

"Gavin, lower the vehicle."

"Roger that!"

The body of the T-740 slowly lowered, and the mobile infantry that had been following it quickly dispersed to both sides of the street, while another T-740 following behind Montana's crew also drove to a position parallel to them.

With the active stabilization system working, the translucent barrel of the plasma cannon pointed steadily in the direction of the enemy unit.

One second later, powered by the superconducting battery stack, a ball of plasma silently broke away from the translucent barrel.

Essentially ball lightning, a mass of high-temperature, high-speed plasma swept across the street in the blink of an eye, with an attack distance of less than a kilometer, and the launch and impact occurred almost at the same time.

"boom!"

The plasma ball exploded quickly after hitting the multi-legged chariot that was the target, completely melting it into a pool of "soft butter" and affecting the surrounding circle of infantry.

Such scenes occurred in almost every street covered by the wide attack surface. Although the imperial defenders continued to mobilize troops to plug the gap, the gap was constantly torn open in the face of the obvious generation gap in equipment.

At the same time, suicide swarms and cruise missiles continued to penetrate deep into the city through the gaps, avoiding the air defense units marked by the front-line troops.

"I told you, it's really over now"

Inside the cabin of the Infinity, Van Fleet looked at the real-time images taken by a high-altitude stealth drone on the screen and sighed deeply.

(End of this chapter)