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Combat Automaton
Code name: Combat Automaton
The Human Reform League was one of the pioneers of simple but effective unmanned, or drone, combat units developed since the end of the Interregnum. Many of these designs, such as the MAJ-V34 Jiachong, were relatively conventional in terms of physical construction and layout. When the League rediscovered GN drives and began development of the GNX-604T Ahead, a new model was designed to act as a supplementary unit incorporating technology derived from that program. The Combat Automaton was easily the most capable robot-controlled weapon system outside of the Earth Sphere Alliance's mobile dolls, although only a limited number of deployments occurred before the formation of the Earth Union. Combat Automatons are surprisingly sophisticated weapons as far as Human Reform League developments are concerned. The robot is designed to be stored and transported in a form resembling a squared-off hexagon. When deployed, the Automaton's legs retract away from the main body, and a compact chemical rocket fires to stabilize its descent or right the unit if it hasn't landed properly. The robot possesses exceptional mobility in spite of its simplistic construction - axial-rotatable wheels in the base of each leg allow rapid movement over flat ground, while the Automaton can walk or climb manually over rough ground, and thanks to very powerful electromagnets, can even scale completely vertical surfaces of a ferrous construction. The tall main body and the outer leg surfaces are heavily armored with e-carbon - this special alloy was developed as part of the GN drive manufacturing process, and is durable as well as lightweight, allowing the Automaton to be well-protected from small arms while still light enough to move quickly. Most of the main body is filled with batteries to power the robot's systems, with a small but efficient processing core linked to external sensors sandwiched between ammunition hoppers for the twin 9mm machine guns. The Automaton's main armament is mounted in a ball turret with 360-degree rotation, and fires a hard-hitting low-velocity round with a hardened core designed to defeat any type of ballistic vest at combat distances. When the Automaton's ammunition supply is expended, or it suffers critical damage, the robot self-destructs in an attempt to maximize damage to nearby enemies. Automatons are provided with a small manipulator arm in each leg for sampling materials or retrieving objects, and each are provided with a compact plasma cutter for utility purposes (e.g. opening locked or barricaded doors). While virtually impregnable against most small arms and infantry-portable ballistics, quality antitank weapons and any kind of vehicle-mounted artillery - much less weapons mounted on even primitive mobile suits - can shatter an Automaton's body with ease. This precludes their use as front-line combat units in large-scale battlefield engagements. Instead, the Human Reform League found the Automaton's best deployment as a "shock troop" of a sort, frequently employed during mobile suit battles as a means to hinder or even seize enemy positions, sometimes right even under the noses of their own mobile weapons. Automatons can also be used to assist in retrieving downed pilots in hostile territory, and can be programmed for a wide variety of mission parameters - the presumption that the robots can only be employed to "kill anything that moves" is more of a facet of the League's total lack of subtlety than limitations of the Automaton itself. Officially, Automatons were deleted from the Earth Union's military equipment inventories sometime in the late UC 220s. However, use of the robots was continued in secret until UC 241 when "in-the-know" field officers, especially League veterans, demanded their return as a tool to help in areas of growing hostility and unconventional combat zones.
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