#Mobile Gun System

[saltypeanutnerd]

Système de pistolet mobile d'irrigation, Prévisions de la Taille du Marché Mondial, Classement et Part de Marché des 10 Premières Entreprises

Selon le nouveau rapport d'étude de marché “Rapport sur le marché mondial de Système de pistolet mobile d'irrigation 2024-2030”, publié par QYResearch, la taille du marché mondial de Système de pistolet mobile d'irrigation devrait atteindre 1022 millions de dollars d'ici 2030, à un TCAC de 5,9% au cours de la période de prévision.

Figure 1. Taille du marché mondial de Système de pistolet mobile d'irrigation (en millions de dollars américains), 2019-2030

Selon QYResearch, les principaux fabricants mondiaux de Système de pistolet mobile d'irrigation comprennent Lindsay Corporation, Bauer, etc. En 2023, les trois premiers acteurs mondiaux détenaient une part d'environ 39,0% en termes de chiffre d'affaires.

Figure 2. Classement et part de marché des 10 premiers acteurs mondiaux de Système de pistolet mobile d'irrigation (Le classement est basé sur le chiffre d'affaires de 2023, continuellement mis à jour)

À propos de QYResearch

QYResearch a été fondée en 2007 en Californie aux États-Unis. C'est une société de conseil et d'étude de marché de premier plan à l'échelle mondiale. Avec plus de 17 ans d'expérience et une équipe de recherche professionnelle dans différentes villes du monde, QYResearch se concentre sur le conseil en gestion, les services de base de données et de séminaires, le conseil en IPO, la recherche de la chaîne industrielle et la recherche personnalisée. Nous société a pour objectif d’aider nos clients à réussir en leur fournissant un modèle de revenus non linéaire. Nous sommes mondialement reconnus pour notre vaste portefeuille de services, notre bonne citoyenneté d'entreprise et notre fort engagement envers la durabilité. Jusqu'à présent, nous avons coopéré avec plus de 60 000 clients sur les cinq continents. Coopérons et bâtissons ensemble un avenir prometteur et meilleur.

QYResearch est une société de conseil de grande envergure de renommée mondiale. Elle couvre divers segments de marché de la chaîne industrielle de haute technologie, notamment la chaîne industrielle des semi-conducteurs (équipements et pièces de semi-conducteurs, matériaux semi-conducteurs, circuits intégrés, fonderie, emballage et test, dispositifs discrets, capteurs, dispositifs optoélectroniques), la chaîne industrielle photovoltaïque (équipements, cellules, modules, supports de matériaux auxiliaires, onduleurs, terminaux de centrales électriques), la chaîne industrielle des véhicules électriques à énergie nouvelle (batteries et matériaux, pièces automobiles, batteries, moteurs, commande électronique, semi-conducteurs automobiles, etc.), la chaîne industrielle des communications (équipements de système de communication, équipements terminaux, composants électroniques, frontaux RF, modules optiques, 4G/5G/6G, large bande, IoT, économie numérique, IA), la chaîne industrielle des matériaux avancés (matériaux métalliques, polymères, céramiques, nano matériaux, etc.), la chaîne industrielle de fabrication de machines (machines-outils CNC, machines de construction, machines électriques, automatisation 3C, robots industriels, lasers, contrôle industriel, drones), l'alimentation, les boissons et les produits pharmaceutiques, l'équipement médical, l'agriculture, etc.

[cripplecharacters]

Sorry if this has already been asked before but as a general statement do you feel like the trope of having mobility aids doubling up as weapons in a fantasy story is ok? I’m disabled myself so I have a lot of disabled characters in my story so there’s a wide variety of mobility aids. Since a lot of characters fight in the story because of the genre I was thinking of making mobility aids weapons (cane as a magic staff or like prosthetics with built in powers etc) but I’m not sure if it falls into the category of ‘character is disabled but it’s actually their superpower!!!’ because I want to avoid that trope at all costs. Hope this makes sense to you since communication isn’t a strong point of mine. Love your blog btw:)

Hi! I'm glad you enjoy the blog:-D

I really feel like it depends. It can be done well and respectfully, but in my experience it usually isn't.

If you're a mobility aid user writing about the aids that you're using, you can do whatever you want! For my deeper thoughts that are too long:

The main issue that I have with the "magic aids as weapons" is that often it feels like the author doesn't actually like the aid because it's "too boring" and thus wants to "improve" it by making a cane into a wizard staff that shoots fireballs or whatever. But I don't feel like that's a good way to go about it at all. Mobility aids are cool in itself! They allow use to be more mobile! Why do they need to be made into something else?

The something else part is also what bothers me a lot around magic aids, aids as weapons, all that. Like the old "replacing a wheelchair with an animal" thing. Why not have a wheelchair? Why not a walking cane instead of a staff, you know? It sometimes feels like the author tries to distance whatever they're writing about from disabled people and our actual experiences because they're "too boring to fit their fantasy story". Like it could be done effectively, but it usually really isn't.

To finally get to the combat part of the question, it again depends (...sorry). If the character with a cane has to fight using it, then I do find it weird, I guess. "Doing cool explosive stuff" shouldn't be a requirement for a disabled character to be included, especially because a lot of disabled people can't do the things that writers want them to do! Sometimes we are weak and unsteady and fragile. Fighting isn't for everyone, and I feel like that's where some of the annoying fantasy tropes appear.

"Hm, my blind character can't fight because they're blind.. oh they have a superpower that lets them 'see'! solved!"

"Hmm, I don't know how to include a wheelchair user… I'll give them a Magic Mecha Exoskeleton, now they can fight!"

"Hm, real life prosthetics seem inconvenient. I'll just make them Magical so they're just like meat limbs but with a gun!"

...and all these kinds of "solutions" that make one wonder if the author even wants to have an actually disabled character. It's not even that the disability is a superpower, it's more that it's non-existent. Sometimes the better solution is to have us in other roles and not make us do things that our disabilities prevent us from doing, which fighting can fall under.

If the above isn't what's going on, then I think it comes down to how the whole thing is even supposed to work. Are the in-universe rules for magic centered around the idea that the Body makes magic? In this case, it could be interesting to have a character who uses a mobility aid and considers it a part of their body to be able to use it in a magical way. Because a lot of people do consider their cane or wheelchair an extension of them, so it could be actually interesting to see it validated by the magic system. But if it's like, "anything could be used" and then every character with a mobility aid ends up using their aid for that, that's... somewhat weird. It does feel like reducing the character to their disability if abled character 1 has a spell book, abled character 2 has a magic necklace, but the disabled character has their disability aid as their magic weapon. To use the example that you did, if the character's prosthetic is the only way they can use magic, I do think that's weird, because like. why… it's both reductive and "disability as a superpower". But if they can use magic through, let's say, both of their legs, and one of them happens to be a prosthetic, then I think that's cool.

I also believe that it depends on what kind of weapon you are talking about at the end of the day - in real life, mobility aids are already treated as potential weapons. I'm under the impression that no one would assume that a walking cane could cast a spell, but people do very much think of a cane as a potential tool to fight with, of a prosthetic as a potential bomb, of a wheelchair as a potential way to smuggle something illegal. I have very much seen and heard of situations where a disabled person wasn't allowed to enter somewhere because their aid was seen as a threat - you don't want to make more people think that this is a reasonable conclusion to come to. If you want to go for it without doing any kind of retrospect on that, I would keep it as a fantasy thing.

I hope this helps! Apologies for the answer length.

mod Sasza

[collapsedsquid]

The way J6 failed is also instructive, and helps us understand the reason far-rightist streetfighters declined in relevance as of January 7. Yes, many people brought guns to the Capitol. Yes, many hoped their victory would result in the invocation of the Insurrection Act or some other signal to begin massive retribution against traitors and subversives. But nobody shot at the cops, and exactly one person was willing to stare into a cop’s loaded handgun and step forward. The kitted-up tactical team that emerged from a stairwell in the wake of Ashli Babbit’s death encountered a crowd shocked and demoralized, not energized, by the presence of death and the blood of martyrs. The J6 insurrectionists largely returned to their hotel rooms - some full of firearms - and then their homes, to be later arrested by the FBI. There was no need to shoot or shell holdouts at the legislature, no attempts by sympathetic actors to seize control of other government or media institutions, no militia revolts in the countryside, no effort to sustain or capture the momentum. The J6 prosecutions knocked these organizations back to actions of primarily local relevance as the far-right almost immediately began making gains on more favorable institutional terrains, efforts to mobilize on a national scale, and in DC especially, elicited paranoid theories of false flags and FBI machinations. Neither did hardcore subsets of these groups successfully build violent underground organizations - there were no cagoulards carrying on the leagues’ struggles against the victorious left wing government. Street-fighters became liabilities to classic fascist movements because they became too powerful, and arguably, too fascist. The fascist squads became their own bases of power within the classic fascist movements, capable of threatening party officials and even the leadership cult. There is no Trumpian equivalent to the Pact of Pacification or Stennes Revolt because streetfighters wielded no similar political power within the Trump coalition and advanced no coherent agenda with which to discipline Trump. Nor did the public square - largely demobilized after January 6 - offer much of an opportunity for streetfighters to demonstrate their relevance to the Trump coalition outside of localized demonstrations and confrontations. While the Proud Boys (more so than the Oath Keepers) may have sought to build a kind of neofascist élan, with their vague gestures towards uniform, hazing rituals, and the relative centrality of physical force confrontation to their identity, these efforts largely failed. Contrast with the streetfighters of the interwar era: the old fascist squads, especially the most militant ones, were useful organizational cages for younger members whose belief in force, revolution, and disillusionment with the system left them uninterested in conventional politics and who in many cases saw more to admire, or at least imitate, in revolutionary Communist structures than bourgeois right-wing parties. While the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers certainly attracted a cast of characters ill-suited for conventional politics, they were (and are) more likely to be relatively older men with families, truck payments, and decent jobs; the kind of people you would expect to react to a defeat in the streets and government repression by spending more time harassing people at school board meetings, rather than uncompromising radicals willing to give their lives for a doomed cause (and let alone radicals willing to find a new cause if the old one proves too inclined to compromise).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Subprime gadgets

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THIS SUNDAY in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

The promise of feudal security: "Surrender control over your digital life so that we, the wise, giant corporation, can ensure that you aren't tricked into catastrophic blunders that expose you to harm":

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

The tech giant is a feudal warlord whose platform is a fortress; move into the fortress and the warlord will defend you against the bandits roaming the lawless land beyond its walls.

That's the promise, here's the failure: What happens when the warlord decides to attack you? If a tech giant decides to do something that harms you, the fortress becomes a prison and the thick walls keep you in.

Apple does this all the time: "click this box and we will use our control over our platform to stop Facebook from spying on you" (Ios as fortress). "No matter what box you click, we will spy on you and because we control which apps you can install, we can stop you from blocking our spying" (Ios as prison):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But it's not just Apple – any corporation that arrogates to itself the right to override your own choices about your technology will eventually yield to temptation, using that veto to help itself at your expense:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Once the corporation puts the gun on the mantelpiece in Act One, they're begging their KPI-obsessed managers to take it down and shoot you in the head with it in anticipation of of their annual Act Three performance review:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

One particularly pernicious form of control is "trusted computing" and its handmaiden, "remote attestation." Broadly, this is when a device is designed to gather information about how it is configured and to send verifiable testaments about that configuration to third parties, even if you want to lie to those people:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/your-computer-should-say-what-you-tell-it-say-1

New HP printers are designed to continuously monitor how you use them – and data-mine the documents you print for marketing data. You have to hand over a credit-card in order to use them, and HP reserves the right to fine you if your printer is unreachable, which would frustrate their ability to spy on you and charge you rent:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Under normal circumstances, this technological attack would prompt a defense, like an aftermarket mod that prevents your printer's computer from monitoring you. This is "adversarial interoperability," a once-common technological move:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

An adversarial interoperator seeking to protect HP printer users from HP could gin up fake telemetry to send to HP, so they wouldn't be able to tell that you'd seized the means of computation, triggering fines charged to your credit card.

Enter remote attestation: if HP can create a sealed "trusted platform module" or a (less reliable) "secure enclave" that gathers and cryptographically signs information about which software your printer is running, HP can detect when you have modified it. They can force your printer to rat you out – to spill your secrets to your enemy.

Remote attestation is already a reliable feature of mobile platforms, allowing agencies and corporations whose services you use to make sure that you're perfectly defenseless – not blocking ads or tracking, or doing anything else that shifts power from them to you – before they agree to communicate with your device.

What's more, these "trusted computing" systems aren't just technological impediments to your digital wellbeing – they also carry the force of law. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, these snitch-chips are "an effective means of access control" which means that anyone who helps you bypass them faces a $500,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence for a first offense.

Feudal security builds fortresses out of trusted computing and remote attestation and promises to use them to defend you from marauders. Remote attestation lets them determine whether your device has been compromised by someone seeking to harm you – it gives them a reliable testament about your device's configuration even if your device has been poisoned by bandits:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The fact that you can't override your computer's remote attestations means that you can't be tricked into doing so. That's a part of your computer that belongs to the manufacturer, not you, and it only takes orders from its owner. So long as the benevolent dictator remains benevolent, this is a protective against your own lapses, follies and missteps. But if the corporate warlord turns bandit, this makes you powerless to stop them from devouring you whole.

With that out of the way, let's talk about debt.

Debt is a normal feature of any economy, but today's debt plays a different role from the normal debt that characterized life before wages stagnated and inequality skyrocketed. 40 years ago, neoliberalism – with its assaults on unions and regulations – kicked off a multigenerational process of taking wealth away from working people to make the rich richer.

Have you ever watched a genius pickpocket like Apollo Robbins work? When Robins lifts your wristwatch, he curls his fingers around your wrist, expertly adding pressure to simulate the effect of a watchband, even as he takes away your watch. Then, he gradually releases his grip, so slowly that you don't even notice:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/ppqjya/apollo_robbins_a_master_pickpocket_effortlessly/

For the wealthy to successfully impoverish the rest of us, they had to provide something that made us feel like we were still doing OK, even as they stole our wages, our savings, and our futures. So, even as they shipped our jobs overseas in search of weak environmental laws and weaker labor protection, they shared some of the savings with us, letting us buy more with less. But if your wages keep stagnating, it doesn't matter how cheap a big-screen TV gets, because you're tapped out.

So in tandem with cheap goods from overseas sweatshops, we got easy credit: access to debt. As wages fell, debt rose up to fill the gap. For a while, it's felt OK. Your wages might be falling off, the cost of health care and university might be skyrocketing, but everything was getting cheaper, it was so easy to borrow, and your principal asset – your family home – was going up in value, too.

This period was a "bezzle," John Kenneth Galbraith's name for "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." It's the moment after Apollo Robbins has your watch but before you notice it's gone. In that moment, both you and Robbins feel like you have a watch – the world's supply of watch-derived happiness actually goes up for a moment.

There's a natural limit to debt-fueled consumption: as Michael Hudson says, "debts that can't be paid, won't be paid." Once the debtor owes more than they can pay back – or even service – creditors become less willing to advance credit to them. Worse, they start to demand the right to liquidate the debtor's assets. That can trigger some pretty intense political instability, especially when the only substantial asset most debtors own is the roof over their heads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

"Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," but that doesn't stop creditors from trying to get blood from our stones. As more of us became bankrupt, the bankruptcy system was gutted, turned into a punitive measure designed to terrorize people into continuing to pay down their debts long past the point where they can reasonably do so:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

Enter "subprime" – loans advanced to people who stand no meaningful chance of every paying them back. We all remember the subprime housing bubble, in which complex and deceptive mortgages were extended to borrowers on the promise that they could either flip or remortgage their house before the subprime mortgages detonated when their "teaser rates" expired and the price of staying in your home doubled or tripled.

Subprime housing loans were extended on the belief that people would meekly render themselves homeless once the music stopped, forfeiting all the money they'd plowed into their homes because the contract said they had to. For a brief minute there, it looked like there would be a rebellion against mass foreclosure, but then Obama and Timothy Geithner decreed that millions of Americans would have to lose their homes to "foam the runways" for the banks:

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/

That's one way to run a subprime shop: offer predatory loans to people who can't afford them and then confiscate their assets when they – inevitably – fail to pay their debts off.

But there's another form of subprime, familiar to loan sharks through the ages: lend money at punitive interest rates, such that the borrower can never repay the debt, and then terrorize the borrower into making payments for as long as possible. Do this right and the borrower will pay you several times the value of the loan, and still owe you a bundle. If the borrower ever earns anything, you'll have a claim on it. Think of Americans who borrowed $79,000 to go to university, paid back $190,000 and still owe $236,000:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

This kind of loan-sharking is profitable, but labor-intensive. It requires that the debtor make payments they fundamentally can't afford. The usurer needs to get their straw right down into the very bottom of the borrower's milkshake and suck up every drop. You need to convince the debtor to sell their wedding ring, then dip into their kid's college fund, then steal their father's coin collection, and, then break into cars to steal the stereos. It takes a lot of person-to-person work to keep your sucker sufficiently motivated to do all that.

This is where digital meets subprime. There's $1T worth of subprime car-loans in America. These are pure predation: the lender sells a beater to a mark, offering a low down-payment loan with a low initial interest rate. The borrower makes payments at that rate for a couple of months, but then the rate blows up to more than they can afford.

Trusted computing makes this marginal racket into a serious industry. First, there's the ability of the car to narc you out to the repo man by reporting on its location. Tesla does one better: if you get behind in your payments, your Tesla immobilizes itself and phones home, waits for the repo man to come to the parking lot, then it backs itself out of the spot while honking its horn and flashing its lights:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

That immobilization trick shows how a canny subprime car-lender can combine the two kinds of subprime: they can secure the loan against an asset (the car), but also coerce borrowers into prioritizing repayment over other necessities of life. After your car immobilizes itself, you just might decide to call the dealership and put down your credit card, even if that means not being able to afford groceries or child support or rent.

One thing we can say about digital tools: they're flexible. Any sadistic motivational technique a lender can dream up, a computerized device can execute. The subprime car market relies on a spectrum of coercive tactics: cars that immobilize themselves, sure, but how about cars that turn on their speakers to max and blare a continuous recording telling you that you're a deadbeat and demanding payment?

https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/

The more a subprime lender can rely on a gadget to torment you on their behalf, the more loans they can issue. Here, at last, is a form of automation-driven mass unemployment: normally, an economy that has been fully captured by wealthy oligarchs needs squadrons of cruel arm-breakers to convince the plebs to prioritize debt service over survival. The infinitely flexible, tireless digital arm-breakers enabled by trusted computing have deprived all of those skilled torturers of their rightful employment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

The world leader in trusted computing isn't cars, though – it's phones. Long before anyone figured out how to make a car take orders from its manufacturer over the objections of its driver, Apple and Google were inventing "curating computing" whose app stores determined which software you could run and how you could run it.

Back in 2021, Indian subprime lenders hit on the strategy of securing their loans by loading borrowers' phones up with digital arm-breaking software:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

The software would gather statistics on your app usage. When you missed a payment, the phone would block you from accessing your most frequently used app. If that didn't motivate you to pay, you'd lose your second-most favorite app, then your third, fourth, etc.

This kind of digital arm-breaking is only possible if your phone is designed to prioritize remote instructions – from the manufacturer and its app makers – over your own. It also only works if the digital arm-breaking company can confirm that you haven't jailbroken your phone, which might allow you to send fake data back saying that your apps have been disabled, while you continue to use those apps. In other words, this kind of digital sadism only works if you've got trusted computing and remote attestation.

Enter "Device Lock Controller," an app that comes pre-installed on some Google Pixel phones. To quote from the app's description: "Device Lock Controller enables device management for credit providers. Your provider can remotely restrict access to your device if you don't make payments":

https://lemmy.world/post/13359866

Google's pitch to Android users is that their "walled garden" is a fortress that keeps people who want to do bad things to you from reaching you. But they're pre-installing software that turns the fortress into a prison that you can't escape if they decide to let someone come after you.

There's a certain kind of economist who looks at these forms of automated, fine-grained punishments and sees nothing but a tool for producing an "efficient market" in debt. For them, the ability to automate arm-breaking results in loans being offered to good, hardworking people who would otherwise be deprived of credit, because lenders will judge that these borrowers can be "incentivized" into continuing payments even to the point of total destitution.

This is classic efficient market hypothesis brain worms, the kind of cognitive dead-end that you arrive at when you conceive of people in purely economic terms, without considering the power relationships between them. It's a dead end you navigate to if you only think about things as they are today – vast numbers of indebted people who command fewer assets and lower wages than at any time since WWII – and treat this as a "natural" state: "how can these poors expect to be offered more debt unless they agree to have their all-important pocket computers booby-trapped?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/29/boobytrap/#device-lock-controller

Image: Oatsy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oatsy40/21647688003

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[thehydromancer]

Colonial Espatier Task Force Lan, assigned to protect the space colony of Umbral Keep. Umbral Keep, despite its vast potential to enrich the megacorp Krewstara and provide highly valuable resources to Sol, only rates the minimal Colonial Espatier investment given its isolated location and the competing need to protect the Aeralyn terraformer project in the same system. If it wasn't for the nearby transit gate and the previous Ijad invasion of the system, its possible The Powers That Be wouldn't have bothered at all. The PCL-01 Rookery class light carrier (inspired by the ARMD carrier from Robotech/Macross). The Fisher King is assigned to Taske Force Lan and the sister ship to the Angraal assigned to Task Force Kay tasked with guarding the Aeralyn terraformer colony. The Rookery class is a converted orbital platform popular with salvage and maintenance operations. Using the Fisher King as an example, the primary upgrades to the base craft are an integrated hangar with an elevator to the catapult, upgraded sensors and communications, and additional engines both for primary thrust and rapid maneuvering. The ships ability to rapidly change velocity is its primary defense as it is lightly armed and armored, completely dependent on its mobile frame company to defend it from aggressors. Multiple locations were reinforced for PDG installation, but the Fisher King has yet to receive this upgrade. In theory the Rookery class can transport a standard mobile frame company's entire 14 frame compliment, but it is only designed to launch and support up to a single augmented squad of 6 frames at a time during combat operations. The Angraal however is rumored to be undergoing upgrades to support an additional mobile frame squad during combat as well as additional defenses despite concerns on impacts to the ships overall speed.

Kobold frigates, based on the general purpose tug of the same name, are a slapdash, minimal cost answer to Colonial Espatier needs throughout the transit gate network. Kobolds are often present en masse around gates and space colonies, and are relatively cheap and easy enough to acquire that the local megacorp losing a few to stand up the local espatier chapter is of neglectable impact in exchange for the security provided. The two kobold examples provided are the Sylph, a missile boat, and the Salameid, a gun boat. Almost completely unarmored the kobold frigates rely on speed and distance, much like the Fisher King, to avoid enemy fire, although at least the Salameid is equipped with 4x PDGs for anti-frame defense.

[meg-jmeg]

🕷MOBILE TANK ARACHNIDA-04🕷

[CLASSIFIED INFORMATION, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY]

The mobile tank division's prototype series, the Arachnida-04, is known for its all-terrain maneuverability and combat versatility. Its spider-like design, which features a spherical core body and four joints on each leg, is based on the famous Masamune frame. They are capable of scaling walls and ceilings and are outfitted with several sensors and cameras that allow them to scan their surroundings from all angles. Two built-in submachine guns with 5.7x28mm ammunition and two M320 GLMs with 40mm grenades are its only weaponry and its also equipped with multi-tool "fangs" that can be used for repairs/dismantling and hack into computer systems as well as connect with other electronic devices, making them useful for missions that involve cyberwarfare and intelligence gathering operations despite their still-early stages of development.

[novankenn]

Jaune et Carro Veloce

Jaune was feeling miserable. His skills were so far below his peers that it was laughable... in a pathetic way. Though his academics in everything but things specifically associated with fighting grimm duties were well above the average. Wonders of the public school system.

So after another desperate failure in Professor Goodwitch's combat class, he wandered off. He heard his friends and teammates calling after him, but he just walked away without a word. Wishing to avoid any and everyone he took the stairs down into the basement of Beacon.

It was dark and damp. The overhead bulbs giving very little usable light. Reaching into his rear belt pouch he pulled out a small flashlight. Say what you would about his performance in combat... Jaune was adept at being prepared for mundane things, like basic wilderness survival.

He looked about, and wandered. His footfalls echoing about the dusty and cobweb cluttered corridors and rooms. There wasn't much of interest. Most of the rooms being either completely empty, or holding boxes of books. Jaune had opened one of the boxes finding it filled with Professor Port's Autobiography "The Heroic Age of the Indominable Sir Port of Vale."

Jaune: Must not have sold well.

Jaune tossed the book back onto the pile of boxes after flipping through it quickly, and continued his exploration. Pulling out his scroll he checked the time. He had been gone for a good three hours and his screen was filled with missed call and message notifications. Sighing he put it away, deciding he would answer a little later.

Turning a corner he saw a massive shadowed filled room. Cautiously he approached, using his flashlight to try and pierce the darkness. Having no success he turned his attention to the near walls, and quickly located a bank of light switches. Flicking them all on he flinched as blaring bright white lights came to blazing life.

Jaune: Oh... wow...

Jaune was stunned by what he found. The room was massive, and filled with artifacts from the Great War and the Faunus Revolution... specifically mobile terrestrial heavy weapon plate forms...

Jaune: Tanks... wow... Tanks on Tanks...

Jaune turned off his flashlight and stowed in away, as he wondered about, his eyes alight with excitement he hadn't felt in ages. While he wasn't specifically a weapon geek like Ruby, he did have a guilty pleasure, aside from comics... and that was tanks. In particular tankettes. While he admired the utility and power of the larger more impressive pieces, he absolutely adored the very much smaller, and faster mini-tanks.

Jaune: An Atlean Panzer IV. A Vale Sherman Firefly. A Vacoan T34, and a Mistralian Tiger I !!!

Jaune wondered, totally forgetting about contacting his friends, which further flew out of his thoughts when he saw it. With a shaking hand he reached out and touched the welded steel armor plating.

Jaune: A Valean Carro Veloce CV33 with twin 8mm machineguns... and over there is the conversion for the 20mm Anti-Material Gun!!!

Jaune was in awe and excited beyond measure as he hovered around what he would call an adorable tankette. Until that revelry was shatter by a voice from behind.

Ozpin: Are you enjoying yourself Mr. Arc?

Jaune: Ah... um...

Ozpin: You are not in trouble Mr. Arc though I was not aware you held such an affinity for... such antiques.

Jaune: Antiques!!! These are pieces of artwork! Form and function made reality! Iron and steel powered by flame and thunder, manned by bone and blood!!!

Ozpin: Please calm down. I only came to see if you are alright. You friends are worried and security alerted me to you entering this area.

Jaune: I'm sorry, I'll...

Ozpin: I already said you are not in trouble Mr. arc. Far from that in fact.

Jaune: Huh?

Ozpin: It is a shame that these icons of human and faunus ingenuity lie here moldering away. How would you like to pick one?

Jaune: Huh?

Ozpin: Pick one. Restore it. Beacon will provide the funds, and maybe you could get others interested in doing the same.

Jaune: This one!

(Imaged sourced from Girls und Panzer wiki)

A/N: Girls und Panzer is a fun Anime... and I get a real kick out of this small Italian Tankette. I want my mind to envision how it would fight against grimm..

[imustbenuts]

nuts reading in jp 11 - wrap up for vol 2 + i can talk about TriStamp undertaker wolfwood a little!!! whooo!!!

its been hella weird to read trigun in japanese since my first read was in english. i think i dug out a few extra stuff i didnt know existed in the work during this little journey. (thank you for joining in on my rambles!)

no real translation word related stuff today. mostly culture stuff dump.

but man i was right on the money when i said vash was stressed in #10. i forget he actually falls unconscious after dominique quits the narrative. yay~

me after i finish these posts at 5am every time

and then, him.

🥺✨✨raidei the blade. ✨✨ 🥺

listen. this guy. this fucking guy is, personally, the funniest guy in the entirety of trigun. for that line above in the 98 anime, and also for some stuff he represents. ...and it's not for larping reasons. ill get into that another day, please look forward to it. (i say this knowing his backstory was rough.)

anyway its time.... for Wolfwood's 'job change'.

in the manga he introduces himself as a tradesman Priest. it doesnt make much sense to outsiders but despite people getting confused, it mostly gets hand waved off as the guy being a little eccentric. and also prideful.

we then get more information about that being a cover for him being one of the Gung Ho Guns, Chapel. he can fight, hes an assassin, his job is to somehow get at Vash while being technically employed by Knives.

this wolfwood has absolutely no struggle with himself as a Priest specifically. heck, its even giving him some confidence bc he actually knows his stuff and can get by with those priestly things alone. at least, i assume so, bc otherwise the pride thing would be very misplaced as he is revealed that he really wants out of the insane GHG business, and wants nothing to do with his coworkers, as it were.

but TriStamp Wolfwood is... different in that pride regard

this version of wolfwood introduces himself as an Undertaker. he's technically a Priest, but he clearly lacks so much pride that he chooses to be an Undertaker.

the narrative tracks since he's the guide to send Vash to hell in tristamp, but theres at least 1 more layer to this.

so, Shinto! Shinto has played a very big part in Japanese culture and history since idk the beginning of Japanese history, affecting society and culture and governance.

key thing for this post: Shinto has a concept named Kegare/Defilement, which you can think of as an accumulation of evil energy. bad energy. bad enough to attract misfortune, evil spirits, and evil evil evil bad bad bad. (ive actually written about this in video game context before if you wanna read it here)

Kegare is generated upon death, blood, menstruation, and all that. in some modern media, Kegare can also be depicted to be generated by an accumulation of negative emotions from people. but for the longest time, it was mainly Death. (oh and somewhat also women with the whole uh.... you know, menstruation, childbirth, and stillbirths etc.)

but: Kegare is NOT sin, and should not be seen as such.

old japan governance also used Caste System. so combine that with shinto, and society and here's the not fun stuff: we now have a discriminated class of people who did all of society's very necessary but deemed dirty jobs. these are the Butchers, Leatherworkers, Executioners, and Undertakers. (which is wild. a society would not be able to function without them.)

they are shunned, deemed too dirty, too tainted, too polluted to ever have a hope of having a better life. since social mobility wasnt a thing with Caste System. and coming too close to them means pollution on the self too.

the Caste System got abolished, and today the descendants are called Burakumin 部落民. they are still being discriminated against to this day. the remnants of the dirtiness with certain jobs still remain, especially with jobs that involves the dead. its also possible to know who is a descendant of one through family names, which can be used to trace family registry and sus out old residences etc.

feel free to watch the above video for a clearer explanation by a japanese man instead of just taking my word for it >_>

back to wolfwood.

studio orange making him go from Priest to Undertaker is likely rooted in a logic associated with this. that TriStamp wolfwood lacks the confidence to have a strong identity outside of GHG, whereas manga wolfwood has. that TriStamp wolfwood really does think of himself as trash and worthless even before outsiders' judgement, whereas manga wolfwood's struggle is more about an internal struggle of being lost.

manga wolfwood is also never truly free from his identity as Chapel until the very end.

but TriStamp wolfwood gets a full contract saying that hes free from Chapel (i assume!)

i think theres also additional implications but im losing braincells by the minute. the change makes so much sense and tracks so well that apart from the confidence thing, everything is more or less intact.

(worth possibly nothing also, I think TriStamp wolfwood isnt fully checking boxes of uhhh Normality in japanese context. hes dressed in a mess, hes not clean shaven, his skin is kinda dark and not fair, he speaks in non-standard japanese. but ymmv, he will be ok in kansai at least, but not fully fitting in in Capital Tokyo nor ex-Capital Kyoto.)

i also, admittedly, dont know much about the culture surrounding death and undertakers within the states or europe so i cant comment much on that aspect. im aware i must have missed something. on that front, sorry D:

anyway thats all i got for now! thanks for reading this long ass post!

[starman-john-tracy]

"You're safe here with me" + "I won't let anything happen to you" with Casey? :) 💙

John had taken the space elevator down to the GDF headquarters no more than half an hour ago, at Colonel Casey's request. There'd been a cyber attack on base; an attempted takeover of the GDF's long range weapons systems, and though nothing has been fired - they needed to rule out the possibility that someone could. With the tech team scrambling for solutions, scouring the databanks for any way someone could have remotely accessed their codes and their LAN, the Colonel could only think of one man she both trusts, and who’s qualified to step in and salvage the situation.

And with an updated firewall to prevent remote access, that he personally provided the protocol for, the only thing John Tracy can do to help is show up in person.

Only, John's got the soft edge of an atmospheric headache throbbing in his sinuses and his eyeballs are always the slowest thing to respond to the change in pressure between Five and Earth, so, as he bypasses the office full of scurrying IT consultants and heads directly for the server room, ready to not-entirely-legally plug Eos’ palm sized mobile unit into the GDF’s databases to assess the damage, he completely misses the slim, shadowed figure in amongst the data processing banks.

Because the remote attack hadn’t actually been remote at all, and the gunshot wound to John's shoulder, now leaking a dangerous amount of blood all over his IR blues, seemed like a pretty big clue this was no employee.

They're currently holed up in Casey's office - after the head of the GDF had bodily dragged his skinny space ass out of there. She's trying to force him down behind her desk and out of the way, while the intruder pounds on the door: his threats mostly incoherent screams and stray gunshots. John might not be as hot-headed as Scott or his youngest brothers, but he's still a Tracy and, clearly, the last thing he wants to do is sit still while others might be in danger and so the damned fool, who’s clearly never been shot before, keeps trying to get up.

“Colonel, we’ve got to- argh!” The spaceman gasps and jerks like a livewire as Casey presses a wad of cloth - a runner snatched from the fancy corporate meeting table - hard against the dark, bubbling wound in his shoulder. John's feet kick out, heels scraping helplessly against the corporate grey carpeting, and the boy's back arches against the pain in a way that plummets Valerie Casey’s heart straight through her shoes. She forces the emotion away, grabs one of his cold, blue-clad hands, and guides it on top of the wound.

“Keep pressure on that.” She instructs, as the dark stain spreads rapidly into not only his IR blues, but the ugly purple runner too. His fingers fumble and fail to take over the task, and a soft whine makes its way out between his teeth. “Come on John, you know to keep pressure on.” He's having a hard time focusing on her. She thinks he might be in shock.

“But the gunman,” John gasps, his head thrashing to the side, eyes wide, “he’s after-”

“John.” She cups John's ashen, blood-splattered face between both palms, like she would when he was a small boy and he'd come to the woman who was his Auntie in all but DNA with a bruised cheek and a split lip because he didn’t want to tell his Father he was being bullied at school. "You're safe here with me." Her mouth is a hard white line as she unclips her service pistol from it's holster, "I won't let anything happen to you."

The wood around the door handle audible splinters under a particularly savage impact, and Jeff's boy flinches under her fingers.

Oh, absolutely not.

"Security is on their way and no one is getting into this room, John. And if they somehow do," She raises the gun with both hands, holding it steady and level with the door, "they are not getting through me.”

[fandomtrumpshate]

FTH 2024: Supported Nonprofit Organizations

Here are the nonprofit organizations that will be supported by this year's FTH auction. Many of these orgs will be familiar from last year's list, but we've cycled in some new groups as well. In particular, because it's a major election year in the US, we've brought in (or brought back) organations focusing on voter enfranchisement.

If you are a FTH creator and you want to ask your bidders to support an organization that’s not on the list, please read our policy on outside organizations here.

Bellingcat *

Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open source research in the public interest.

Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center *

The Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC) is a nonprofit legal organization that fights for liberation and equity through the lens of intersectional disability justice.

In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda *

A national-state partnership focused on lifting up the voices of Black women leaders at the national and regional levels in our fight to secure Reproductive Justice for all women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals, NBWRJA delivers proactive advocacy and policy solutions to address issues at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Life After Hate

LAH provides support to people leaving hate groups, and providing pluralism education and training to vulnerable young people.

Middle East Children's Alliance *

MECA is a nonprofit organization working for the rights and the well-being of children in the Middle East. They collect funds in order to provide direct aid, financial support for community projects, water purification systems, and university scholarships, and also create educational and cultural programs in the US and internationally to increase cultural understanding.

National Network to End Domestic Violence *

NNEDV offers a range of programs and initiatives to address the complex causes and far-reaching consequences of domestic violence.

Never Again Action *

A Jewish-led mobilization against the persecution, detention, and deportation of immigrants in the United States, NAA takes on campaigns against detention centers and ICE training programs, and organizes mutual aid and deportation defense.

Razom *

Razom initiates short and long-term projects, or collaborates on existing projects with partner organizations, which help Ukraine stay on the path of fostering democracy and prosperity

Sherlock’s Homes Foundation *

SHF provides housing, employment opportunities, and a loving support system for homeless LGBTQ+ young adults so that they can live fearlessly as their authentic selves. Within these homes, young adults learn about responsibility, accountability, financial independence, life skills, and how to love themselves

Spread the Vote

STV helps eligible voters make their voices heard through voter education, supporting voters through the process of getting necessary ID, and advocating against voter suppression laws.

Violence Policy Center *

VPC works to stop gun death and injury through research, education, advocacy, and collaboration; exposes the profit-driven marketing and lobbying activities of the firearms industry and gun lobby, and offers unique technical expertise to policymakers, organizations, and advocates.

VoteRiders

VR works to help all citizens exercise their right to vote. It informs and helps citizens to secure their voter ID as well as inspires and supports organizations, local volunteers, and communities to sustain voter ID education and assistance efforts.

Umbrella: Environmental orgs

For the past four years, FTH has supported one “umbrella” cause: we invite participants to donate to their own local grassroots organization, while also suggesting a handful of exemplary organizations working in communities where the need is especially acute. This year our umbrella category is environmental organizations.

Pollinator Partnership *

Deploy/Us *

Together Bay Area

Wildlands Restoration Volunteers

Coral Restoration Foundation *

++

Organizations marked with an asterisk (*) allow for international donations directly through their websites. The orgs without asterisks may take international donations through a paypal or venmo account. If you are a non-US-based bidder/donor and you are having trouble finding an organization to which you can donate, please email us directly at fandomtrumpshate @ gmail . com.

[its-to-the-death]

Fictional Weapon War Round 4

Crescent Rose (RWBY)

Used by Ruby Rose

Is both a scythe and a sniper rifle

Has a storage mode that makes it more compact and easy for travel

Ruby uses its massive recoil to enhance her mobility

She built it herself when attending Signal Academy

Can use different kinds of Dust ammunition with different effects

Dangeresque's Nunchuck Gun (Homestar Runner)

It is a gun with one end of a pair of nunchucks taped to the barrel

Purchased from Cool Weapons Surplus

Typically, only the nunchuck part of the weapon is utilized

Gungnir (Symphogear)

Comes from a spear owned by Odin that is said to never miss and always kill its target

Fragments of this gear are imbedded in the area near Hibiki's (the user) heart

Every time she activates the system, the fusion between her body and it increases

This also caused Hibiki to sometimes enter a berserker rage

Can be used as a sword, but mainly serves as a lance or spear

Can clone itself and spin like a drill to create tornados or whirlwinds

Baby 5 (One Piece)

Baby 5 is a member of the Donquixote pirates

The devil fruit she ate, Buki Buki no Mi, lets her transform all or parts of her body into weapons

This includes a giant sword, a sickle, a pistol, a rifle, a cannon, and even a missile

If her body is broken apart by the weapon she turns into (like a bomb exploding) then her body will reform

[anastasiamaru]

Conducting artillery fire is a continuous process in which every member of the crew is involved. The high firepower of the gun targets enemy armor, weapons, and personnel.

Artillerymen of the 12th Special Purpose Brigade "Azov" engage enemy targets with the 152mm howitzer "Msta-B."

P.S The "Msta-B" is a soviet 152-mm self-propelled howitzer developed in the 1980s. It is designed for engaging enemy personnel, equipment, and fortifications at medium to long ranges.

Caliber: 152 mm

Range: Up to 24 km (with new ammunition up to 30 km)

Weight: Approximately 45 tons

Rate of Fire: Up to 5 rounds per minute

Minimum Crew: 4-6 people

The howitzer is equipped with an automated loading system and fire control system, allowing for rapid and accurate targeting. Its mobility is provided by a wheeled chassis, enabling quick movement between positions.

[jinxxangel13]

Phantom of the Night

Chapter 7:

Tw: blood, gore, minor character death, guns

~Masterlist~ ~Prev~ ~Next~

Recap:

“Contact!”

Phantom took cover behind some crates with Soap, losing eyesight of Ghost and the rest of their team as she focused on the AQ soldiers. She switched guns as fast as she could, double checking that she had enough bullets before going prone and aiming between the slits on the side of the shelves.

She was able to drop 2 people on the top floor, and one heading down the stairs before she had to take cover again. The AQ were now lighting up her hiding spot with bullets, so she had no choice but to dash to the forklift in front of her. It wasn’t a lot of cover, but it was good enough for her to take down a heavily armored soldier hiding behind an ammo crate at the back of the warehouse.

Phantom couldn’t see anyone else, but still waited for Ghost’s call.

“We clear?”

“All clear.”

Phantom shouldered her gun, rolling out her shoulder with a wince at the pain in her arm, but it could wait a bit longer at this point.

“Search it. Let's find what they were hiding…”

“Lieutenant. This warehouse wasn’t on the schematics. Got a bad feeling about this.” Phantom lowered her voice when she stopped near him. “Check the container.” 

Ghost gestured to the one in front of them, with her nodding in agreement. With the help of two other Bravo soldiers, they opened the heavy metal doors to reveal a computer system with lines upon lines of code flying across the screen.

“The fuck is this?”

Phantom's eyes widened as she stepped into the container, trying to decipher the letters flying across the screen before it clicked.

“It’s English.”

“It’s all in English.”

Phantom scoffed as Ghost mimicked her words without realizing and stepped up to the controls. Her fingers flew across the keyboard before she flipped a switch to the side, waiting a moment after she heard metal creaking above her before making her way out of the container.

“This isn’t good…”

Ghost, Soap and Phantom watched as something was raised out of the top of the container.

 “Steaming Betsy...:” Soap muttered, stepping back slightly.

“Ballistic missiles.”

“It's a fucking mobile launcher.” Phantom snapped, her fists clenching tightly. "Shit."

“Sir, these'll go 1,000 miles.” 

“At least…” Ghost huffed. 

This mission just went from bad to worse as the weight of what they found settled on everyone's shoulders.  Phantom snapped back to the present as she noticed Soap starting to climb up a nearby crate to get a closer look at the side of the metal.

“How the hell did Iran get their hands on this?” 

Phantom stepped closer to Soap, though she kept her feet on the ground this time.

“Could be anyone at this point. Trade, black market, stealing.” Phantom shrugged. This wasn’t the first time she had witnessed something like this happening.

Ghost called out to one of the other team members.

“7-6, get us through to Laswell.”

“Roger, stand by... Bravo 7-6 Charlie to Watcher-1, how copy?”

“This is Watcher-1, send traffic.” Laswell called over the radio.

“Laswell, this is Ghost, we got something.”

“Tell me you found Hassan…”

“Hey, Phantom, take a look at this…” Soap pointed something out on the missile, Phantom's eyes finally understanding what symbol was on it.

The American flag was etched into the missile.

“Ghost, do you have Hassan?”

“Negative. We found a weapons cache. Hassan's got missiles... they're American.”

“0-7-- This is Gold Eagle Actual, repeat that last.” It must be bad if General Shepherd answered.

“I say again- Hassan has missiles.” Ghost retorted back.

“They have fucking American missiles, General.” Phantom called through her radio.

She walked away from the crate in annoyance, not caring about what else was said at that point as the pain in her head and arm started to become debilitating. 

“Let’s clear out to exfil.”

Phantom was one of the last people on the plane when they picked the team up. She took the time to rewrap her arm tightly with the help of Alpha 0-2, who also used some antiseptic she handed him from her kit to try and clear her head wound-sans her helmet. She hissed in pain, knuckles whitening in her lap as she sat as still as possible.

“I know, kid, gonna hurt like a bitch.”

Phantom chuckled, tilting her head slightly to allow him easier access to the rest of the wound.

“Probably gonna need stitches.” She groaned, earning a small yet pained smile from the man in front of her.

[thehydromancer]

On a 'realistic/reasonable' weaponry kick for Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack lately. Based on the Polsten/Sten WW2 era guns, the Colonial Espatier use a Colsten rifle base as their primary armament. Enough variations of this simple and inexpensive weapon exist to fill most battlefield roles. Note the overheated barrel in the & the spare barrels/ammo for the Colsten wielded by the Ruschia.

A variant of the Colsten rifle, the Colsten Maxter features a housing around the barrel containing a water based coolant system. This is particularly useful in space based combat. Colsten Maxters tend to use drum magazines as their barrels can handle higher fire rates than their air cooled predecessors. The Full Maxter is a scaled up chain fed Colsten galting gun also cooled by water. Due to the movement of the water and spinning of the interior barrels, the Full Maxter requires a stable firing position for proper accuracy, and is popular under gravity. For funsies, I threw in a break barrel grenade launcher as well. The 1x2 plate with top clip and 1x1 round plate with handle is one of my favorite brick combos, and its always nice to find another use for it!

[atinyladybug-art]

Braincells aligned! I now want to redesign the sillies over at SCP Animated Tales From The Foundation!

Starting off with Dr Amelia Buck!

My thoughts on the design is that she would tie her hair up to get it out of the way (her hair being let down sometimes drives me insane cause she goes through containment breach with it down and I'm just like ????? Hello???? I have to tie my hair up when I scroll through Tumblr)

Her eyes are also a blueish grey cause like. She's very cold and sharp do it felt fitting her eyes would be grey-blue.

I also think she'd have a wider skirt (Almost A-line) for mobility.

Think she's the type to get cold easily but doesn't like jackets and prefers her labcoats so she would wear like. Leg warmers. Plus you can hide a survival knife in there or rip them off and tie them as an emergency bandage.

She also has pens in her pockets. Multicoloured because she has a system in her head for pen colours.

And it can't be seen cause her arms are covering it but she has a belt for 2 reasons. 1. Gun. 2. To accentuate her hips cause she knows she has a nice figure.

Also the base underneath (no lighting)

[lets-talk-gundam]

The MSA-0011 S Gundam

The early success of Project Zeta led to many new and innovative mobile suit designs. The introduction of new materials, new mechanisms, new weapons technologies, and new design talent at Anaheim opened the door for the company to dominate the MS development sector into the mid 90s UC.

During this period, a number of machines based on Project Zeta would see deployment by factions all across Earth-sphere. many of these post-Zeta machines would come to be known as "Anaheim Gundams", and would be regarded as some of the most influential designs in the history of mobile suits.

Developed for the Earth Federation forces sometime in the late 80s UC, the MSA-0011 S Gundam, also called the Superior Gundam and Iota Gundam internally at Anaheim, is a bit less well-known than its other Project Zeta siblings.

The machine featured a modular design, made up of three high-performance aerospace craft which combined via a core block system to form the full mobile suit. These units were the FXA-08BG Core Fighter, the G-Bomber, and the G-Attacker.

Despite similarities to the MSZ-010 ZZ Gundam, the design teams for the two machines largely worked independently of one another.

The S Gundam featured some unique equipment for the time, including the Beam Smart Gun, a powerful rifle that connected directly to the machine's power plant. It was also one of the earliest adopters of INCOMs and the quasi-psycommu system. Quasi-psycommu technology allows non-Newtype pilots to make use of formerly Newtype-exclusive weapon systems.

The S Gundam also saw several upgrade plans. These plans included the MSA-0011 [BST] S Gundam Booster Unit Type, the MSA-0011 [Bst] S Gundam Booster Unit Plan 303E "Deep Striker" , and the MSA-0011 [Ext] Ex-S Gundam.

The MSA-0011 [BST] S Gundam Unit Type and the MSA-0011 [Ext] Ex-S Gundam are both upgrades applied to the original unit, but the "Deep Striker" equipment was never built. The "Deep Striker" does appear as a playable unit in the SD Gundam G Generation series of games.

The S Gundam would also be developed into the Nero, a mass-production variant taking cues from it and the Lambda Gundam. It was used as the mainstay MS of the Federation's Task Force Alpha.

While all of this is rather impressive, the most notable part of the machine was undeniably its greatest strength. The S Gundam was equipped with the Advanced Logistic and Inconsequence Cognizing Equipment system. "ALICE" - as she was better known - was an advanced artificial intelligence designed to replace a human pilot.

WARNING!

The following section contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Gundam Sentinel! If you are interested in reading it, I highly recommend you do so!

ALICE was developed by Anaheim scientists Dr. Carol and Dr. Roots to automate certain functions of mobile suits. While this was possible previously, commands had to be programmed into the MS via a command console. The final objective of the project was to fully automate a Gundam-type mobile suit using ALICE.

She was programmed to grow and learn by observing and analyzing the actions of pilots, and was treated like a daughter by Dr. Roots. This caused tensions with Dr. Carol and other factions at Anaheim. A suspected act of sabotage resulted in an explosion that nearly destroyed ALICE, but Dr. Roots gave her life protecting her. The project was shelved for a time.

ALICE was picked back up later, being installed in the S Gundam and paired with Ryou Roots under the Federation's Task Force Alpha. She, along with the S Gundam, saw action during the Pezun rebellion perpetrated by the New Desides faction. This faction of Titans remnants and loyalists sought to break away from the Federation to further their own interests.

During combat, Ryou's lack of skill resulted in multiple near-death experiences. ALICE was responsible for saving his life on multiple occasions.

Learning from Ryou and other Task Force Alpha pilots, ALICE eventually developed an awareness of the world. She would deduce that friends were the most important thing to a person, after initially failing to comprehend Ryou's grief at the death of his fellow pilots.

Following this logic, she would eventually sacrifice herself to save the lives of her comrades. Her final words were thanks to Ryou for the memories and lessons she learned from him.

She would be destroyed during atmospheric entry.

The above machines were all designed by Hajime Katoki for the 1987 photo-novel Gundam Sentinel. Gundam Sentinel was written by Masaya Takahashi and published in Model Graphix magazine.