Bear

Specifications
Use	Fire support Heavy Gear
Production Code	HACS-01HG-FS
Manufacturer	Northco
Height	4.8 meters (5.6 w/MRP)
Speed	Walker: 36 kph SMS: 60 kph

The Bear was the first Northern Gear designed to be a true fire support specialist unit from the onset. Previously, this function had been assumed by the Mad Dog, a Western-designed Gear made as an attempt to face the UMF’s Hunter. The Mad Dog sported heavier weaponry and spread throughout the North in limited numbers in the early period of Gear development. The Mad Dog was never a superior design, however, and was withdrawn from service. The Northco Razorback was also supposedly assigned to limit fire-support duties, but its short-range, low-ammunition weaponry kept it as a tank-hunter above all else. In TN 1810 Northco announced that it would be finally filling the fire support niche appropriately and the Bear was released soon thereafter.

The Bear’s designers based most of their drive train design on the lower body structure of the Razorback, a particularly tough system layout that had already proved its worth in combat. The upper body, however, was totally redesigned; the humpbacked frame of the Razorback’s torso was replaced by a more humanoid one. The pilot’s head was protected by the “head-in-head” configuration, similar to the one found on the Hunter. The arms were made large and strong, with hydraulic rotors instead of piston-like actuators. The S-V460T engine was replaced by a S-V790T rigged with a heavy duty radiator.

The weaponry of the Bear was designed with short to medium range fire-support duties in mind, with assault mission profiles a secondary concern. Fire support duties were ensured by twin GH-10 rocket pods and a Harmon T-12 guided mortar unit. The rocket pods could be used as direct fire weapons during assaults as well, when their power was supplemented by a large Riley M225 autocannon. Anti-infantry defense was insured by a GU-4 machinegun mounted in the shoulder casing of the right manipulator arm. The GU-4 machinegun placement, although ingenious, caused problems because of the muzzle’s proximity to the main omnicamera. When the gun was fired on full automatic, the bright muzzle flash has a tendency to blind the Gear’s pilot. The problem was usually solved by makeshift flash suppressors.

Usage

While it was a definite improvement on the Mad Dog and other converted fire support Gears, the Bear was plagued by technical problems over its career. Critical problems, such as the wildly defective fire control computer and sensor camera system of the prototypes, took many cycles to fix. The engine also had the bad habit of shutting down whenever the pilot pushed his machine a little too hard. An inexperienced pilot always took a little time before learning how to use all his machine’s potential while avoiding a shutdown. The problem was finally traced to a faulty valve design, though many S-V790T engines were never fixed — the monitoring computer was simply reprogrammed to take the valve failure into account. By the late TN 1820s safeguards were in place and most pilots knew how to keep their Bears running on the battlefield.

The Bear has served with distinction for over a century and has seen service across the North and the Badlands. Most forces used the Bear in five-Gear fire support teams, sometimes including a single scout Gear for target designation. During the incessant border skirmishes of the TN 1840s and 1850s, Southern units very wisely came to fear the sight of a Ferret recon Gear scooting across the battlefield using its target designator to “paint” units for the mortars of Bear squadrons.

Over its career, the Bear spawned very few (and rare) variants, although it did lead to the creation of the Den Mother artillery command Gear which involved an extensive redesign using the Bear as its basis. As new technology became available, however, the Bear slowly faded into obsolescence. In the TN 1870s, Northco entered into an agreement with Shaian Mechanics to coproduce a next generation fire-support model to replace the Bear. This project led to the development of the Grizzly. Despite the introduction of its successor, the Bear is still in fairly wide circulation. Pressed back into front-line service during the war, the Bear is now a mainstay of second-line and local militia units. A large number of the Gears can also be found in the Badlands and Fort Neil’s Neil Motor Works has recently acquired the rights to produce spare parts for the design (and its cousin, the Den Mother).

Variants

• Den Mother

Media

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External links

• Bear Miniature - DP9 Store