Iguana

Specifications
Use	Scout/recon Gear
Production Code	OACS-01L/SC
Manufacturer	Territorial Arms Skavara Heavy Industries
Height	4.1 meters
Speed	Walker: 52 kph SMS: 84.2 kph

The basic scout and reconnaissance Gear of the Southern armies, the Iguana was designed to replace the Basilisk Gears that had been pressed into these duties in the past. The Basilisk was a trooper Gear that ended being most commonly deployed as a recon unit because of the massive problems posed by the Anolis, the South’s only dedicated recon Gear. Southern commanders had gotten used to stripping some armor off Basilisks to increase their speed, but they found that was not quite enough and hence a new Gear was commissioned.

They wanted to see one that could do everything the Basilisk was capable of, and more. Unlike the Northern Cheetah, which featured light armor and high maneuverability, the Iguana had to be effective as a light general-purpose trooper as well as a scout model. The design procedure was a success.

The Iguana features a chassis that is only vaguely related to the Basilisk, but does have some similarities with the ill-fated Anolis, i.e. a small cockpit surrounded by armoplast plates that take up most of the torso of a steel-alloy frame. The newer design, however, manages to couple speed and armor as few other machines have been able to do. While the Iguana can achieve a running speed of 52 kph, a rolling one of over 84 kph and an impressive degree of maneuverability, it nonetheless carries almost as much armored protection as the Jäger.

The Iguana is also provided with a top-of-the-line Obelisk MERIT 1000 electronics package, designed especially for the model. The Obelisk package provide long-range, precision sensor pods and communications equipment, supplemented by a battlefield electronic counter-measures (ECM) suite. The Iguana's main direct fire weapon is a simple MPGU-22 pack gun, supplemented by a Vogel-7 rocket pod and a simple vibroknife. The Iguana’s weapons load is lighter than the Basilisk’s or the Jäger’s, but maintains a close approximation of their firepower. In line with its duties as a forward observer unit, the Iguana is also equipped with an Elite-15 laser target designator, allowing it to lead guided munitions to their targets.

Usage

Since its introduction in TN 1879, the Iguana has been a very successful design. Appreciated by its pilots for its combination of speed and armored protection, the “Iggy” can be found in all but the most disfavored of front-line units. Local defense militias and other second-line units may still be using converted Basilisks as their recon units, but these have become rarer and rarer. The Iguana is so popular that Territorial Arms, in order to meet production requirements, has subcontracted out many of the parts to several other corporations. The most prominent of these is Skavara Heavy Industries, which is now responsible for a large part of Iguana production.

Over its career, the Iguana has proven itself an adept light trooper/commando machine as well, and is in use by elite forces in this function. Indeed, the speed of the machine, combined with its offensive and defensive punch, make it almost ideal for close-quarter rapid strike operations against lightly armored targets. The Iguana has also spawned a family of variants, many of which build on its strength as a commando unit.

Over the fifty cycles of its deployment, the Iguana has gone through several refits. In its early production models, the Iguana’s speed was not quite at its peak and in TN 1883 the secondary movement system core motors were upgraded to a new and more efficient model that gave it its current speed profile. The Obelisk Electronics MERIT package has also been upgraded several times. The current package, the MERIT 1200, has increased the communications range and was designed to fit into a slightly modified armored head module that protects the main sensor array from enemy fire. This later innovation was introduced after the War of the Alliance after many Iguana pilots took to using makeshift plasteel shields to protect the sensor eyes they felt were overly vulnerable to damage. The new head module introduced for the 1200 series is visually similar to the old one, with only a slight reduction in the size of the omnicamera. The inside of the head, however, is plated with an armor laminate to increase its endurance. The success of the Iguana also inspired a derived model, the Chameleon stealth Gear.

Gallery

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