The Long Bow Jägervariant was initially intended to serve in riflemen squads which would engage targets in the Badlands at a distance and, using precision targeting, destroy enemy units. The project was on the point of cancellation because of poor performances. On the final inspection of the prototype design, one of the military observers realized exactly what it was that they had in front of them; combining precision fire control and long-range weapon systems, it was a perfect mass-produced sniper Gear. In TN 1691 the first Long Bow Jäger entered service. It was used to good effect during the War of the Alliance to pick off battlefield commanders of the CEF forces.
Sitting back from the action, the Long Bow would find likely command targets and tracked them until a shot opportunity appeared. The machine was used with great effect during the War of the Alliance as a “Jan-Slayer." While human commanders mostly kept to their armored vehicles, making sniping difficult unless they came out for a look, Jan-class GRELs who commanded smaller units tended to stay more in the open and made perfect targets.
There was some confusion as to what code to provide the Long Bow, the TE code not having been decided on at the time, and in a bureaucratic mix-up it was assigned an artillery coding. Until the error was flagged bases with Long Bow Jäger’s attached to them could not understand the reason for artillery shells being earmarked for the use by the Long Bows.
Overall, the Long Bow Jäger proved as good a sniper Gear as could be achieved for its price. The Long Bow is sturdy, reliable and is easily modified depending upon the task required of it. To make it even more competitive, several improvements have been offered, the least of which is the addition of camouflage netting and a smoke launcher system. The sensor suite has also been upgraded. Some Long Bows had their AP mortar replaced with a light guided one and were also given a pack gun for situations which require an automatic weapon, but they were extremely rare; none is known to have survived the war.
