Chapter 400: Battle Between Main Battle Tanks and Multi-Legged Chariots

"All crews, pay attention to the surrounding situation and collision warnings, don't crush the surrounding infantry."

In the communication channel, the platoon leader's voice sounded a little nervous to Montana, but he was not surprised. As the head of the team, Montana himself was more nervous than the platoon leader.

After the assignment, the armored company, which was temporarily reinforced to the assault force in the ATT, followed their respective attack routes and led the infantry along the streets to the interior of the Garibal city.

Montana is now wearing a protective helmet with integrated head display functions, so although he is in a fully enclosed passenger cabin, he can still clearly see the situation around the vehicle through the vehicle body.

At this moment, a circle of red dotted lines with warning meanings are displayed around the vehicle body, which represents the area affected by the gravity control unit.

Although the main range of the gravity control area is still directly below the vehicle body, the range of this circle of red dotted lines has been expanded for safety reasons.

The infantrymen who were advancing with the main battle tanks were now closely attached to the periphery of the red dotted line and kept alert to the surroundings.

Montana knew that the dotted line would also be displayed on the tactical visors of these mobile infantrymen to prevent them from accidentally entering the gravity control area.

As a member of the third batch of Roma "trainees", Montana was selected to join the Atlas Combat Vehicle Training Camp for intensive training with other companions because of his relatively outstanding driving talent after completing the recruit training.

Then, as the "top student" of the training camp, he was transferred to the ATLAS TEST TEAM, which was the heart-warming team of the Roma soldiers and could use various advanced equipment at the first time.

For Montana, this was definitely an affirmation of his technical and tactical level.

After all, this "rabbit group" that likes to spray various cartoon rabbit graffiti on the external armor of vehicle equipment generally selects personnel from teams with actual combat experience.

Not long after entering ATT, Montana became the commander of the new suspended main battle tank with the final designation T-740 ‘Thor’s Hammer’.

This new tank, which is one of the main vehicles of the future Atlas ground heavy armored forces, is based on the ‘Project 12’ new main battle tank that was tested on the Rubion V.

However, after the equipment research and development center used the pioneer technology from ‘archaeology’ to get the gravity control unit, the walking mechanism of this main battle tank was changed from the traditional crawler type to the suspended type.

Since the gravity control unit is much lighter than the traditional crawler walking mechanism, the weight of the whole vehicle was reduced a lot at once. In addition, the design team boldly abandoned the gas turbine that was originally the main power source and replaced it with a reduced version of the superconducting battery stack, upgrading the T-740 directly from ‘hybrid’ to ‘pure electric’, which also caused the main battle tank to be reduced from 60 tons to just 50 tons at once.

After testing the gravity control unit and finding that there was still a lot of load redundancy, the design team began to "pile up" materials, including additional battery packs, more ammunition, more sensors, and a large number of electronic countermeasures equipment.

These things eventually made the T-740 Thor's Hammer no longer a simple main battle tank, but an important support node on the front line of the battle. After multiple vehicles are networked, they can not only share situational awareness information with friendly forces, but also independently launch electronic warfare attacks as offensive cover.

Especially with the help of the combat assistance AI developed by Lilith, the crew was directly reduced to 2 people - driver, commander/gunner,

A large amount of information collected by the sensor will also be filtered in real time by the combat assistance AI, only some key information will be retained to prompt the commander, and the electronic warfare will also be dominated by the combat assistance AI, that is, the crew only needs to be responsible for decision-making, issuing instructions to the AI, moving, and firing.

In addition to these combat assistance means, the design team also handed in an excellent answer sheet in terms of the T-740's "main job".

The combat weight is 55 tons (additional armor can be installed), the maximum speed is 80 kilometers per hour, the all-terrain mobility, the obstacle crossing capability of up to 4 meters, and the unmanned turret can be stuffed with an electromagnetic reconnection gun with a track inner diameter of 180 mm, or the plasma gun that has also completed the test and finalization and entered mass production.

Although the latter has lost the ability to switch to the "curved" mode, the high-temperature plasma group launched, for units without deflection field or insufficient deflection field power, its high temperature and electron bombardment killing effect should not be underestimated.

Especially in street fighting, it is very effective for "soft targets" such as mobile infantry and ordinary power armor.

It can be said that in this era when main battle tanks are gradually declining, Atlas's equipment research and development center has found a new track for this "veteran".

Montana did not realize the combat effectiveness of this new main battle tank at first. When he saw the allocation information sent by the ATT personnel dispatch center, he was even a little disappointed.

Because he has always been more interested in another heavy vehicle tested by ATT in Rubion V, the heavy multi-legged tank code-named "Project 14" and now the finalized number T-600 "Chimera".

In the eyes of many Roma, multi-legged tanks, which are full of mechanical equipment, look more powerful and have stronger combat effectiveness.

However, after driving the T-740 himself, Montana was quickly impressed by this new equipment and immediately felt that multi-legged tanks were nothing.

This is also the problem that the Atlas Equipment Research and Development Center is currently struggling with.

At present, the ground vehicle design group of the Equipment Research and Development Center is divided into two factions. One side is the "main battle tank revival faction" that emerged after the development of the gravity control unit, and the other side is the "multi-legged tank firm faction" that still believes that the bionic multi-legged tank still has the power to fight.

Coincidentally, the T-740 "Thor's Hammer" and the T-600 "Chimera" were also developed by these two factions.

However, due to the excellent performance currently shown by the T-740 and the advantages of the main battle tank after solving the mobility and obstacle crossing capabilities, the T-600 heavy multi-legged tank has been temporarily overshadowed.

"Warning, an abnormal electromagnetic signal was detected in the window of the building marked at 1 o'clock, which is suspected to be the start-up feature of the anti-vehicle missile fire control radar."

The voice of the combat auxiliary AI suddenly sounded, causing Montana to quickly focus on the marked window in the distance, but due to the perspective problem, he could not see the situation in the window for a while.

"It seems that the swarm didn't clean up this place."

Montana muttered to himself, glancing at the infantry 'around him', and then pressed a few times on a touch screen at hand, and the warning information of the combat assistance AI was synchronized to the squad around him and the other two tanks behind him.

Then he saw that a mobile infantryman who was searching and advancing turned his head and made an OK gesture to a sensor somewhere on the T-740, and then a single-soldier drone mounted on his back flew up and quickly flew towards the marked window.

Soon, a small window popped up on the integrated head display and showed the picture of the drone camera, and a heavy anti-vehicle missile launcher that should be placed on the ground position was arranged in the window.

"Fuck, the cold launch mode is used indoors by them???"

While Montana was 'amazed' by the operation of these imperial defenders, the picture in the camera flashed suddenly, and he looked up and saw that the drone made an emergency lateral translation to avoid the shooting in the window.

The vital signs detection device on the drone also confirmed that there were no other soldiers or civilians in the building except for the anti-tank team.

"OK, confirmed that there are no civilians in the building, 172 crew prepare to fire!"

"Received, permission to fire."

The 180mm inner diameter electromagnetic reconnection gun of the T-740 was raised under the guidance of Montana's pupil aiming, and the electric transmission turret slowly rotated a certain angle.

"Gavin, pay attention to stabilize the vehicle body."

Montana gently kicked the buttocks of the driver Gavin sitting in front of him in the longitudinal crew cabin layout. The latter immediately indicated that he had received it in the communication channel, and added:

"You don't have to kick my butt every time."

The buzzing sound of the main gun charging sounded. After the "hot gun" had been charged in advance, the charging before firing did not take long.

I saw an orange-yellow fire line flashing on the street, and then the marked window was covered with smoke and dust, and then the piercing scream and explosion sounded at the same time.

However, the crew and mobile infantry who had turned on the equipment noise reduction mode would not be affected by the loud noise.

When the smoke and dust dissipated, the original window had become a huge gap in the building, or the entire building had been cut off a corner under the kinetic energy impact of the electromagnetic reconnection gun.

"It's powerful!"

Montana subconsciously wanted to swing his fist, and then realized that he was in a compact crew cabin.

At the same time, the drone that had just dodged also flew over again to confirm the impact of the attack. When the sign of "suspected threat target position" originally marked on the integrated head display disappeared, Montana also breathed a sigh of relief.

But just as he was about to continue advancing, the drone suddenly detected a large number of enemy units in front of the street, and a series of red inverted triangle signs were also marked.

The next second, a series of dense barrages swept over, and the drone was shot down in an instant.

An accompanying anti-aircraft vehicle equipped with a multi-barrel electromagnetic machine gun!

Montana immediately realized why the suicide swarm and cruise missiles were not fully effective. It turned out that the enemy had so many accompanying terminal air defense units. This thing is indeed one of the natural enemies of densely packed drones in street fighting conditions.

"Engage! Engage! MBT number 2! Multi-legged tank number 4, infantry and power armor number 33!"

While yelling in the communication channel, Montana adjusted the deflection force field from 'adaptive' to 'high power' mode, and then subconsciously kicked Gavin on the butt.

"Gavin, lower the height of the vehicle body"

"Received!"

The body of the T-740 slowly lowered, and the mobile infantry that had been following the advance quickly dispersed to both sides of the street, and another T-740 following Montana's crew also drove to a position parallel to them.

The translucent barrel of the plasma cannon pointed steadily in the direction of the enemy unit under the work of the active stabilization system.

A second later, powered by a superconducting battery stack, a ball of plasma silently detached from the translucent barrel.

The high-temperature, high-speed plasma ball, essentially a ball of lightning, swept across the street in the blink of an eye. The attack distance was less than one kilometer, and the launch and hit occurred almost at the same time.

"Boom!"

The plasma ball exploded quickly after hitting a multi-legged chariot as the target, completely melting it into a pool of "soft butter" and affecting a circle of infantry around it.

Such scenes occurred in almost every street covered by the wide attack surface. Although the imperial defenders continued to mobilize troops to plug the gap, the gap was still torn open in the face of the equipment that had obviously produced a generation gap.

At the same time, suicide swarms and cruise missiles continued to penetrate deep into the city through the gap, avoiding the air defense units marked by the front-line troops.

"I told you, this is really over now"

In the cabin of the Infinity, Van Fleet looked at the real-time images taken by the high-altitude stealth drone on the screen and sighed deeply.