MIU-43 Rockhound

Styled somewhat after a common morph used by hunters of the Kumiho Clade, the MIU-43 Rockhound is one of the primary heavy attack synthmorphs of Hounds of Tindalos, and has been adopted by a number of other combat groups. A bulky, 2 meter long mechanical hound, the Rockhound carries more firepower and protection than an Information Age IFV in a highly mobile package with advanced supplemental stealth and EW capability.

The Rockhound carries a heavy layer of nanocomposite armor protection, consisting of multiple layers of cBC5 metastable polycrystalline diamondoid, with microcrystals of other carbon allotrope incorporated within the diamond matrix to increase flexibility and toughness. Spongy mid-layers containing nanofabrication systems and nanite storage cells are sandwiched within, allowing rapid repair in response to attacks. The outer armor is coated in a layer of quantum dot smartmatter, which can be charged to take on any atomic form, including phased arrays capable of outputting broad spectrum barrage jamming and point defense lasers with outputs of up to 500 kW.

For offense, the Rockhound carries a pair of dorsal turreted weapon pylons that can carry up to 125 kilograms of payload each - these are normally held close to the hull, but can be extended slightly to fire from cover. Typical armament is a 2.5 megawatt heavy pulse laser cannon (up to 500 kJ at 300 RPM, capable of penetrating 340mm RHAe per shot within 500 meters) and a 24 shot 64mm missile launcher. The tail also mounts an EM launcher system for 20 internally stacked 64x80mm grenades. The launchers typically use a mix of EFP anti-personnel warheads and MAHEM anti-vehicle warheads - other options include airburst frag, stun and thermobaric warheads for use against soft targets, and occasionally 2 kiloton autocatalytic nuclear warheads on more open battlefields where collateral reduction is not a priority.

The Rockhound is powered by a superconducting power pack storing 3.5 gigajoules of energy, sufficient for long term operations, and can recharge with ambient solar while operating at lower power levels. The MIU-43 is also equipped with excellent stealth capabilites - the multispectrum phased array can provide effective invisibility by matching incident radiation with emissions. It also carries a 12 kg internal Al-Si phase change heat sink with 7.485 MWs of capacity, enough to mask the waste heat signature at max output for up to a minute.

For the pilot, it features an integrated armored brain case, designed to contain most human brain or smaller sized intelligences. Hounds of Tindalos typically use a memristive physical neural network brain with processing speeds up to 1.1e3 times human baseline at significantly higher levels of general intelligence, typically in conjunction with smaller tactical-savant tulpas to provide greater situational awareness as well as aimbot targeting software. Accuracy against targets is functionally perfect with lasers in a clean environment, but stealth and phased array laser IR/optical jamming can drop actual accuracy by a huge margin.

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