Okay, so you all must have seen that I’ve been working an awful lot of overtime, lately, as tends to happen from time to time in my line of work.  This has messed up my workflow, leading to a bunch of late comics over the past few weeks, which isn’t great.  So in an attempt to get back on track, I’m pushing this week’s page to next week, and instead, as I like to do, am going to regale you with some more technical info from the 6-Commando universe.  I hope you can understand why I’m doing this, and thank you for being so patient with me.  I’m sure that lesser people would have long since given up on me for it!

And so, here’s the one you may or may not have been waiting for, the “Howler” GEV, which our beloved Major Bronniford is trained to fly.  The text is as follows:

AFFILIATION: United Nations Alliance
YEAR IN SERVICE: 1976 (Model A)
NATION OF ORIGIN: Republic of Quebec
UNIT COST: CA$22,730,000 (1997)

The SOMUA  HS-49 hovercraft is unique on the modern battlefield, as it fills a role it has essentially created for itself, as a light multirole armored vehicle and gunship, which the UNA uses extensively for power-projection, force reconnaissance, and high-speed forward support.  The Howler is highly unusual in that it spans the gap between an armored ground vehicle and an air cavalry gunship, roles which prior to its intorduction had been filled by separate light tanks and helicopter units.  Making use of a hybridized flying-wing-in-ground-effect shape as well as direct thrust vectoring from its single bifurcated turbofan, the Howler is able to attain high speed and performance characteristics on the ground as a hovercraft, as well as limited low-altitude flight for short periods under directly-vectored thrust.  This makes it a particularly useful vehicle for supporting amphibious operations, and several UNA navies have equipped light carriers as landing docks for Howler GEVs to support marine landing operations. Although it can reach unprecedented speeds of over 150 MPH in open terrain, the vehicle’s airframe and complicated avionics have precluded the use of a single large weapon, requiring an array of several smaller weapons instead. This varied load can often be hard to use, yet no practical variants have yet been produced, in contrast to most other UNA vehicles.