During the weapons development stage of the RDF's formation, there was considerable interest in the useage of artillery assets in this new form of high speed and non linear warfare. Never before had maneuver units had the speed and mobility of the enemy Earth was soon to face. The question was not whether artillery weapons were needed, it was what form they should take.
In the late 1980's the United States military had approved for procurement the MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) as a corps artillery weapon. This was an incredibly lethal weapons system whose time had come, and armed with that fact, the weapons design teams of the RDF set out to create a missile artillery weapons system to put the MLRS to shame. They succeeded in the RDF's Spartan Destroid.
However, there was a nagging doubt that many "old school" RDF ground commanders felt when presented with the new Spartan. It seemed that perhaps they were simply unwilling to fully embrace the new Destroid technology. After all they had a perfect combined arms team, with Excalibers as the front line combat units, Gladiators for engineering support, Raider X's for tactical air defense and the new Spartan as a long range artillery and air defense unit.
When the RDF Army set out to hone their tactics with the new weapons systems at the United States National Training Center in Fort Irwin California, it soon became appearent what was left out. There was no suitable command and control vehicle for the management of any mech formations larger than a platoon (4 vehicles). The simple problems of communications and size of the combat area proved to be the undoing of the RDF at these early exercises.
At first it was deemed that perhaps one of the ubiquitous M113 APC varients the M577 could be refitted and upgraded to act as a mobile TOC (tactical operations center), after all it was performing that job in the US armored and mechanized divisions at that time.
That idea was soon thrown out, as it was still too small and underarmored to be useful for the RDF's purposes. It was within 6 weeks of the disasterous trials at NTC that the requirements for a command and control mecha were placed at the feet of the RDF design teams feet.
The requirements were quite daunting, perhaps even more so than those faced by the Excaliber's design team of six years ago. This new mecha was to be fast, well armed, hevily armored and contain the best Command, Control, Communications, Cryptographic, Intelligence and Information (known as C4I2) equipment in the world, and be able to hold a planning cell for any size formation from a battalion TOC to a division staff..
Unfortunaltely, many of these requirements proved to be mutually exclusive in the final analysis. The M.A.C. II's orginal designation was the Mobile Armored Command and Control mecha or MAC2 (MAC squared) for short. This was soon converted to the now accepted M.A.C. II. The name "Monster" came about from the quote by General Arthur Halsey, UN RDF Army, who upon seeing the almost 300 ton prototype MAC was heard to utter, "Jesus Christ, look at that fucking monster!"
The MAC II, while a valuable addition to the mechanized forces of the RDF has a tendency to find itself in the middle of fighting it is supposed to be coordinating. The heavy weapons, sensors, and armor of this mecha make it hard to kill, but it is certainly not an impossible task. When used as a pure command and control vehicle, providing limited fire support this mecha is incedibly deadly, but when stripped of it's supporting units, it becomes nothing more than a very valuable target.
Vehicle Designation: HWR-00-MK II Mobile Armored Command and Control, (M.A.C.C.) commonly called the M.A.C. II Monster
Variants of note: The MK III which replaces the tri-laser cannon arms with triple tube missile launchers. This Variant is called the Mighty Monster, or the Mighty Mo (perhaps a reference to the USS Missouri, a mothballed United States Iowa-class dreadnaught from WWII, whose nickname was "The Mighty Mo" due to her impressive firepower.)
Crew: 1 pilot, 1 co-pilot, 1 communications tech
Passengers: Up to 8 in a spacious planning bay equipped with CCTV, satellite communications capability, computer imagery, crptographic equipment, ground surveillance radar, laser communications, communications networking systems, extensive ECM and ECCM suites.
SP and MDC by location:
Speed: 20 mph (32.18 kph) under optimal conditions
Height: 73.7 ft (22.46m)
Length: 42.7 ft (13m)
Width: 13.10 ft (9.75m)
Weight: 186.3 tons unloaded/ 238.8 tons with full ammo load (285.5 tons loaded weight: Mk II)
Main Engine: 1 x WT-1001 Fusion Reactor, Output=11500 SHP
Secondary Engine: 1 x CT-8P Fusion Reactor, Output=890 SHP
Weapon Systems
Fire Control, Communications and Other Systems
Combat Bonuses