Been away a while, haven't I? I'll level with you all. A few weeks ago I suffered a head injury while helping load boxes into a car while moving someone. With previous head injuries on the record, I struggled for a while with being able to do something like... having the lights on, for example. I want to thank Moonsword for covering for me a couple of weeks back, and apologize to him and to you all for missing last week- I thought he was going to do another one last week, and by the time we realized the mistake it was late enough in the week that I just left it alone and figured I'd let it wait until the weekend. So, here we are, I'm back, let's get a brief show on the road.
Moving infantry around via armored vehicle has been a key part of warfare since World War II. From early attempts like the German and American half-tracks to the modern Bradley IFV and Russian BTR, units like this are just the thing for getting troops from point A to point B quickly, without them being at risk of getting killed along the way in a vulnerable truck bed. If you're lucky, your APC might even be able to shoot back in support of the troops. Things haven't changed in a thousand years- in Battletech's universe, APCS are still vital elements of warfare. The advent of battle armor didn't change this much- while the Elemental suit, for example, offered better protection and mobility to the infantry, it still wasn't fast enough to keep up with a rapid advance- and sometimes there's not an Omnimech handy to ride around on. This is particularly true in the case of the Federated Suns- while they enjoy battle armor as much as anyone else, and have a number of Omnimech designs to have them ride, sometimes that's not an option, and a more conventional way to move them around is the way to go. The result here is the JI2A1 APC- a unit that sadly lacks a real name, but can provide a serious impact on the modern battlefield.
Built by Johnston Industries (thus the 'JI' portion of the name), the twin-nosed APC starts with focusing on the 'mobile' part of the job. It accomplishes this with a 120-rated fuel cell engine, scooting the 25-ton craft to 10/15- the kind of speed a VTOL usually reaches. What more can be said beyond that? If your infantry moves a hex a turn, or a couple of hexes for battle armor, this will get it moving a hell of a lot quicker. Hard to argue with that, right?
Another key element to an APC is the whole 'armor' portion. If the vehicle is no better protected than a regular truck, then why build this thing anyway? The JI2A1 (I hate that name) has the advantage of moving fast enough to dodge a lot of incoming fire, but not all of it- for that, it relies on. Four tons of heavy ferro fibrous armor give the plucky little hovercraft the ability to protect itself against a few hits here and there, anyway. With the design being intended to quickly move infantry into harms way, danger is all around- so the armor here is in a very even coating. Twenty points up front, fifteen everywhere else (one less on the rear). Of note, the artwork shows an open-topped infantry bay, which is rather unusual for an APC- Battletech doesn't care, but infantry would probably rather not see what is above on a battlefield full of shrapnel, aircraft, and Mechs towering over them. Molotovs are a bitch. ;)
The four-ton infantry bay, open topped as it is, is plenty to hold a squad of whatever battle armor you decided to bring along. The author found that while the Davion-built stuff like the Grenadier are obviously well-suited, other units like the Fenrir, Void, or even Purifier are pretty handy as well- depends on what you have in mind for the job of the day (Hauberks seem fun too, but all three attempts to test this theory resulted in Megamek crashes). To keep the infantry safe, a pair of SRM-4s sit in the turret, with a ton of ammo to share. It's simple but effective weaponry- what more could one want, really?
A variant exists, which keeps everything as it was before, but drops the SRM racks for a pair of MML-3s. Since nothing else really changes, this version obviously does slightly less damage per salvo, but can engage at much longer ranges- so that's good news, and makes the variant a much better proposition overall if you can get it.
And you can, because the JI2A1 is one of the most widely utilized APCs in the Inner Sphere. From its early start in the Victoria War, it's spread like wildfire to almost every military in the Inner Sphere, even Clans. So whatever flag you fight under, give some thought to using these nameless but certainly not toothless little monsters to move your troops to the front.
