Vehicle of the Week Update: Anhur(The original article has fallen off the face of the archives.)In the beginning, there was the Karnov. And it was good. But the followers of Kerensky had wandered far from home, into the desolation of the Pentagon Worlds and beyond, and they no longer had the ability to place orders with their New Earth Trading Company representatives to order them. Since the need for a versatile heavy utility VTOL hadn't magically gone away in the process, the Clans turned their attention to the problem of producing a counterpart quite early on, preceding the standardization initiative of ilKHan Winson, and basing their efforts on the Star League's Cobra transport. As usual for Clan vehicle designs, the resultant output is a bit long on teeth and not quite long enough on utility by Spheroid standards, but the Anhur is undeniably effective in its intended role.
(As some fluff states that the Karnov is also a descendant of the Cobra, the above should not be taken literally.)
The Anhur is named for an Egyptian war god, patron of the army, and as the old adage goes, an army marches on its stomach. No military force lasts long in the field without logistical support, and the Anhur's specialty is battlefield logistics, the dangerous practice of moving supplies forward to units in the field in areas that aren't yet secure. The heart of the design is the same 100-rated fusion engine that powered the Cobra, propelling it at an 8/12 movement - slower than the Karnov (fatally so for the tastes of some, but not others) but capable of powering energy weapons more easily, standard for Clan units, and providing a nearly unlimited theoretical operational radius. The armor was replaced by ferro-fibrous composites for an impressive 15/14/12/2 pattern. A heavy particle cannon/Gauss rifle hit on the nose won't even go internal, while the flanks can absorb it and survive, or weather two hits from normal Clan medium lasers without going internal. The art for the Cobra and Anhur bear a strong family resemblance, but the major difference between the two in terms of capability is obvious. Where the Cobra has a single medium laser to defend itself along with a pair of AMS units, the Clans mounted an ERML and an MPL up front, with another MPL in the tail, sacrificing some of the VTOL's cargo space for a credible defensive battery, but leaving seven tons available, comparable to the modern Karnov.
As GWA noted in his article on this trash hauler, it makes a formidable transport for supplies, infantry, or ultra-light vehicles (support vees, mainly, although I have no doubt, knowing tinkerers and bored soldiers, that some lunatic has stripped an Anhur down and launched a WiGE out of it). As long as the Anhur sticks to its job - transport - and uses the guns as suppression weapons instead of pretending to be the gunship it isn't, it will provide sterling performance. Several Clans permanently attach them to combat formations to move infantry around, including the combined arms proponents in the Horses, the same band of
lunatics enthusiasts responsible for the
Elemental APC "Turhan II" variant of the Ku. As such, it's probably no surprise that they're the ones behind the modified Anhur.
Arguably, the single biggest problem the Anhur has is the "waste" of tonnage on heat sinks to support its somewhat prodigious energy mounts, and in the modern era, those weapons are going to do relatively little against infantry. Killing two birds with one stone (one hopes they were Emerald Turkeys), the Horses stripped the MPLs out, rigged a second ERML aft, and then placed an anti-personnel Gauss rifle along each one for a decent anti-armor punch and the kind of anti-infantry capability most people associate with the products of Lindblad or Sperry-Browning. They also mounted an ECM suite for additional defensive capabilities, or to provide EW support for the BA if the pilot is clever, daring, and lacking anything more sensible to do with his time. In the process, they freed up another three tons, giving them a second vehicle able to lift two points of standard BA (or a full point of assault suits) and carry them across the battlefield.
The final canon variant was the Anhur P-Stealth from XTRO:Pirates, mixing technology fearlessly to carry vehicular stealth armor (which functions as you'd expect the 'Mech version to do) and a pair of Clan LRM 15s fed from a single ton of ammunition. The armor is slightly thinner due to the use of stealth composites (which offer the same basic protective value as standard armor), but in light of the increased target modifiers at medium and long range, that's probably acceptable. However, it's no faster, so you need to stay at those ranges to exploit the relative targeting advantages of stealth armor. Ripple your missiles off (possibly closing to seven hexes to get at the very edge of short range, but at medium range for a number of other weapons) and get out of the way. It still has 5.5 tons of cargo space. It's never explained how the pirates got their hands on the hardware necessary for this variant, including a Clan VTOL and weapons as well as Spheroid electronics and experimental stealth armor. By the end of 3074, the pirate band responsible had basically disappeared.
Image Reference: Choo-choo! The
MUL love train is rollin' on, with a special stop for the
in piratical waters! Once you get off, be sure to check out
the Anhur display over at CamoSpecs.
