Suomi Light Tank
Mass: 20 tons
Movement Type: Tracked
Power Plant: Husqvarna 80 ICE
Cruising Speed: 43.2 kph
Maximum Speed: 64.8 kph
Armor: SSAB Class A*
Armament:
1 Medium Laser
1 Machine Gun
1 SRM 2
Manufacturer: Suomi Heavy Industries, Diplass Technologies, Taurus MachineWorks/Taurus Territorial Industries, Magesty Metals and Manufacturing
Primary Factory: Terra (SHI), Apollo (DT), Taurus (TMW/TTI), Canopus (MMM)
Communication System: GP/100 A
Targeting & Tracking System: ST-100
Introduction Year: 2481
Tech Rating/Availability: D/C-C-C-C
Cost: 237,200 C-bills
The IST series of light tanks was once an almost ubiquitous light combat vehicle, first manufactured in the Nordic regions of Terra in the middle of the Age of War and widely deployed by the Terran Hegemony as a light infantry support vehicle, spreading to the other great houses through various truces and trade agreements and ultimately seeing serve on almost every front of the late Age of War. Though seen as largely obsolete by the Reunification War, the "Suomi pattern Light Tank" or simply the Suomi (after its original manufacturer) would still see heavy use both during the conflict and the occupation that followed, and once the occupation period was concluded and the Periphery States transitioned into Territorial States of the Star League, surplus Suomi tanks would be transfered by the hundreds to help reconstruct their indigenous military forces. As the tank moved out of service with the SLDF and the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere, it instead became a fixture of the Periphery, with production even restarting in three of the four periphery states.
The typical Suomi tank is designed for infantry support, particularly at close range. A medium laser and a twin tube SRM launcher make up the tank's primary armament, while a machine gun provides close in defense against enemy infantry attack. Mobility and armor protection were both initially judged as exceptional for a tracked light tank, though it must be acknowledged that this was relative to the common vehicles of its era, many of which were still built to more primitive design standards, and within a decade these characteristics could be more accurately described as at best adequate for its design role. The standard Suomi tank's most obvious weakness was an inability to engage targets at extended range, meaning the vehicles had to operate alongside other units able to provide long range fire support, or in areas with abundant cover. Another weakness of the Suomi as an infantry support vehicle was that it couldn't actually carry the troops it was meant to support, forcing them to rely on other transports to actually move across the battlefield.
Though once deployed in large numbers all across the Inner Sphere, the limitations of the Suomi relative to competing designs like the Goblin, as well as heavy losses during the Reunification War, saw the vehicle completely phased out of SLDF and House military service shortly after the war's end. Each of the Star League's new Territorial States would acquire many of these now surplus vehicles into service to rebuild their own shattered militaries in the early 27th century, and the Suomi would enjoy something of a rebirth in Periphery service. Though its limitations remained, the vehicle was cheap, able to do its job as a light garrison and defense unit, and inoffensive enough to allow the Periphery states to assemble large numbers of Suomis without drawing the ire or the rest of the Star League, and the vehicle proved so successful in periphery service that the Taurian Concordat, Rim Worlds Republic, and Magistracy of Canopus would all restart production to meet the demand.
Of course, while the Taurians and Canopeans would build a fair number of Suomis, the Rim Worlds Republic would eventually vastly outstrip not only the production goals of their fellow periphery states, but even the annual output of the original Terran production runs of the design. The same factors that had made it attractive for the other Periphery states only made it more attractive for Stephan Amaris. The Suomi was cheap, it could be built quickly and easily, and, to Amaris' limited strategic understanding, it was good enough to help fill out the ranks of both the Rim Worlds Republic military and the various secret armies assembling in the Periphery, and hopefully flood the battlefield to overwhelm surprised SLDF forces with shear numbers.
This, of course, didn't happen. While the secret armies could manage local superiority over the SLDF's periphery garrisons during the early stages of the Uprising, and Rim Worlds troops were able to overwhelm the weakened defenses of the Terran Hegemony when the bulk of the SLDF moved to put down the revolt, in the end neither could compete with the shear material and manpower advantages of the SLDF. The Suomi itself would be destroyed by the hundreds, then the thousands during the course of the war against the Periphery and Amaris, and the production facilities on Apollo and Canopus would become casualties of the conflict. The factory on Taurus would survive the conflict with only moderate damage, and would continue to produce the Suomi to support the badly depleted Taurian Defense Forces into the 29th century before shutting down and retooling to produce the Vedette. Though there are no known production facilities for this venerable light tank still in existence and the major periphery states have either mothballed or scrapped those that still remained in their inventory before the 31st century, the Suomi can still be found in reasonably large numbers on worlds in the mid to deep periphery, a testament to either the vehicle's reliability or the shear numbers built in the leadup to the Periphery Uprising.
Variants:
The most common variants of the Suomi removed the machine gun and the twin SRM launcher to make room for a larger missile rack, either a four tube SRM launcher to boost the vehicle's firepower or a five tube LRM launcher to provide it some token ranged capability. Another version of the same concept favored by the Rim Worlds Republic replaced the missile launcher and machine gun with a pair of chemical flamers, and this variant became a hallmark of the Republic's scorched earth tactics in the later stages of the Coup. A more involved set of variants removed all of the original weapons and installed a new turret mechanism to incorporate either a battery of long or short ranged missiles or a single light autocannon. This "Weapon Carrier" version of the Suomi was most commonly deployed alongside more familiar types to provide capabilities that the standard model and its simpler variants lacked. Finally there is a model that is environmentally sealed for operations in hostile environments. Despite the extra weight of the sealing system, this model actually manages to improve its firepower over the base model with an additional SRM launcher, thanks to the light weight of its advanced fuel cell engine. Of course, the higher operating costs of the Fuel Cell makes it rather unattractive for the mostly pre-fusion or limited fusion worlds of the mid to deep periphery.
Since the 3070s, the independent planet of Foxhaven has begun to field its own variants of the Suomi, the first of which replaces the original powerplant with the SitiCide powerplant used by the Scorpion tank, giving the vehicle a small but valuable boost in mobility. The weapon package has also been replaced with a five tube LRM launcher and a four tube SRM launcher, freeing up some weight to allow for mild improvements to the vehicle's armor protection. The second, much less common version uses a single seven tube multi-missile system rather than the mixed launchers, however this requires reverting the armor protection to that of a standard Suomi, and the advanced missile system is expensive and hard to come by that far out in the periphery. Though these new variants have long been assumed to be refits of standard Suomi tanks, the relatively large number of Suomi's that have turned up in Foxhaven's hands over the in recent decades has led to speculation that the world may actually have a hidden production facility for the vehicle.
Type: Suomi Light Tank
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Movement Type: Tracked
Tonnage: 20
Battle Value: 285
Equipment Mass
Internal Structure 2
Engine 80 ICE 5
Cruising MP: 4
Flank MP: 6
Heat Sinks: 3 3
Control Equipment: 1.0
Power Amplifier: 0.5
Turret: 0.5
Armor Factor 64 4
Internal Armor
Structure Value
Front 2 15
R/L Side 2/2 12/12
Rear 2 10
Turret 2 15
Weapons
and Ammo Location Tonnage
Medium Laser Turret 1.0
Machine Gun Turret 0.5
SRM 2 Turret 1.0
SRM 2 Ammo (50) Body 1.0
Half Machine Gun Ammo (100) Body 0.5
Download the Beyond The Frontier Record Sheet Book, which includes all the variants of the Suomi discussed here, by following the link located in this thread:
https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=84454.0Author's note: I enjoy thinking about weird little linguistic quirks that might have developed over centuries of contextual disconnection, like how a tank might end up being named the "Finland" because successive generations of users who don't speak Finnish just got used to calling it a Suomi.
Also it uses a Swedish engine. Nordic Cooperation!
