Based on
this thread. Here are my ideas. All three are intended for a WoB Waneta LAM design. Fluff included for your pleasure.
The Blakists were never successful with their Land-Air Mech designs, despite their best efforts. In particular, the Word scientists struggled with the same problem that plagued Star League-era designs: the lack of room for adequate weaponry. In the end, the Blakists opted to use clan technology to maximize firepower. However along the way, several alternatives had been explored and rejected.
One of the most promising of these approaches was to equip their LAMs with hand-held weapons, a then-recent Federated Suns innovation. The concept was tested extensively, and the Word of Blake even went so far as to turn out several manufacturing runs of handhelds before abandoning the concept. This unused cache was uncovered at Luyten, and Republic intelligence officers were eventually able to piece together the story. The weapons had been quite effective, especially once they were upgraded to clantech as part of the general LAM effort.
However, the Blakist LAMs were used primarily in commando strikes, a role ill-suited to the drawbacks of hand-helds. In particular, the problem of transporting the weapons into battle was never solved. Having the LAMs carry them as cargo defeated the purpose of having a hand-held in the first place. Dropping them in cargo containers or shuttling them down was deemed impractical. Ultimately, despite the pilots' objections, mission planners abandoned the concept and the weapons were mothballed, never having actually been deployed in combat. The hand-held concept survived only in the visual appearance of the Waneta's fixed main weapon.
The Blakist scientists had discovered very early on that missile launchers out-performed direct-fire weapons by a considerable margin, especially since the kind of fast in-and-out commando strikes conducted by LAMs emphasized quick bursts of high-intensity firepower over sustained slugging matches. The limited ammunition was discovered to have another advantage; once emptied, a captured weapon posed little threat to the LAM pilot who dropped it.
- ATM-9: The least common of the LAM designs, it carries a single clan ATM-9 launcher plus half a ton of HE ammunition (enough for three shots). Limited availability of the salvaged ATM technology rather than its performance quickly doomed this version.
- LRM-25: This design uses 5 LRM-5 packs, which share a half-ton of ammunition among them for two salvoes. Pilots learned to cache these launchers at fall-back positions, where they would use specialized ammunition such as mines, smoke, and incendiaries to deter pursuit, leaving the conventional ammunition for their own integral LRM launchers.
- SRM-18: The SRM design's name is actually a misnomer. It employs a trio of SRM-6 launchers, with a ton of ammunition providing five salvos. Pilots praised this design, which marginally outguns the Waneta's base weapons layout with no overheat. However, since the LAM's normal weapons are unavailable while the Waneta carries this gun, mission planners remained skeptical of its actual usefulness in battle.
Oddly, one weapon that
wasn't found in the Word of Blake cache was a hand-held weapon based on the Rocket Launcher. Apparently, scientists on the hand-held project had been given access to clan technology as part of the authorization for the entire LAM project and became fixated on the cachet of the stolen clan tech. The project leaders, already facing cancellation, also feared that by reverting to Inner Sphere weapons they would draw attention to themselves. Ironically, junior scientists interviewed by Republic intelligence reported that simple, cheap rocket launchers significantly outperformed the more sophisticated clan weapons. Two versions were conceived, but never produced. One used eighty five rockets. The other, a "pistol" design, would fire only fifty rockets, but could be carried and used in one hand.
