Vehicle of the Week: Hetzer Wheeled Assault GunSeason's Greetings! This Boxing Day, we're opening up an appropriately boxy vehicle for your examination, the Hetzer Wheeled Assault Gun. Developed by Quikscell Corp., makers of fine vehicles everywhere, the Hetzer was intended to make defense easier for poorer worlds. The entire design from start to finish is an exercise in cost-cutting measures to the point that some suspect it was accountants, not engineers, who actually designed the Hetzer. Few ascribe any benign motives to those same accountants and crews are frequently regarded by themselves if no one else as being equally low cost. To quote TRO3030, “Those manning a Hetzer usually fall into one of three groups: those being disciplined, those who lack the talent or initiative to get out, and those who take a perverse pride in going to battle with the little chance of survival.” They're most commonly found in backwater militias or Periphery forces, but House Liao has taken the vehicle to heart, ordering large numbers with a curious knock-on benefit to other customers by forcing Quikscell to ship the vehicles with the wiring and other systems installed correctly, something Quikscell has a habit of not bothering with.
The Hetzer lives up to its reputation and, perhaps, just a bit past it in the right hands. A wheeled chassis is marginally cheaper overall than a tracked design, and part of that is the reduced engine size. A mere 140-rated SitiCide ICE is sufficient to drive the chassis to 64 kph, slow by modern standards but enough to pace your typical dirtbag militia tank (a Scorpion) and more acceptable in an era where even some lights were going the same speed. Although TRO3039 speaks in dire terms about the armor, 6 tons of StarSlab/6 standard plate goes a lot further when you don't have a turret to cover, generating an arrangement of 30/22/22. It's hardly great but it's passable. The Hetzer's real survivability problem isn't the armor, it's the combination of the eyebrow-raising armament and the fact that wheeled vehicles aren't great at staying mobile. Your gun (singular) is certainly worthy of being the sole armament. The Crusher 5H Autocannon/20 is a brutal weapon, fully capable of punching straight through certain light 'Mechs and then scratching the paint of whatever's behind them, and with four tons of ammo, you've got enough endurance to last as long as your armor usually will using the precision ammo that'll let you hit those light 'Mechs. Back in the Succession Wars, you could easily toss a ton of flak ammo in there to punch out VTOLs or fighters silly enough to get in your forward arc and still have plenty for a routine engagement. Although they're not likely to be mobile for long if only because of the rubble, a Hetzer is one of those special joys that makes fighting in the concrete jungle such a wonderful way to build characters. (No, that's not a typo.)
Inevitably, a certain number of variants have turned up over the years, and they remind me a bit of Swaybacks by centering on trading out the big gun for a different load of firepower. The simplest switches down to a class 10 autocannon, adding another ton each of ammunition and armor. My recommendation: Carry alternative loads. Flak, precision, flechette, whatever. Trust me, you've got room, and with a 34/26/26 armor spread, you'll live longer to use it. Eschewing that problem entirely is the laser model, trading out for four medium lasers, the heat sinks to use them, and an armor layout identical to the AC/10 model's. The LRM model steps back from the action with two LRM 15s fed by four tons of ammunition. A little more mobile and significantly tougher than the LRM carrier, there's some uses here. Free idea: One ton of Thunders and three tons of semi-guided or Narc ammo will make a real mess. A scout variant plunges right back into the fray, removing two tons of ammo for a remote sensor dispenser with 30 sensors. This one has some uses, allowing you to sweep an area and leave sensors behind to cover it as you advance provided you have units able to monitor them. The final variant out there is an SRM model, trading the atuocannon and one ton of ammo for five SRM 6s. If you use this one, operate it like and alongside the AC/20-armed original, letting that one punch someone's armor out then burying them in SRM fire. If it lacks the turret of a light SRM carrier, the Hetzer (SRM) has thicker armor to compensate for it.
Still, time marches on and even the humble Hetzer has received some upgrades since the Clans came back to the Inner Sphere. The first to turn up was part of Record Sheets: Upgrades, now incorporated into RS3058U Unabridged's IS volume, and it's a real doozy. Unlike the original, which I somehow suspect is still being sold to backwater militias, this one uses a fusion engine. The weight savings aren't applied straight to a bigger gun, although you're now packing an LB 20-X cluster cannon. Instead, another ton of ammo was added (by default, solid shot, but I lean toward three tons of cluster myself) while a half-ton was applied to each flank, bringing the armor up to 7.5 tons with 30 points on all facings. Later on, this model was the basis for a sealed variant. The armor was replaced, now 6.5 tons of heavy ferro-fibrous with 32 points on each facing, and this model also adds CASE and swaps the LB-X for a RAC/5 fed by three tons of ammunition. Environmental sealing is there, of course. The wildcard here is the use of C3I.
Exactly why this vehicle is restricted to the AFFS and CCAF, neither one a large user of C3I, and isn't available to the Word or ComStar, I don't know. Late-breaking news: It's available to the Word and went extinct after the Jihad. Considering the specialized nature, I'm not really surprised.
During the Jihad, an unknown (or, rather, carefully undisclosed) party advertised with
FrontierTech, publishers of the universe report presented to fans by XTRO: Boondocks, that they were responsible for creating the Jagdpanzer II, a major refit of the original Hetzer that's
probably from somewhere in the Lyran Alliance. The 180-rated XLFE gives it the speed to pace a
Crab at full gallop under normal conditions. The heat sinks go straight into supporting the six tons of stealth armor, laid out in the familiar 30/22/22 pattern. The forward mount is now home to a Defiance Thunder Ultra/20 autocannon fed by four tons of ammunition, providing an absolutely crushing potential blow, and each sponson has a machine gun with a half-ton of ammo. (Predictably, there's no CASE.) ECM is present to 'power' the stealth armor. Although the price is high for what you get, I can see some potential. Open field operations are a lot safer, while the ability to evade in the concrete jungle (probably more due to the ECM than the armor itself) is much greater. Whether it's worth it on a platform that's not that much less vulnerable than usual to being immobilized is debatable.
Operating the Hetzer requires even more cleverness than a
Hunchback, which has the advantage of being sturdy for its size and difficult to immobilize, two things Hetzers aren't, and further has a broader arc of fire. It's not that difficult to get out of a Hetzer's forward arc in close maneuvers, so you need to either find spots to lurk where that's not an option,
make such spots (minefields help), or provide a way to punish an enemy who decides to flank your Hetzers, assuming they're not operating in support of something to cover its blind spots. At the same time, while a city might be a natural place, you want to avoid dropping buildings and scattering rubble piles that will block a Hetzer's ability to maneuver. If you have to, accept a relative targeting disadvantage to put the AC/20 on target - you don't have the speed to really evade that much fire anyway, while a few solid hits from a class 20 (or 5 SRM 6s) will make it a moot point. The LRM and AC/10 models have smaller problems in that regard; keep them back to take advantage of their longer reach and keep an enemy further away from your blind spots.
Hetzers are a classic example of an enemy that's dangerous if you ignore it and easily dealt with if you don't and have the right tools on hand. Disable them through whatever means necessary - LB 10-Xs are the usual superlative choice, but there are other options - and then blow the armor from a safe distance or outside the forward arc. Minefields can hem one in just as readily as they can you, so consider applying them to cut one's maneuver option. If you're dealing with hidden unit rules, bring active probes and if necessary, bring ECM modules tuned to disrupt jamming efforts, too. Above all, don't dismiss the thing as a non-threat and suddenly find a Hetzer at short range with good numbers. That's not a mistake you'll make very often before you're dead.
References: As usual, your first stop is the
Master Unit List, with a detour to examine the
Jagdpanzer II. This time around, the only miniature at CamoSpecs is in
Taurian colors, solidly reinforcing the Hetzer's image as a backwater mainstay.
