Sand Hornet SN-1HT
Mass: 25 tons
Chassis: GM-HT-1
Power Plant: GM 150
Cruising Speed: 64.8 kph
Maximum Speed: 97.2 kph
Jump Jets: Rawlings 52A
Jump Capacity: 180 meters
Armor: Durallex Light
Armament:
2 Small Laser
1 Medium Laser
1 LRM 5
Manufacturer: Diplass Technologies
Primary Factory: Finmark
Communication System: Duotech 65
Targeting & Tracking System: Radcom TXX
Introduction Year: 2640
Tech Rating/Availability: D/C-E-D-D
Cost: 1,976,875 C-bills
The Sand Hornet was developed in the aftermath of the Reunification War specifically for the Periphery Market. While the SLDF had just spent nearly twenty years actively destroying the armed forces of the periphery states, and there were more than a few who believed wholeheartedly that these troublesome realms should actually remain forever disarmed, those in power knew that eventually shifting these states from occupied territories to contributing members of the Star League would require granting them at least some degree of autonomy, including the ability to handle their own internal security.
Of course, once the plans for the Sand Hornet became public knowledge, it also became clear that the Star League's tolerance for any future adventurism had its limits. The Sand Hornet, named for a species of Terran wasp more commonly known as the cicada killer, was billed as a low cost general service machine ideal for security, civil defense, and anti-piracy duty. Put another way, it was a slightly bigger Wasp with a somewhat more flexible weapon load. Critics immediately decried the machine as at best a token gesture and at worst yet another Terran chain around the Periphery's neck, and while the substantive debate over the machine's merits and drawbacks in the halls of power of the periphery states contained substantially more nuance than the public discourse, ultimately three of the four periphery states rejected adopting the Sand Hornet into service. Only the Rim Worlds Republic would diverge from this decision, and only then after securing a production license from General Mechanics.
To be clear, the Sand Hornet is not, strictly speaking, a bad design. Indeed, it spent the extra mass gained from the size increase relatively well, maintaining the movement profile of the standard Wasp while improving armor protection and significantly enhancing its firepower. The five tube missile rack that replaced the Wasp's original gunpod may seem like a token weapon system on larger machines, but against opponents of a similar weight class the launcher provides a respectable punch at a fantastic range. And the nominally secondary weapons are no less impressive. The medium laser removed from the right arm gunpod has not been completely eliminated, only moved to a fixed mount on the left arm, alongside two light lasers. As a light weight generalist, the only capability the Sand Hornet really lacks is a dedicated anti-infantry capability, though in a pinch the lasers can do the job well enough.
After its not quite universal rejection by the Periphery, the Sand Hornet would find itself in virtual limbo, manufactured briefly and in small numbers by the Rim Worlds Republic, but never adopted by any other state or even put into serial production by its original designers at General Mechanics. The relative handful of mechs built by the Rim Worlds Republic would seem to be the last word on the design for better than a century, until it suddenly wasn't.
Stephan Amaris would tap every source of arms and equipment he could in order to bring his grand and insane vision into reality, and it should come as no surprise at this point that the Sand Hornet would be no exception. Though it is not known exactly when this occurred, at some point in the mid 28th Century, production of the Sand Hornet was not only restarted on Finmark, but radically expanded, leading to the steady accumulation of eventually thousands of Sand Hornets at secret bases and training sites across the Periphery. These mechs would appear on every front of the Periphery Uprising and the Amaris Coup, either serving as command mechs for groups of smaller mechs like Locusts, Wasps, or Fire Ants, or simply filling gaps in lines normally filled by heavier, more capable machines. Even the Star League Defense Forces would field these machines in numbers after taking the production facilities on Finmark intact and using its output replenish losses, and as many as two hundred of these mechs would survive to accompany the Exodus. A small handful would even return to the Inner Sphere again in the possession of Wolf's Dragoons, causing a degree of confusion in early reports on the Dragoons between this mech and its much younger and visually distinct cousin, the Hornet.
Unsurprisingly, the ravages of war were not kind to the Sand Hornet. The fighting of the Periphery Uprising and Amaris Coup alone would account for the vast majority of Sand Hornets built, but the production facilities on Finmark would survive those conflicts and steadily churn out more mechs for the newly established Finmark Free Republic well into the First Succession War, until a brutal strike by the Lyran Commonwealth in 2792 eliminated the factory, much of Finmark's military, and Finmark itself in a barrage of nuclear fire. While a few hundred more mechs would still remain scattered across what had once been the Rim Worlds Republic, these would gradually be lost to generations of infighting and attrition, with the few survivors eventually filtering into the hands of bandit groups operating out of the Aquilla Rift, who are said to operate them to this day. In other regions of the periphery, this process of gradual extinction was only accelerated by the lack of replacement machines or spare parts, and currently the design is so scarce in the near periphery that it has been declared extinct in official Comstar records on at least one occasion. Further into the periphery, the mech is somewhat more common, most likely simply due to the large numbers built by the Rim Worlds, though rumors of caches are persistent. Back in the Inner Sphere, Wolf's Dragoons had an indeterminate number of Sand Hornets with them when they arrived in the inner sphere, something which would cause a degree of confusion among later historiographers due to the Dragoons' tendency to refer to these mechs simply as Hornets. A rough similarity in size, performance, and weapon load with its much younger and better known counterpart only heightened the cases of mistaken identity, despite the fact that neither mech bears even a passing physical resemblance to the other. The Dragoons small cadre of Sand Hornets would gradually be exhausted during their earlier years, with the last examples destroyed during the Fourth Succession war (and ironically replaced in role by the more familiar Hornet).
Variants:
Though never actually put into serial production by General Mechanics, the initial models produced to market the design, as well as the first small runs of production by Diplass Technologies were of an overall much higher quality than the large production runs later produced for Stephan Amaris' secret military buildup, though their theoretical specifications remained the same.
The detachable missile pod mounted to the right hand was an obvious point of customization, with pilots most commonly swapping in a short range missile launcher or an additional trio of medium lasers in its place. A more extreme modification removed the entire original weapon load to mount to attach the large laser from a phoenix hawk to the arm instead, to create a particularly potent scout hunter. Though pioneered by SLDF troops during the Terran Campaign, this variant of the Sand Hornet would also be seen on a handful of occasions with Wolf's Dragoons.
The two small lasers were also an occasional target of field modification, removed to either give the mech a dedicated anti-infantry weapon, or to make room for a second medium laser.
Type: Sand Hornet
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Tonnage: 25
Battle Value: 553
Equipment Mass
Internal Structure 2.5
Engine 150 Fusion 5.5
Walking MP: 6
Running MP: 9
Jumping MP: 6
Heat Sink 10 0
Gyro 2
Cockpit 3
Armor Factor 64 4
Internal Armor
Structure Value
Head 3 7
Center Torso 8 9
Center Torso (rear) 2
R/L Torso 6 7
R/L Torso (rear) 2
R/L Arm 4 6
R/L Leg 6 8
Right Arm Actuators: Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm, Hand
Left Arm Actuators: Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm, Hand
Weapons
and Ammo Location Critical Heat Tonnage
2 Jump Jet CT 2 - 1.0
2 Heat Sink RT 2 - 2.0
2 Jump Jet RT 2 - 1.0
Medium Laser LA 1 3 1.0
2 Small Laser LA 2 1 1.0
2 Heat Sink LT 2 - 2.0
2 Jump Jet LT 2 - 1.0
LRM 5 Ammo (24) RA 1 - 1.0
LRM 5 RA 1 2 2.0
Features the following design quirks: Fast Reload, Poor Workmanship, Jettison Capable Weapon (LRM 5)
Author Note: The references in the fluff to it being confused for the Hornet has two parts. The first is that when I first made the Sand Hornet, I inadvertently made it very similar to the Hornet without realizing it. The second is that one or two pieces of very early art (as well as the relevant battledroids miniature) depicted the hornet as another humanoid design clearly of the same macross/robotech lineage as the Wasp, Stinger, and Phoenix Hawk, and as near as I can tell it wasn't until the Wolf Dragoon Sourcebook that we got... pod. So I used that as an excuse to have it both ways.
