"Hell on wheels. No complaints here."
Hardware Upgrade Proposal: "Up-armored Technical" Land Rover Defender 130 SUV (Customized)
One of our Land Rover SUV's will be fully militarized as an up-armored technical. Appliqué armor will be applied to the engine compartment and crew cabin, and all windows will be replaced with bulletproof polymers. This level of protection will ensure the defeat of small arms fire and fragmentation. Also of prominence, a gunner's hatch will be cut into the roof of the crew cab. From there, a gunner can fire a mounted weapon, such as a machine-gun, in a full 360 degree arc. (Obviously, the roof rack has been removed to accommodate the gunner.) Several utility and safety improvements should also be included over the base Land Rover SUV features: bullhorn with siren mode, crew intercom headsets, seatbelts, gunner's harness, spall blankets, fire extinguisher. If budget allows, a basic LMG will be purchased to occupy the weapon mount.
Difficulty Modifier: Normal (+/-0)
Roll (2d4): 2
Result: 2 - Disaster
Ops Chief Neil MacCauley's jaw drops as he walks into the motorpool, "You expect me to send our boys out in THAT?!?"
The senior tech stammers "Chief, just lemme explain..."
As you might expect, aftermarket up-armor kits are in high demand on Anghabar. This wouldn't be too bad if AMR wasn't also the primary heavy industry in the Thiel Planetary System. With a near monopoly on titanium, kevlar, and ceramic plating manufacturing, AMR's own security forces are desparately gobbling up armor straight off the production line. For everyone else, those kind of materials just aren't on the open market right now. Your techs lost a lot of time waiting for materials on backorder, and ultimately did what they could with more readily available steel.
The end-product is terrifying... in a bad way.
Functionally, 3/4 in thickness steel armors the crew cab and the engine compartment. With your shop redoing all the bodywork anyways, they tried to go thicker initially. However, this overinsulated the engine compartment and made the vehicle too heavy to handle. Furthermore, tempered steel plate is much more difficult to shape than common sheet metal. Your techs couldn't replicate the graceful aerodynamic curves of civilian automotive bodywork. The body of the customized SUV is bulky and angular, no longer resembling a civilian vehicle. Even without the machine gun pintel, it looks like a paramilitary tactical vehicle.
In additional armoring, the windshield and side windows have been replaced with inch thickness polycarbonate. Your techs would've preferred stronger multi-layer polycarbonate, but that was too specialized to find on the market. Still, it's thick enough to stop rifle rounds. Most importantly, polycarbonate doesn't shatter and spiderweb like glass, even when penetrated. However, to properly anchor the windows, they no longer open.
So far as an armored car goes, you've got the armored part. Now as far the car part...
The 111hp engine struggles under the additional weight. The whole engine probably should've been upgraded, but it was too late in the development cycle to do so. Furthermore, the armor-plating on the sides of the engine insulates too much heat. Between the additional weight and insulation, the engine tends to overheat, and the driver should keep an eye on the engine temp gauge to prevent an engine seizure. The 111hp engine can't sustain highway speeds anymore and probably shouldn't do any towing. General acceleration is poor.
Not only does it looks like a tank, it handles like one too. All that weight is a lot of inertia on a fairly high center of gravity. It's rollover prone, and has abysmal braking distance. The amphibious capability is probably gone, and it would take a skilled and/or suicidal driver to go off-road with this vehicle anyways. Your techs did what they could to rework the shocks and suspension, but it proved beyond their abilities with all the other work scoped.
At least the accessory systems went relatively okay. The front passenger side has a fire extinguisher under the dashboard and access to an exterior mounted bullhorn and siren. The gunner's harness is alittle tricky to get on and off while wearing body armor, but should keep the gunner from being ejected from the vehicle in a collision. The vehicle intercom system ended up being faulty and was dropped from the project. But with the additional gear and thicker vehicle doors, the interior got a lot more cramped. When having to fit ammo and manuever room for the turret gunner, the backseat is a tight fit for the two rear passengers. Even up front, elbows are cramped against spall blankets on the doors.
As for the machine gun? Well...
Neil searched hard, but machine guns seem to be a hot commodity right now. He had his eye on a nice FN MAG, but got heavily outbid at auction. He did manage to find something, though he wishes he could've done better.
At the turn of the century, Vasily Degtyaryor first began work at the Tsarist arms industry at the age of 11. By the end of WWI, he had his own plant in Kovrov. After the Russian Civil War, he spent years developing a light machine gun with zero state support. Eventually the Soviets recognized the merits a light machine gun, and "Degtyaryor's Infantry Machine Gun" ("DP" in Cyrillic) became the standard Soviet LMG during WW2. Degtyaryor would go onto to develop many foundational systems of the Soviet infantryman's arsenal, including the PPD-40, DShK, PTRD, and the RPD. After his death in 1949, his namesake Degtyaryor Plant would remain one of Russia's leading small arms manufacturers well into the 21st century. The DP/DPM was soon pushed out of general service early in the Cold War, entirely eclipsed by Mikhail Kalashnikov's various full auto weapon systems. The DP/DPM was seemingly forgotten in pop history until its depiction in a popular video game revitalized it as a meme.
Your purchase is a 7.62x54mmR Chinese Type 53 LMG: the Chi-Com licensed version of the Soviet DPM. It fires in full auto from an iconic 47-round pan-shaped magazine atop it. Because of this, the DP/DPM was known in slang as the "record player." It's a reliable system that gets the job done, but lacks many key features LMG's would feature post WW2. It's on the heavier side for a LMG, at 20 pounds unloaded, and is too unwieldy to shoulder fire. However, the heavy mass buffers the recoil of the auto fire, making the DPM surprisingly ergonomic to fire from the prone with its bipod. The barrel is fixed, as opposed to interchangeable, but this works because the gun is less likely to overheat from its limited pan magazine. The pan magazine themselves are awkward to carry and load, but generally work as they should. Like most Combloc arms, it doesn't have ready means to mount optics.
It may not be the best LMG out there, but the "Tachanka" still has over double the range, muzzle energy, and magazine of your workhorse Val carbines.
The wood buttstock of the Tachanka has some Korean markings stamped onto it. Neil deduces it must've been a war trophy from the Siege of Pyongyang. Probably from 25th ID even. While normally our armorer would remove those kind of markings in refurbishment, Ops Chief MacCauley insisted the Korean markings be preserved.
"Beast" Custom Up-Armored Technical SUV (Quantity: 1)A 1990's Land Rover Defender 130 SUV overloaded with heavy steel armor and polycarbonate glazing. Small arms and fragmentation resistant, but a complete beast to drive. Unmistakably paramilitary in profile. Seats four and a turret gunner in the crew cab. Includes bullhorn, siren, fire extinguisher, and gunner's harness.
"Tachanka" Chinese Type 53 7.62x54mmR LMG (Quantity: 1)A Chinese licensed version of a WW2 Soviet DPM LMG. Fires rifle caliber 7.62x54mmR in full auto from an antiquated 47 round pan magazine, effective to 800 meters. Cannot be shoulder fired, but includes a bipod and can be mounted to a pintel. Weighs 25lbs loaded and is four feet in length. Appears to have been a service weapon in North Korea.
Specialist Phase"Well Ma'am, our boys deserve better, but beggars can't be choosers."
"That monstrosity has us set for the ULM job, though I pity the poor bastard that has to drive it in urban traffic."
"I do think we should develop our capabilites for the Potter Properties op. Bigger cities mean more high tech obstacles and its a safe assumption that the report exists primarily in digital form. Our operators aren't stupid, but we need somebody who's comfortable behind a keyboard... any keyboard. I'd rather not have somebody have to figure out some niche GUI in the middle of a black bag job."
Specialist: Computer NerdYou never really realize how tech savvy you are, until you meet someone who abjectly isn't. Furthermore, just because somebody knows how to use an Android smartphone, doesn't mean they know how to open Windows File Explorer on a desktop. And most experience Windows users are at a loss when put before other OS GUI's, like Linux or MacOS. What kind of nerd even knows how to use a command prompt these days?
Our Computer Nerd is who.
From mobile, to desktop, to servers, the computer nerd has seen them all before. He's familiar with most OS's, their GUI's, and file/data structures. With full permissions, he can navigate to any directory in seconds from login. Trash? My Documents? My Photos? Downloads? Browser Caches? Just tell him where to go. All he needs is time and access.
Ethan "Zero Cool" Hunt seems like a good candidate for this. He can also purchase a custom mouse and rollup keyboard to assist in this role.
(OOC Rule Update! As I alluded to at the turn opener, you've now read plenty about your individual operators and should have a decent understanding of their individual strengths and weaknesses. For here on out, operator personality will be factored into the difficulty of the Specialist Design. If you choose a certain somebody whose intials are "VV" as the team diplomat, expect raised difficulty accordingly. I hope that wasn't too much of a freebie.)(1) Ethan "Zero Cool" Hunt, the Computer Nerd: Ops Chief
"Also Ma'am, I hope you've got that whole poetry thing with Mr. Thiel figured out. I don't want to end up like that Denton guy."