Harbinger Gunship

The FTAC-X2 Harbinger gunship was one of the latest additions to the Allied arsenal in When the Cold Breeze Blows Away. It is a massive four-engine gunship, powered by Collider fuel cell and armed with miniaturized Collider Cannons and a minigun.

Dwarfing even their own Century Bomber, the Harbinger's advanced sensors and weapon systems allow it to secure and hold large areas, as well as provide heavy fire support to any surface forces in the vicinity.

The production model of the gunship features not one but two starboard-mounted 120mm Collider Cannons, each one packing the explosive punch of a howitzer of roughly the same size. Because the fuel cell provides the Collider Cannons with their ammunition and also runs the Harbinger's four redundant turbofan engines, the thing can get off the ground and remain airborne for days.

The Harbinger needs to continually orbit while trained on a target. Together with the Harbinger's sheer size, also means it is incapable of landing at a standard Allied airbase. To compensate, the Harbinger features FutureTech's proprietary self-diagnostics-and-repair system, which makes up for its inability to touch down for repairs while out in the field. An elaborate array of sensors and communication equipment lets Harbinger crews keep a lock on terrestrial targets during flight.

To make up for the Collider Cannons' inability to strike precisely at a chosen destination, the Harbinger features a nose-mounted 25mm chain gun linked to targeting systems that track the gunner's eye movements. These extremely accurate weapons can shred lightly-armored surface threats without causing significant damage to the environment. All of the Harbinger's weaponry is directed toward the ground, however. Enemy air superiority fighter squadrons could conceivably give it a hard time, but the Harbinger is heavily armored, and has been shown to suffer barely a scratch from a Soviet MiG Fighter's Matryoshka missile.