IPS-N Mitscher

Drones are not new technology. In modern parlance, they are often lumped under the category of RPV - “remotely piloted vehicle” - and are thought of by most modern observers in the context of chassis. However, the most notable historical RPV program was undertaken far from the concerns of mechanized combat.

The Second Committee’s Remote Air Support Program (RASP) was created just before the dawn-days of the Revolution, taking some of the most promising - and mentally resilient - naval aviation candidates into the far lower-risk occupation of drone piloting. In an era where manpower was suddenly a fraction of what could be relied upon a year ago, with a considerably smaller reduction in available war materiel, the Second Committee turned to these pilots to first control protests, then attempt counterinsurgency at the end of a gun barrel, and finally, fight a war without ever leaving air conditioning and an omninet connection.

After the conclusion of the Revolution and the rise of the Third Committee, the RASP was shuttered and its surviving pilots either tried, retired, or rehabilitated. With the rise of mechanized chassis and the exceptional complexity of remotely controlled orbital (and even atmospheric) strike craft on parity with directly piloted vehicles, the manufacturers associated with the program turned their focus towards the ballooning market of chassis (both milspec and civilian) instead of continuing to produce RPV gunships for a market that no longer existed.

However, IPS-N’s decadal risk management report several hundred years later - in 4930u - showed that their line of milspec chassis could often be engaged and defeated in the field far beyond their own effective range, typically by fixed artillery and fortifications or aircraft. After all - as effective as IPS-N chassis were in ship-to-ship combat or in close quarters - no corpro with the sheer reach and market penetration IPS-N had could assume their chassis were only being used in their ideal environments, as opposed to in conventional combined-arms warfare. Thus, a weapons system had to be developed that could reduce fortifications, eliminate long-range threats, reliably engage atmospheric strike craft, and keep up with the swift terrain-crossing capability of the corpro’s flagship mechs such as the Nelson - all while maintaining the brand identity as a rugged, low man-hours supplier. In short, an aircraft, not another mechanized chassis line.

It was determined that the most effective means of accomplishing this objective (and filling another hole in the defense market) was a modernization of a design that had not been produced since the beginnings of IPS-N’s chartering as a corpro-state. Most of the other corpros that had worked on elements of the RASP’s gunships had long since disappeared, merged, failed, or simply lost the institutional knowledge, but into the holes left by them - and with the benefit of several centuries of additional technological development - IPS-N inserted elements from the Walleye and Swordfish naval craft to create something wholly new.

At least, such is what they marketed it as; a quiet lie generated by advertising teams and lent credence by the popular option for a pilot’s cockpit instead of the original design’s RPV interface.

In doctrine, deed, and effect, the IPS-N Mitscher is the angular, weapon-heavy ghost of an era long past.

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The first purpose for drones was not offensive operations, but surveillance and reconnaissance. That is the legacy they retain, over the course of countless thousands of years between their invention and the modern day: the watchful, constant eye, the collector and filterer of information, the hand that aims the gun placed at the head of whosoever would dare contravene the drone’s owners’ restrictions. Do not step into the exclusion zone. Do not speak of certain subjects. Do not gather in too-large groups.

The Steichen, as it is now called - a different designation from that it bore in the years of the Second Committee, before it was redesigned and modernized along with its sister-airframe - is precisely for that purpose. Many of the weapons hardpoints and load-bearing equipment have been stripped away for a set of formidable camera, radar, and database-track correlation equipment designed to work in concert with satellite and ground-based reconnaissance assets in order to produce a complete picture of the threat environment. Where to shoot, where to aim, who to kill - the questions most immediately relevant to combat teams, and one their overflight is well-suited to answering. Similarly, the significantly upgunned computing and systemic-attack capabilities of the Steichen over its gunship companion lend themselves to active intrusion into hostile systems, locking down vital components and disabling methods of locomotion to prevent its targets from escaping either its own weaponry, or a heavier payload guided in by the Steichen’s unwavering attention.

Surveillance assets and artillery assets are designed to work together: one locates and pre-calculates, the other removes the identified problem. The dull hum of paired turbofans through dead air remains the hallmark of such an unholy yet traditional matrimony - nothing beyond remains except the quiet crackling of fire, and the promise of marching boots yet to come.

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The IPS-N Mitscher and Steichen are not official Lancer products; they are third party work, and are not affiliated with Massif Press. The IPS-N Mitscher and Steichen are published via the Lancer Third Party License.

Lancer is copyright Massif Press.