SARC Reus

The Reus (Afrikaans for “Giant”) is an autonomous robot developed by SARC in 2021, entering mass production in 2023. SARC itself was built around the goal of indigenously developing and producing a combat robot for domestic and foreign sales, riding the wave of dramatically increased arms production in South Africa to fill the void left by the cessation of foreign sales from the arms producing giants of Europe and North America that had previously dominated the market.
While other combat robot manufacturers had focused on developing machines of near-human size (Raptors, Guanjun, Mirmidons), lack of sufficient technological base in South Africa for miniaturization instead saw the development of the Reus go in the other direction, producing a large bipedal combat machine. Although smaller automata were desirable for a number of reasons (ease of transportation, smaller target size, integration of handheld firearms etc), the large-scale machines were simpler to design, build and maintain, in addition to being remarkably terrifying to confront on foot due to their huge size.
The Reus’s main armament is the GI-2 20mm autocannon developed and produced by Denel Land Systems, based off of the French GIAT F2 autocannon. The GI-2 fires a 20x139 cartridge of the Hispano-Suiza line at a rate of 750 rounds per minute in free-fire mode, with single-shot and eight round burst. Fire control is handled by two fixed forward IR cameras set into the “shoulders”, along with a combination IR and visual spectrum camera mounted in a central “drum” about where one would expect the head to be. The fire control system is capable of identifying and leading targets, allowing the machine to make the most of its main weapon’s 1.5km effective range. 
Although their SI was complex enough to allow them to operate autonomously, this was rarely done in practice due to them only being able to function so at greatly reduced effectiveness. They lacked tactical flexibility and had poor logic functions, making them quick to abandon pursuit and relatively easy to evade. Reus networking ability was wholly reliant on local commercial telecommunications towers, which while useful for inadvertently jamming said civilian communications was neither efficient nor secure, and limited their coordination ability outside of urban environments.
At least 40 Reus were sold to Mexico in 2022 for use in the Mexican-Texan War.
Category:PACYOA: TE
Category:TE Technology
Category:South Africa
Category:Drones