FV30 Armored Fighting Vehicle

The FV30 series of Armored Fighting Vehicles is a family of 8-wheeled multirole armored fighting vehicles, with many official variants and license-built variations. It is designed with modular components that can be arranged into different roles and capabilities, the most prominent being a the Mk 31 Infantry Carrier Vehicle, the Mk 35 Infantry Fighting Vehicle, and the Mk 39 Assault Gun System. Today, it is one of the most common combat vehicles used by the CGDF, and the backbone of its armored infantry.
== Development history ==
Starting in 2669, Terran military officials outlined plans for the transformation of the nation's defense forces. The emphasis was to be on rapid mobility, quick deployment, and broad-spectrum capability, applicable to all ground forces. This was in response to two distinct problems encountered in the Colonial Wars of the 2650s-2660s, and the Great War, both resulting from flawed Army combat doctrine.
Previously, the Empire had relied on infantry-heavy defense brigades to garrison worlds, with a combination of Marines, and Army airborne, armored, and cavalry units providing contingency and rapid response. But in the late stages of the Colonial Wars, this led to slow responses to insurrections, and made defensive forces vulnerable to strategic attacks on armored and aviation units. Infantry and armor were increasingly divergent in mobility and consequently were increasingly vulnerable. This pattern would also manifest in the first half of the Great War, as infantry were subject to devastating artillery bombardments, and armored formations were repeatedly pinned and destroyed by antitank weapons. The Imperial Army's doctrine of "tank fleets" was criticized by tacticians and field commanders, and great efforts were made to blur the line between motorized and mechanized infantry in order to provide infantry with heavy firepower and provide tanks and walkers with defensive infantry. By 2669, plans were made to completely reform the postwar Army, centered around a smaller number of more mobile divisions composed of modular armor, infantry, artillery, and aviation brigades.
The FV30 series was conceived as the backbone of this new combined-arms combat doctrine, to provide every infantry element with armored mobility. A new generation of hover tanks fielded in the war created a gap in infantry mobility that needed to be filled by rapid-moving, well-armored vehicles. The FV30 series was developed between 2671 and 2673, based on the recommendations of Marine general Céleste Beaumont and State Security generals William McGrady and Brian Kessar, all of whom had served in combat. Their experience provided necessary expertise on the project's requirements, which then went into the design phase in late 2671. Several designs were submitted before going to the prototype testing and evaluation phase. Hellfocker submitted the ultimately-successful 8-wheeled design, while its competitors featured modified tank chassis as the basis for their designs: BAE fielded a hover vehicle type based on the new Mk 1 Hover Tank chassis and lift system, while Bavarian Motor Works submitted a tracked vehicle based on the Mk 29 Tank.
The selection of the Hellfocker design was controversial in some circles; some technologists advocated for the speed of hover vehicles, while others desired the weight capacity of tracked vehicles. Ultimately, the maneuverability of the wheeled version was the deciding factor, as was the expectation that such armored vehicles would be used primarily in existing road networks with secondary use in varied environments. Hover vehicles, while fast, were too hard to control and less maneuverable in a fight. Heavier tracked vehicles would be less mobile, and more likely to damage road networks in a home-front counterinsurgency or military occupation. The Hellfocker design was tested, evaluated, and revised into the first production-model, called the Mk 30B Infantry Carrier Vehicle, which began mass production and deployment in 2673.
== Service history ==
The Mk 30 ICV was first deployed with the 211th Infantry Division in October 2673, in their reinforced landing on the Battle of Ras, a campaign to capture a critical goliath planet. It proved effective in several battles. Infantry reported quicker movement to the front lines, despite having previously been equipped mostly in the "armored car" Mk 12 Infantry Mobility Vehicle, due to not being inhibited by enemy fire. The FV30 was rapidly equipped to all other infantry divisions being mobilized for expeditionary action, rotating their older vehicles out to garrison units back home. The home front situation had largely calmed during the war, with Colonial Liberation Army forces agreeing to a wartime ceasefire, and it was not deemed a critical necessity that the FV30 be delivered to home defense units. This process took about a year, with some forward units still operating with older armored personnel carriers until late 2674, engaged in static trench warfare on "redoubt" worlds.
The next wave of variants of the FV30 was rolled out in July 2674: the Mk 31A Command Vehicle, Mk 32H Medical Evacuation Vehicle, Mk 33C Reconnaissance Vehicle, the Mk 34B Mortar Carrier, and the Mk 35B Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The Mk 35 IFV proved to be especially effective in the last eight months of the Great War, keeping infantry secure and able to engage with armored targets while advancing in maneuver warfare in urban and plains environments that predominated on shrike planets. This was deployed in conjunction with the Beaumont Doctrine's evaluation of enemy-held worlds for habitation value and measured response with weapons of mass destruction, enabling more forces to be freed up from costly planet-hopping campaigns and deployed at strict necessity to strategically-important habitable worlds. These forces were made much more survivable and mobile due to the FV30, allowing the combined resources of the human alliance to go much farther. By the end of the war, the FV30 and its initial run of variants were deployed across 500,000 divisions.
On 1 March, the war was declared over after the Shrike Federacy assented to CGC demands of unconditional surrender. Within two months, the former allied states were abolished, over 160,000 worlds were made independent, and were reorganized into a federal republic, the Central Galactic Union. Under the dictatorial powers vested in him by the provisional Congress, Chancellor Maximilian set about reorganizing the allied militaries into the Central Galactic Defense Forces and dividing the Galaxy into military areas of responsibility, a process defined by law and made official with the National Security Act of 3 February 2676 and subsequent Ministry of Defense policy measures. Over the next several years, as much as 80% of the allied forces were demobilized. The FV30 had been produced in considerable quantity, and was retained in the units that were subordinated to the new astrographical combatant commands, making them the mainstay for Army and Marine mechanized forces.