Jackal IFV

The Jackal is an extremely versatile family of front line armoured vehicles capable of transporting infantry. There are many variants in weaponry to the same basic hull.

## Armour

The front plates are made of 70mm angled laminated composite armour, and 35mm on the sides. This is enough to protect the Jackal against frontal 40mm AP rounds, and the sides can stop 12.7mm rounds with ease.

The crew is additionally protected by a partitioned cockpit to prevent total team kill by beyond-armour effects: a driver on the front seat, the commander who keeps battlefield awareness and designates targets in the rear right seat, and a systems operator who deals with sensors and electronic warfare systems on the left rear seat. All controls can be slaved to any partition, should the specialist be incapacitated.

## Variants

### Gauss

The most common Jackal sports a 75mm tank Gauss cannon and coaxial 12.7mm on an armoured turret. Like a tank, it can depress the gun 10º or elevate it 45º or more using the legs to tilt the hull, which allows its use as a makeshift indirect fire weapon.

This version can carry twelve soldiers.

### Missile launcher

This has two 150mm missile launchers and a 12.7mm HMG on a self-loading turret; it carries both AT and AA missiles and can quicly load up or change between the missiles.

Internally the mechanism and reloads take up space, so it can only carry eight soldiers

### Command and Control

This has only a 12.7mm HMG turret, topped with a long range radar antenna and an array of comms. Instead of carrying infantry, it has consoles for eight system operators who collate data for the unit commander sitting in a raised central dais.

### SPG

It has a heavy tank gauss gun on a casemate, and can deploy 200mm shells 85Km away or shoot at objects in low orbit with 25mm sabot-discarding tungsten rods. The compartment has a gunnery operator, and is otherwise filled with the reloading system and the absurd amount of ammunition the gun requires for sustained operation at full speed.

### MRLS

Two massive pods balanced on a fixed casemate hold eighteen cluster rockets; each contains anything from tens of self-guided anti-armour bombs to hundreds of anti-personnel bomblets. It does not carry infantry, but two extra crew and two full reloads that can be inserted into the pods with two cranes operated from inside the vehicle. This version frequently tows a caisson with four other reloads; after that, it'll depend on supply vehicles if there are still any targets left.

### Engineering

The only thing these have in common is a bulldozer blade in the front, a mine flail on swivel arms and an A-frame on the back. Beyond that, it can have anything an engineer's creativity may come up with mounted on top and the sides.

It carries a complement of four combat engineers.

### Bridge laying

This vehicle carries a 25m bridge span wide enough for a heavy tank, and a self-anchoring pontoon to make longer bridges in conjunction with other bridge layers.

It carries a complement of four combat engineers.

## Mobility

Akras recent advances in heat disposal allowed it to rethink its paradigms. All Akras vehicles are now equipped with miniature Helium-3 fusion reactors thermally shielded by Heatsink Stone(TM) technology.

While the Jackal is too heavy to have a full high mobility system, its twin axis unfolding tracks still allow it to rise up, walk, overcome ditches and climb ledges, though it's highly recommended that high recoil weapons are not used without all tracks firmly on the ground lest it topples the vehicle.