RXR-44 Guntank R-44

The RXR-44 Guntank R-44 was a prototype mobile suit developed in the early UC 110s (about 10 years before the F91 story takes place) by noneother than Anaheim Electronics. It stood no more than 10.3 meters tall, and could transform into a tank-like mode.

Due to the diminutive stature of the R-44, there was little room for advanced hardware like auto-reloading mechanisms for the two large shoulder-cannons. To this end, Anaheim based the R-44's design and operation around a 4-man crew. This included two pilots (one for the arms, one for the legs), and two gunners (one for each cannon). Each crew member had their own coompartment, with the upper pilot in the center torso, the lower pilot in the "groin" section, and the two gunners inside the left and right torso modules, directly underneath the cannons.

The R-44's armament is worthy of a fire-support unit from any era. On either shoulder is a 200mm shell-firing cannon, capable of long-range attacks. The large shield-like pieces on the forearms are actually 4-tube missile launchers for mid-range combat. For short-range and anti-personelle, the R-44's hands each contain 5 "finger launchers"--projectile weapons with the barrels built directly into the fingers (amazingly enough, the hands appear to be fully functional despite their weaponized nature).

The R-44 never saw mass-production, and few prototypes were ever built. One such prototype ended up in the hands of a Mr. Roy Jung, curator of a war museum in the Frontier-IV space colony. During the initial attack by the Crossbone Vanguard, Roy and a few local teens manned the mothballed Guntank R-44 in a desperate attempt to fight back. The combination of untrained crew and inadequate protection meant that the R-44 didn't last long, and was abandoned at the colony's spaceport entrance when its drivetrain snapped. This was the first time that the main character, Seabook Arno, had a chance to pilot a mobile suit.