OSA 'Drop Bear' Armored Harness

For NationStates; Modeled in DoGa and based on the Tausennigan Ob'enn Mini-Tank from 'Schlock Mercenary'...

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Is it power armor? Is it a tank? A gunship? Drop Bear?

First, Drop Bears are real. In a universe with faster-than-light travel, multi-species civilizations, interstellar empires, and of course genetic engineering someone somewhere has created or rather recreated Thylarctos plummetus - probably multiple times. Thus the OSA's 'Drop Bear' is named after a very real and very dangerous pseudo-marsupial found on New Sydney, New New South Wales, and Ayer's Rock (the planet, not the landmark - that's a whole other discussion for a whole other time).

Second, Armored Harness?

That at least takes us back to the first three question marks. Actually, it takes us back further to the prototype 'Stevedore' logistics handler - so named because it had big hands. The 'Steve was designed for rapid loading and unloading of both loose cargo as well as palettized and intermodal containers. It was - is - an armored cockpit that sits on a powerful repulsorlift unit and has two arms fitted with both hands and extending forks as well as cable-and-hook points for towing and pulling. 

Then some maniac said 'Hey, they should be able to defend themselves!' and put a gun on it. Then another maniac said 'Good idea - but it needs more guns.' That person was probably a Dornie. Then someone else said it needed some (more) armor, another suggested an up-gunned sensor suite (mostly because it contained the sub-word 'gun') and then someone said 'It needs a better name than 'Steve''. Drop Bear?

Your basic default 'Bear takes the 'Steve, adds some armor, a heavier reactor, and a bunch of guns. Specifically, it adds two 'weapon pauldrons' that house a six-pack short range missile launcher, a high-cycle linear accelerator, a double-barreled particle cannon, and a grenade launcher with the 'utility' part scratched off and painted over. While designed to accommodate a wide variety of species, the cockpit is basically a padded box and so it immediately became common practice for crews to festoon their units with any number of bags, packs, welded-on containers, and other places to carry their non-essential essentials until it became easier to just standardize this practice.

For those that might ask? No - they aren't particularly big. In fact the packs on the side give a good sense of scale; these are about the size of a large three-day pack. That puts the 'Drop Bear at around two, two-and-a-half meters tall. They're also pretty fast and - bonus - can still be used to unload cargo.