Description / application in missions

It is the successor of Bronekhod. Having the same firepower, Salamander is more compact and has better speed and maneuverability, though its armor is less strong. In battle a squad of Salamanders perfectly supplements an armored fist of heavy assault machines.

The Protectorate military more than once complained about the absence of their own model of a walking tankette, similar to the successful Empire Raptor. It even happened that the Protectorate army bought Raptors in the free market from some independent manufacturers who copied the Empire model. There were several attempts to arrange the production of Raptors at the Protectorate plants. In the upshot the Protectorate authorities gave up the idea of direct copying the Empire machine. The engineers developed a new walking tankette for the purpose of substituting the outdated Bronekhod at least partially. The new fighting machine Salamander carries a little thinner armor than Raptor and Bronekhod, but it is more maneuverable. Salamander’s armament doesn’t differ from that of its predecessors. For some time the troops were supplied with Salamanders and Bronekhods equally. There is information that on Velian one of the Protectorate robo-infantry divisions under the command of Mark Chang was entirely completed with Salamanders. It means that the new walking tankette had already got a wide distribution by the end of the Third Wave of the Empire Invasion. With the appearance of the long-expected walking tankettes of own production in the army, the Protectorate strategists started actively developing the concept of “light elements”, which were expressly intended for acting in special conditions, where bulky heavy machines couldn’t be applied, for example, in production areas, on orbital or asteroid objects with extremely low gravitation, inside strongly destroyed buildings or underground cavities. So-called “boarding” modifications of Salamander equipped with rocket boosters and special magnetic crampons on their feet were especially widespread. These machines were intended for acting upon the outer armor of space ships and stations and also in their narrow inner rooms. During the Raid War, Salamanders gained the most popularity. Some raid group commanders even abandon the walking tanks exchanging them for larger quantity of Salamanders. The firepower and maneuverability of these nimble and compact machines went excellently with the tactics of commando-unitars.

The armament of the walking tankette Salamander:

-- Two missile launchers “Harpoon” for unguided missiles Mk12. These missiles are widespread everywhere. The missile launchers for missiles Mk12 are excellent weapon for machines of mass production. The Protectorate model of these missiles and the missile launcher “Harpoon” are produced by General Rocketry Tiranon Corporation. Some of Salamanders were equipped with the missile launcher “War-Dog” for heavy self-guided missiles. Later the command-reconnaissance walking tankette Salamander-II was created on the basis of this modification.