Janes LA Weapons: Swarm

Disclaimer: This image belongs to Production IG and Masamune Shirow for Ghost In the Shell.

From: Major-Gen Thomas Bradley
To: CLASSIFIED
Re: Destruction of civilian property during field evaluations

It is of the opinion of this officer that the destruction of civilian electronic equipment and damage to local magic users during field evaluations of the EWH-X1 Electronic Warfare Platform was an unintended accident.

It is also the opinion of this officer that the EWH-X1 should be purchased and placed in service immediately.

Letter from a British General recommending the purchase and deployment of the Mitsubishi/Sikorsky EWH-X1 Electronic Warfare Platform.

Mitsubishi/Sikorsky EWH-X1 'Swarm' Electronic Warfare Platform
The need for electronic warfare is an important part of modern warfare, and the need for the ability to affect magic quickly became important as well.

Inside Los Angeles, the board of directors at the local Mitsubishi office conferred with representatives at Sikorsky to produce a helicopter-based electronic warfare platform, which would allow for long-range communication interception and jamming at range in a stable, terrain-ignoring package.

After several months of painstaking development, the EWH-X1 was designed and placed into on-site testing and it quickly became apparent that the initial prototype design, though large, bulky and fairly ungainly, was the only way to successfully pull off the requirements of the project and it was tentatively approved to create a production unit for active testing.

Initial field tests discovered that the system worked incredibly well, able to intercept and jam any communications signal and also destroy unshielded electronics and disrupt magical energy fields. With these results in hand, Mitsubishi and Sikorsky decided that the EWH-X1 'Swarm' would be placed into production.

The EWH-X1 is fast and incredibly stable but is vulnerable to attack by direct fire weapons but since it is designed never to operate alone, this has been considered a non-issue.

Two rotor blades set at 30 degrees of each other offset the need for a tail rotor, which is good since the Swarm's tail is entirely given over to its communication jamming system and E/M Denial System, gaining its unique name from the sound in enemy communications that is heard as it activates its systems.

Currently, the British Army, German Army and Britannian Army along with the Los Angeles National Guard use this helicopter, the latter three in conjunction with Cheetah Power Armor-wearing operatives.

Armor:
-Reinforced Foam-Metal Armor with RAM Insulation.

Crew:
-1x Pilot
-1x Copilot/Navigator
-4x Electronic Warfare Officers.

Powerplant:
-Sikorsky LA-600 Hydrogen-electric Powerplant

Systems:
-Military Radio with scrambler.
-Full Optics Package
-Satellite Uplink
-Damage Control Systems
-Fire Extinguisher System
-Autopilot and Navigation Suite
-Cybernetic Linkage
-Military Radar with Terrain Following System
-Passive Radar Detector
-Laser Communicator
-'SWARM' anti-communications system
-'HOT FOOT' Electronics/Magic Active Denial System
-'CHAFF CLOUDBURST' Launchers.

Armaments:
-No space for armaments.

SWARM:
SWARM is an extensive communications denial system located in the tail of the EWH-X1 and responsible for the buzzing sound in enemy communications as the system is activated and increased in power. SWARM can also intercept and jam satellite uplinks and transmit a broad-spectrum jamming signal that renders radio communication useless.

HOT FOOT:
HOT FOOT is the second system located in the tail of the EWH-X1 and is designed to destroy unshielded electronics though a wide-area indiscriminate microwave pulse that fries the sensitive components in all electronics and then prevent magic from being cast by deploying a neural disruptor field that actively breaks any brain activity related to magic or psychic abilities.

CHAFF CLOUDBURST:
A relatively simple system, designed simply to blanket the air with metallic chaff strips to block radar and scatter laser energy if the EWH-X1 is engaged at close range. Of course, should anyone actually get close enough to force this systems engagement, they would have access to other weapons that merely require line of sight to engage.

Price:
-$12 million per helicopter.