Why would I join the army if I can’t drive a Gundam!

Chapter 302 The Sky Belongs to TMSTMA
After making all the preparations, Mark Bay led his advance fleet on a long journey to the Earth Sphere. The entire journey was expected to take more than half a year, since a large fleet operation required more considerations, especially since the advance fleet also carried a number of transport ships.

However, even if it could travel at breakneck speed, Mark Bay couldn't possibly floor the accelerator and head straight for the Earth Sphere. The Earth Federation's control over the entire Earth Sphere is now unparalleled, and with economic development, the Earth-space conflict has been masked. At least on the surface, the space inhabitants are still quite willing to exchange the heads of their fellow Zeon residents for the Federation's bounty.

Therefore, it's impossible to rush straight to Earth. Even if Mark Bay's forces were three times the size, they wouldn't be enough to defeat the Federation forces. He plans to go to Mars first. Arcadia is a metropolis with hundreds of millions of people, and he can squeeze some more resources out of it. As for what comes next, he'll deal with that once he gets to Mars.

Anyway, there are other companies within the Earth Federation that do business with Mars, such as the Bucher Consortium, which started by collecting scrap metal. Mark Bay plans to communicate with them to understand the current situation in the Earth Sphere.

Especially what his old friends are doing, like that guy who was looking for him on the battlefield. Hopefully, after all these years, he'll have forgotten about him!

How could I possibly forget him?

"Then why isn't he in side 7, and why isn't he replying to my messages?"

"This is all Captain Cuvatoro's fault!"

Looking at the woman in front of him, heavily pregnant and looking distressed, Makarius broke out in a cold sweat.

Of course, the fact that the other woman was pregnant had little to do with him, because the woman in front of him was named Aina Saharin, and her husband was named Amada Shiro.

However, the reason why the other party appeared in front of her was closely related to Macarius. Because Aina was about to give birth, but Macarius sent her husband to Earth to carry out a test mission, forcing the other party to come to her door with a big belly to ask for her back.

Marcarius wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and began frantically explaining to the other person why her husband wasn't in Side7 at this crucial moment when she was about to give birth.

“He’s on Earth helping Captain Cuvatoro. I couldn’t have left him there on purpose, nor could I have forgotten about it. So please don’t worry or get angry. Stay calm. I’ve already sent the fastest ship to pick him up!”

"At the latest, by tomorrow morning, you'll see him!"

"It's not just him, it's my brother too!"

Aina, holding a cup of hot drink, emphasized it again.

"Oh, right, and Brother Kinnias too!"

Makarius nodded, then quickly turned around, went to his desk, grabbed his communicator, and swiftly issued a new command.

"Load Kinias onto the flight too!"

After receiving a reply, Makarius breathed a sigh of relief, since there was still a chance to salvage the situation.

"Don't worry, I'll give Captain Cuvatoro a good scolding and get revenge for you! And those two, Shiro Amada and Kinias, really!"

Aina remained silent, simply watching the clown performance. She didn't truly resent Makarius, but the fact that her husband was away was indeed related to him.

Meanwhile, at the training grounds of Torrington Base, Shiro Amada was piloting a strange aircraft, performing various tactical maneuvers in the air.

"The deformation mechanism is operating normally, and the attitude control is good!"

As the orange-yellow aircraft, resembling a round pumpkin cookie, flew overhead and then made a stylish low-altitude flyby, Kinias, holding binoculars on the ground, couldn't help but smile.

"Alright, Shirou, let's land!"

"Roger that!"

Inside the cockpit, Shiro Amada immediately steered the machine back to the training ground they had just flown over. However, as he approached low altitude, he did not perform any landing maneuvers on the machine. Instead, he activated another maneuvering function.

Then, under everyone's watchful eyes, the round pumpkin cookie flying machine suddenly unfolded its body.

In less than 0.5 seconds, the round pumpkin cookie transformed into a tall mobile suit, and then landed with its feet on the ground.

Immediately following, thunderous applause erupted, and all the federal soldiers present couldn't help but clap excitedly.

Although they didn't understand why this machine could transform, they knew that its successful testing represented the arrival of a new era.

This is the era of transformable mobile suits, and the mobile suit that looks silly and cute, and transforms into something like a pumpkin cookie, is the new mobile suit NRX-044 Ashima, jointly developed by Tsunami Heavy Industries, led by Kinias, and the Naval Strategic Research Institute!
It can also be called the Federation Army's first technologically mature, combat-ready, and fully mass-producible transformable mobile suit!

Thanks to the use of magnetic coating technology, the Yashima can switch between MS and MA modes in 0.5 seconds. In the design team's vision, this machine will conduct short-to-medium distance cruise flight in MA mode, or be airdropped by a large transport aircraft to the vicinity of the combat airspace, and then engage in combat in MA mode first.

Its MA form is a unique disc shape, with strong durability and elasticity, and its speed and mobility are also at a very high level. When combined with its beam rifle with a rated output power of 2.6MW, it can strike the enemy to the maximum extent.

When it needs to switch to ground combat, the machine can transform into a mobile suit form to engage in ground combat. To meet this requirement, the Yashima's beam rifle can also transform into a beam axe.

In this way, one machine can accomplish two objectives. After all, if the battle is conducted in the traditional way, an additional flight platform is needed to carry the mobile suit. However, in order to meet the carrying requirements, the flight platform will not carry heavy weaponry, which would result in slightly insufficient ground support firepower.

Therefore, the appearance of Ashima largely solved these pain points. And this is also why Kinias, Shirou Amada, and Macarius completely forgot about Aina—who says mobile suits can't fly? Right now, isn't there a mobile suit soaring through the sky?
Shiro Amada was naturally incredibly excited to be the test pilot for this groundbreaking mobile suit; it was like watching his own child...

child?

As Shiro Amada stepped out of the cockpit, he finally remembered something, but before he could react, the cheering crowd rushed up and tossed him high into the air.

"Great! With this, our remote patrols will be much easier!"

Several federal air force officers present were also delighted. After all, compared to their various types of fighter jets, the mobile suit was more economical and practical. Compared to long-range drones, it was faster and could get closer to the target. It could be said that this thing was specially prepared for their branch of the military. How could this not be exciting!
"The Navy has its Water GM, the Army has its Marine GM, and we have our Air GM now!"

"Sir, this thing isn't Jim, it's Ashma! And look at their eyes, they're like the Great Demon's three-dimensional orbital monoculars, not sunglasses!"

"It's just an example! But a three-way orbital monocular isn't that much different. After all, wide-area observation and aiming capabilities are very important in the air. I wouldn't feel comfortable using something like the GM!"

An air force officer, who was leading the group, couldn't wait to ask Kinias when the machine would be ready for mass production. The air force needed this thing at its front-line bases around the world, and the number would be no less than three hundred!

However, when he went closer, he found that someone next to him was even more anxious than he was!
A dozen or so military policemen, like raging bulls, pushed through the crowd, grabbed Kinias and Amada Shiro whose smiles hadn't even frozen yet, and started running away.

"What's going on? What's the situation?"

"Sir, your wife (sister) is about to give birth!"

The military police shouted loudly as they cleared the way.

Then, Kinias and Amada Shirou became the ones leading the way.

"Get out of the way, get out of the way!"

The two of them were like monkeys leaping and bounding, quickly jumping out of the crowd and onto the helicopter that came to pick them up.

"Hey, hey, why did you leave!"

The air force officer looked bewildered as he watched the two leave, but after learning the reason for their departure, he was left speechless.

Fortunately, although Kinias left, his team did not. The air force officers, having received accurate information from the technical team, were finally relieved.

"Okay, okay, we'll go back and write a report right away!"

The Air Force needs not only the combat version of the Yashima, but also the early warning and reconnaissance version. In fact, considering that the Yashima only has one beam rifle, they also hope to have a heavily armed version.

However, these machines still require further research and testing. After all, it has already taken the technical team a lot of effort to get the current state of Yashima sorted out.

However, the improvement process won't take too long. After all, they have now proven that Yashima is a stable platform, so all they need to do next is add requirements to this platform.

These tasks no longer require Kinias and Shiro Amada; the technical team can handle them themselves. In fact, the technical team had conducted related research when designing the Ashima, but at that time, this research was requested by Macarius in order to develop a high-altitude early warning system to be mounted on a mobile suit, with the direction of defense naturally being space.

However, Makarius later considered that early warning within the atmosphere might be a bit too late, so the research was shelved. Instead, he planned to wait until the technology matured and then deploy it directly in low Earth orbit, just like a satellite, to complete the detection of the entire space region.

So, there are naturally many technologies here that can be learned from or even copied, since they are all our own technologies!
But that's not the only good news about transformable mobile suits. After learning of the success of Yashima, the technical team at the Naval Strategic Research Institute was also encouraged and completed the development of MSA-005 Metas. Both are transformable mobile suits, but due to the different usage environment, Metas did not turn into a pumpkin pie like Yashima. Instead, it turned into a space fighter with a pointed head.

Moreover, unlike Ashima, Metas has a thinner appearance, looking like a skeleton. This is because in order to achieve the transformation mechanism, the armor of the main transformation parts of the machine had to be removed, resulting in the transformation parts of the machine being severely exposed and creating holes in the mobile suit form.

However, this is quite normal. After all, the Yashima is a mature technology equipment that is to be mass-produced and put into actual combat, so protection is naturally essential. But the Metas is different. This thing is a test unit for technical verification of transformable Gundam. Although the Naval Strategic Research Institute plans to build several more units with different functions for testing, it does not intend to put them into military service.

Moreover, even if they wanted to serve, Makarius would not agree; deploying such equipment would be a crime.

Therefore, if the Space Force is eyeing transformable mobile suits, they either need to purchase pumpkin pie or wait. In any case, the current Metas is definitely not ready for service unless a mature version is available. As for the significance of the Space Force purchasing transformable mobile suits, there is naturally a need for them. On the one hand, mobile suits in fighter mode can save space and increase the carrying capacity of warships. On the other hand, they can replace the function of flight pedals. In case of emergency, they can temporarily make do with their good buddy and let him fly the mobile suit as a horse. Moreover, this was recorded during the One Year War.

However, considering the firepower of the Pumpkin Pancake, the Space Force ultimately decided not to compete with the Air Force for it. Firstly, the current Pumpkin Pancake still seems to have room for improvement, and secondly, the Air Force is indeed having a tough time, while the Space Force has no shortage of mobile suits. So, let's be generous and show some consideration for our Air Force big brother!
Regardless, the Federation now has two truly transformable mobile suits.

This can be seen as proof of Makarius's foresight in suggesting the establishment of a naval strategic research institute, since Anaheim had nothing at all!

In fact, Anaheim now understands what they lost by making a deal with the Matsunaga family. They sold off several key technical personnel who were among the first to start researching related technologies. Although the deal was very profitable, for a businessman, not getting a good deal is a loss. So Anaheim is now very regretful and even has the idea of ​​bringing them back.

The problem is, it's too late to realize this now; they're way behind in the field of transformable mobile suits!

However, Anaheim did not give up so easily. After all, it is obvious to everyone that transforming mobile suits have a bright future. Although it is late to get involved now, it is not too late!

(End of this chapter)