Guillotine GLT-8D

         The Guillotine is a venerable design. Commissioned in 2499, the ‘Mech saw action in every major Star League Defense Forces action and every major Successor State conflict. The Guillotine was the standard heavy ‘Mech for generations, working with companies of Griffins to provide heavy firepower. As time passed, however, technological improvements made bigger ‘Mechs possible, and today the Guillotine is no longer as common as it was in the past.
         Few of the newer, heavier ‘Mechs can match the Guillotine’s maneuverability, but the Guillotine’s firepower is no longer exceptional. Consequently, its role on the modern battlefield has changed. Instead of serving as a front-line BattleMech, the GLT-4L Guillotine now serves almost exclusively as a raider.
         The recovery of Star League-era technology and know-how has allowed Inner Sphere BattleMech manufacturers to make many improvements on common ‘Mech designs. In the case of the Guillotine, recovered technology has resurrected a design thought lost to the vagaries of warfare. Even though the Succession Wars left the production line for the Guillotine at Irian BattleMechs Unlimited’s primary factory on Irian unscathed, the Guillotine went out of production for lack of sophisticated Star League equipment and weapons, primarily the endo steel for the ‘Mech’s internal structure. Engineers replaced the weapons with similar ones of almost equal quality, but the loss of the ability to produce endo steel was a hurdle they could not jump. Other construction materials were simply too heavy, requiring the removal of crucial weapons systems.
         Since the recovery of the necessary technical knowledge, Irian BattleMechs has revived the design by using Crucis-II Deluxe endo steel. The designers have even improved on the original ‘Mech by substituting a Diverse Optics Sunbeam extended-range large laser for the older Sunglow model.

         The Guillotine’s primary weapon is the left-arm mounted Sunglow large laser, backed up by four Exostar II medium lasers, one on each side of the torso and two mounted on the right arm. These energy weapons give the ‘Mech considerable force, but not quite the punch of other heavy ‘Mechs. Though the Sunglow is a dependable weapon, occasional problems arise with the power cables leading from the chest to the arm. As the cables pass through the shoulder, they run near the surface of the underarm and may bind when the ‘Mech raises its left arm over its head. Experienced pilots know to lower the arm and try again, but rookies sometimes attempt to force the line, snapping the feeds in the process and rendering the ‘Mech’s most potent weapon inoperable. Repairs are costly and time-consuming, as each severed cable must be completely rerun from chest to forearm. If a rookie survives this mistake, he never makes it again.
         The medium lasers on the Guillotine use different housings than other medium lasers, making field repair difficult at best. Each laser has two components, the power-supply unit in the heart of the GLT-4L and the fire-control system in the barrel. Eight pairs of fiber-optic cables carry power to the firing mechanism. Fortunately for Guillotine technicians the system has an excellent combat survival rate because the bulky power supply, normally the first casualty, is well-hidden.
         The secondary weapon is the Coventry-6 short range missile system located in the center torso. As with many add-ons, the system initially had several annoying glitches, most of which were repaired early in the ‘Mech’s career. Some, however, persist to this day. The most serious is the arming regulator. For unknown reasons, the system sometimes fails to arm missiles five and six. The cause of the failure has never been traced despite a complete redesign of the arming system and countless hours of computer diagnoses. Because the problem occurs irregularly, it has not stopped the production of the Guillotine, nor significantly decreased the ‘Mech’s usefulness.