RPN-388 Crockett Launcher

1. Purpose

The RPN-388 (Rocket-Propelled Nuke Mk.388) was designed to fill in a major gap in the arsenal of heavy infantry and power armor infantry, a means to destroy Cosmic Era fortifications, mecha, and superheavy vehicles.

2. Basic Abilities

The RPN-388 is a tube-fired rocket that carries the Mk.388 nuclear warhead. The launcher itself weighs 35 kg, while the rocket and nuclear warhead weigh in at an impressive 55 kg. 5 kg of that is a mix of enriched uranium and plutonium. The rocket is semi-guided, piggybacking on the SmartGun system of the soldier/s who fire the weapon. Its accuracy isn't the best, but as a short-range high-yield weapon, missing by a few feet isn't a deal breaker. It has an intermediate range of 5 km, and the weapon has an arming trigger that doesn't activate until the rocket is at least one kilometer from the launcher. This can be bypassed, but it is generally assumed this is a suicidal action. It can be fired out to 10 km, but this is a Hail Mary lob, and after the firing unit loses line of sight, the rocket is on its own.

The effective yield of the Mk.388 is one kiloton (1 kt) and has a 1 km blast radius and a fallout radius of 3 km. For damage rating, anything within 3 hexes of the detonation point is destroyed/rendered out of service. Electronics are fried, power systems are overloaded, living crews are flash carbonized even inside their vehicles, and anything flammable is all but vaporized. The damage falls with distance from the point of detonation, but in Battletech terms, anything on the conventional-sized hex map is destroyed/out of service, and everything within one hex map of the blast takes heavy artillery and heat damage. Two hex maps away take moderate artillery damage, three hex maps light artillery damage. Prevailing winds would determine the direction of fallout which would extend in a tail away from the blast eight to ten maps away. Unprotected infantry would suffer lethal radiation even if they survived the blast unscathed.

3. Hurdles

The largest hurdle to the production of the RPN-388 was reluctance to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. All of the tech used dates back to late 1950s specs. Upgrades were made to guidance systems, and improvements in the reliability of the warhead, but otherwise, the RPN-388 is a shoulder-fired version of the 1958 M28/29 Davey Crockett recoilless rifle. The factions that pioneered the use of the RPN-388 found desperation in the face of superior battlemech technology to be liberating when it came to doubts about tactical nuclear weapons.

4. Basic Production

The RPN-388 was a simple weapon system designed for power armor grunts to carry into desperate battles. Making them was easy. The hardest part was securing the required nuclear materials to manufacture the warheads.

5. Field Trials

The RPN-388 had no field trials. The manufacturers had access to the classified weapons documentation and testing information from the original M28/29 tests. When the RPN-388 was fired for the first time, it was in a battle, there were no test detonations of the warheads.

Testing and production of the RPN-388 was carried out under the guise of the RPG-10 Program, code-named Basilisk. The enemies of the constructing state knew they were building and testing a heavy RPG launcher, and considering that they had invested in power armor and not mecha, this was not really a great surprise or secret.

6. Variants

The RPN-388/S is a standard-issue version of the launcher and fires a short-range rocket grenade with a sixteen-pound conventional warhead. This is effective against bunkers, vehicles, and power armor troopers.

The Mk.117 warhead is a drone hunter-seeker that has unfolding wings, a small buzz-boy motor, and the ability to loiter over a combat area until it sniffs out something interesting to dive bomb kamikaze style. While the payload is relatively small, just eight pounds, it can nose dive into an open window, a door, an unbuttoned tank, an opened suit of power armor, or into something juicy like a fuel or ammo dump. The Mk.117.R has no payload but has a much longer range and the ability to data-link back to its launcher. 

The Mk.247 carries a pulse warhead, a much smaller nuclear warhead designed to release a gamma flash/EMP. Where the Mk.388 destroys, the Mk.247 disables.\

The Mk.989 is a massive smoke grenade and can be used to lay down smoke screens. These block lines of sight, but not necessarily more advanced systems. The Mk.989.S detonates a massive static smoke charge which does block/shut down EM radiation, rendering thermal and enhanced imaging systems blind, and blocking comms for units caught in the cloud.

The Mk.3000 is a super bright magnesium flare that can create enough light to cause permanent blindness and vision impairment in those who are exposed to it without protection.

7. Maintenance and Repair

The RPN-388 is reloadable, but for the most part, after being fired, most launchers are destroyed by their crews. As they are equipped with power armor units, this is generally fire for effect, and keep shooting until they run out of ammo or win the fight. If a loss is pending, most will step on the discarded launcher to crush the few sophisticated parts. The launchers are relatively low-tech, so most of the time, they are scrapped in the field and replaced rather than repaired. The only serious issue is when a rocket misfires. The limited range arming switch keeps the warhead from arming, so this results in a rocket stuck in a tube, which a demolitions expert will disarm and remove the warhead, which can then be carried back to be installed in a new rocket, or it can be configured into an ad hoc nuclear mine.

8. Service Record

The RPN-388 was deployed by the Rocky Mountain Republic, the Republic of the Great Lakes, and the former democratic republic of El Norte (currently part of the North American DMZ. Users of the weapon had a love/terror relationship with their shoulder-fired nukes. Most crews were skeptical or feared the weapons they carried, with some opting to bury and forget their pocket WMDs and retreat rather than fire them. Others took an almost fanatical enthusiasm about slagging assault mecha or turning a land battleship like a Cataphract Assault Platform into a glowing tomb.

Radiation from the weapon itself, and fallout caused a long list of cancers, both in the crews and in the populations that lingered after the weapons were used. When detected by long-range radiologic detectors, Crockett launchers were primary targets for artillery strikes. a smashed RPN-388 won't detonate, it generally is just a ruined radioactive smear in the rubble.

9. MVP Time

The RPN-388 was most infamous for its use in the horrific Battle of Cleveland. The city had turned into a lynchpin in the defense of the Great Lakes Republic's southern front. The Republic was being pressed on two fronts, facing the Commonwealth of New England's battlemech forces advancing through the Ohio territories, and the Canadian forces occupying several of the Great Lakes and threatening naval actions and marine landings in Michigan and Wisconsin. The Republic's 51st Grenadiers, the 133rd Michigan Regulars, and the 8th Rust Belt Devils engaged the advancing Commonwealth mechs and fought a slow retreat until they drew the forces into the suburbs of by then mostly evacuated Cleveland. Penned in by buildings and a concern for not causing excessive collateral damage, the Commonwealth forces were all but annihilated in nuclear fire. The city suffered catastrophic damage and was reduced to a wasteland. Radiation levels are still high, and the shell of the city is considered a black zone, no go by anyone with a lick of sense.

The Deadman's Charge is a remembered event from the Fall of Cleveland. A fair number of Commonwealth soldiers survived the multiple nuclear blasts. Some of their machines were able to reboot and restart, albeit with significant problems and a console of red and amber lights. These men and women were walking dead, they knew they had taken lethal doses of radiation. Sure, there was a chance that if they had perfect evacs, and could be taken to a tier I medical facility they could undergo months of anti-radiation treatments, gene therapy, skin grafts, etc to live dramatically shorter cancerous lives. About a third of the surviving forces retreated in a general attempt to do this, or escape further exposure to miniature suns.

The other two-thirds of the survivors rallied and became the Deadman's Charge. Heedless of Republic defenses and defenders, the Commonwealth forces blitzed through their lines. Mecha smashed through buildings rather than go around them, with some working together to drop skyscrapers on Republic fortifications. Mechs that ran out of ammo fought on with improvised weapons. Some threw ground vehicles, others ripped parts out of buildings or uprooted trees to use them as clubs. It was savagery and brutality on a previously unknown scale. When it seemed that a mech was done for the fight, but the pilot was still alive, they would short the safety systems on their machines and ramp the reactors into overload, often waiting until their mech was being swarmed by infantry with cutters and torches to pull the trigger. Nine mechs went up in N2 (non-nuclear) explosions. These would flatten a city block, collapse large buildings, and turn a plaza full of Republic infantry into a superheated cloud of marinara sauce.

Colonel M. Stackpole remains a hero of the Commonwealth even more than a century later.

10. Fate

The RPN-388 has been out of service for almost a century. After the North American Armistice, it was included in the list of war-fighting materials to be removed from inventories. According to the official record, all of the Mk.388 warheads were accounted for and were disarmed and rendered for fuel to keep the last of the 2nd gen fission reactors running for a few more decades.

The RPG-10 remains in service as a heavy RPG for power armor forces, albeit without nuclear warheads.

The RPG-10 remains in heavy service in the forces of the Wastelands, where crews carry the heavy weapon and fire it without the benefit of power armor. Staying true to the origins of the weapon, these forces have started fitting arcanotech devices to the rockets the launcher fires. This includes things like implosion warheads, DFE triggering warheads, and stranger things that those.