| The oldest and most basic of the Gears fielded by Southern forces, the Jager stared its existence as a shameless copy of the United Mercantile Federation's Hunter. Indeed, Republican commandos stole a Hunter prototype and engineers created a near-exact copy for operations at the end of the Southern War which created the Allied Southern Territories. At first, the only significant differences between the Hunter and Jager were the Southern machine's rounded armor plates -- designed to improve the armor's sturdiness to shocks, collisions, and enemy fire -- and a slightly improved sensor/communications head pod. Over the years, the two "cousins" have remained sign-posts of miltary competition between the poles, having become locked in an arms race of their own. Indeed, with every minor adjustment made to the Hunter, Southern engineers are ordered to make a matching change in the Jager, and vice versa. The most evident example of this came in the TN 1850s when the Jager was overhauled into its "Alpha" configuration, leading to a similar redesign of the Hunter, which was dubbed the Mark II. The Jager has undergone several other rounds of modernization and is currently in its "Epsilon" configuration. All the changes since the 1850s, however, have been relatively minor and most technicians still refer to the current design as the Jager Alpha.
Due to its long history, durability, and versatility, the Jager has seen far more action than any other Southern combat Gear model. From the beginning, it has been used as one of the most readily identifiable tools of Republican might. In the Southern War that subjugated the member-leagues of the Allied Southern Territories, it was special strike teams of Jagers which broke the stalemate that had stalled Republican ambitions. Soon after, the Jager would face its first Gear to Gear combat was the AST and the United Mercantile Federation fought over influence and resources in the Westridge Range area during the so-called Merchant War. By the time of this latter conflict, Territorial Arms had spewed out hundreds of the new war machines and the South was able to match Mercantile forces Gear for Gear and win. The tactics developed during the early deployment of the Jager -- most notably their use in dedicated units with highly trained pilots -- remain part of standard Southern military doctrine to this day.
|