| The basic scout and reconnaissance Gear of the Southern armies, the Iguana was designed to replace the Basilisk Gears that had been pressed into these duties in the past. The Basilisk was a trooper Gear that ended being most commonly deployed as a recon unit because of the massive problems posed by the Anolis, the South's only dedicated recon Gear. Southern commanders had gotten used to stripping some armor off Basilisks to increase their speed, but they found that was not quite enough and hence a new Gear was commissioned. They wanted to see one that could do everything the Basilisk was capable of, and more. Unlike the Northern Cheetah, which featured light armor and high maneuverability, the Iguana had to be effective as a light general-purpose trooper as well as a scout model. The design procedure was a success.
Over the fifty cycles of its development, the Iguana has gone through several refits. In its early production models, the Iguana's speed was not quite at its peak and in TN 1883 the secondary movement system core motors were upgraded to a new and more efficient model that gave it its current speed profile. The Obelisk Electronics MERIT package has also been upgraded several times. The current package, the MERIT 1200, has increased the communications range and was designed to fit into a slightly modified armored head module that protects the main sensor array from enemy fire. This later innovation was introduced after the War of the Alliance after many Iguana pilots took to using makeshift plasteel shileds to protect the sensor eyes they felt were overly vulnerable to damage. The new head module introduced for the 1200 series is visually similar to the old one, with only a slight reduction in the size of the omnicamera. The inside of the head, however, is plated with an armor laminate to increase its endurance. The success of the Iguana also inspired a derived model, the stealth Gear. |