Here's the finished model. . .more or less. As you will see below, I've tried my best to give the pilot compartment as much armor and oblique angles from incoming weapon's fire as possible. I've also tapered the pod to maximize shallow angle impacts on the side. The deflection visor above the view slot has the most armor since I imagine a Badger as a mobile bunker that will likely find low depressions in the landscape to deploy. That's how the T-90 got it's nickname "Badger", by finding small craters, holes, or crevices in rock to deploy, trying to protect the lower movement assembly and making itself an extremely hardened pill box. . .not the pathetic little whipper-snapper found in BZ1.
The first two screen shots show the entire pod can achieve a positive and negative pitch angle of + or - 10 degrees, giving the pilot the "feel" of the guns. Somewhat like flying, but with no actual translational movement. And of course, the Pod is able to rotate full 360 degrees, with no limitations on continuous rotation.
Below you can clearly see the front view slot. I realize it's tough to make out how its designed at the moment with all the surfaces the same white texture, but basically the slot has a quick actuating shield that can either be slammed shut with the sensing of a direct impact of a large incoming hit, or it can be opened in 2" intervals, providing less visibility, but heightened protection. Fully opened the front slot is 10". Since the pod moves with the pilot, and the the Badger is designer specifically to engage ground forces, there's less need for a large view port providing a large vertical view. The pilot sits basically at the center of the view slot's radius, so it actually provides an exceptional view. Having the pod move with the pilot, forces the operator to face his attacker and keep the bulk of his armor towards the enemy. I've also added a small view port slot on the side
(which by the way needs to be fixed, as it's about 5" too high for the pilot view at the moment.)
In the below shot I'm showing a top view of the main guns, both which fire recoilless {edit} 50mm, 3,000fps depleted uranium rounds that feed two per second per cannon. Both are locked to the pod in respect to pitch but are able to fire parallel. . .or converge, with the tightest convergence being 40 meters, then out basically the distance of the round's range,
(the red pie shapes) giving the shells much higher kinetic energy at a single contact point. Parallel fire would be used more for an onslaught or for greater probability of hitting targets at greater distances, as you have the barrels with a {edit}[3] meter separation.
The Badger can also serve as a very secure observation post. The two 20X scopes shown below can be either used in the full vertical periscope mode for scanning two monitors watching for ships using radar jamming technology or can be fully separated horizontally to provide additional binocular distance ranging along with the laser ranging to provide weapon's fire convergence data.
Here you can see the Badger in
Observation mode, or fully extended providing the pilot an eye level of 7.5 meters and a scope height of 9.9 meters. The Badger CAN fire in this position, but the rate of fire must be greatly reduced. Even with "recoilless" guns, the residual reaction would still impart too much moment on the tower if they were to fire at full capacity.
And of course, the Badger has full articulation of it's lift pods. I've removed the other legs for clarity. One thing that has never been explored is that the Badger has a very unique ability with fully articulating legs to set down on very uneven ground.
THIS CLIP gives a hint of what can be done if an operator has the skill and training to fully utilize the Badger's ability.
