A84 Inabarom

A84 Inabarom
A84 Inabarom with hatches open
Type	Infantry fighting vehicle
Place of origin	Charnea
Service history
Used by	See Operators
Wars	Ninvite War Fahrani Civil War
Production history
Designer	Mount Jekara
Designed	1982
Manufacturer	Ikyan Corporation
Produced	1984
No. built	10,144
Variants	See Variants
Specifications
Weight	18.5 tonnes (20.4 short tons; 18.2 long tons)
Length	7.21 m (23 ft 8 in) (hull)
Width	2.5 m (8 ft 2 in)
Height	2.91 m (9 ft 7 in)
Crew	3 (commander, gunner, driver) + maximum 9 passengers
Main armament	See Variants
Secondary armament	7.62 mm coaxial machine gun 7.62mm machine gun on rear ring mount 7.62mm machine gun on turret roof 3,600 - 6,000 stowed rounds of 7.62mm ammunition
Engine	Six-cylinder diesel engine 205 kW (275 hp) at 2,200 rpm
Power/weight	11.36 kW/t (0.00691 hp/lb)
Ground clearance	0.34 m (1 ft 1 in)
Fuel capacity	530 L (140 US gal)
Operational range	1,000 km (620 mi)
Speed	105 km/h (65 mph)

The A84 Inabarom (Tamashek: ⴰ84 ⵉⵏⴰⴱⴰⵔⵧⵎ, "Painted dog") is a wheeled infantry fighting vehicle of Charnean origin. It was designed by engineers of the Ikyan Corporation and the Charnean Army tasked with testing the potential of an armored vehicle based on a truck chassis in an effort to create an inexpensive solution to the ICA's lack of battlefield troop carriers and to replace the ICA's aging Type 63s acquired from the Mutul. The Inabarom was initially intended to replace the by then four decade old and technologically simplistic A45 Torka when it entered service in 1984, but the plan to fully replace the old vehicles was scrapped due to the financial pressures of the Ninvite War which broke out in 1985. Although the Inabarom would see action in the war and came to be respected as a robust and cost effective vehicle, the plans to phase out the thousands of Torkas in service would never be revisited. Elite formations within the ICA mobile forces would receive the A84 Inabarom while the bulk of the units would be armed with Torkas, with some featuring both vehicles in the same formation, fulfilling similar roles. Overall, the Inabarom is regarded as one of the most advanced and innovative Charnean vehicles and an important milestone for the Ikyan Corporation with such features as a mine protected hull, twin linked ammunition feed and an operating range that could be extended up to 1000 kilometers to compete with the Torka, all while retaining the desired characteristics of being cheap to produce, easy to maintain, and a generally mechanically reliable design.

Development

CAP Prototype 3, the basis for the final A84 Inabarom design

The effort to develop the A84 Inabarom stretches back for decades before its actual design and introduction. Experimentation by the Charnean military in the motorization of the ancestral tactics of desert warfare known to the Charnean Tenerians had previously yielded the A45 Torka, a rugged and versatile armored car that had quickly become a mainstay of the armed forces. The Torka provided a highly mobile platform able to carry a variety of heavy weapons suiting it to anti-personnel, anti-air and anti-tank duties. It was also cheap and simple enough for the nascent Charnean industries to produce at scale, and possessed the all important characteristic of being able to traverse vast expanses of open desert with little resupply. However, the Torka was lacking in the area of troop transport. The A45 Torka had been designed to carry a crew of five into the desert, but once in service had nearly always operated with a crew of 3 or 4 depending on the weapon mount in an effort to conserve onboard supplies and thus extend the range of the vehicle. This meant that any Torka deployed on a mission would very often have little or no infantry support and no capability for dismounts. Attempts to remedy this with the use of military transport trucks and imported APCs were made, with the former proving to be risky due to the unprotected nature of such vehicles, and the latter due to the limitations of foreign designs available to the Charneans which were intended for service alongside tanks and other armored vehicles and were poorly adapted for the requirements of long range desert operations. This created the conditions of the so called "dismount problem", the ICA's chronic lack through the 1950s, 60s and 70s of battlefield troop carriers and thus deficiency in infantry support to screen armored vehicles and fulfill other battlefield roles.

The Ikyan Corporation began to collaborate with the Charnean military in the 1970s towards creating an answer to the ICA's problem under the Carry-All Program (CAP). Multiple competing design teams were formed from Ikyan automotive and ICA military engineers in an effort to create a number of prototypes that could be compared and pitted against one another in a series of demanding trials at the Mount Jekara, the facility in which most of the ICA's military technology trials are conducted. The teams used Type 63 APCs already in Charnean service as well as a number of other foreign APCs and IFVs purchased for the occasion as references, all of which were put through rigorous trials and were eventually rendered inoperable in destructive testing. Three teams produced prototypes for testing. Team 1 produced a tracked chassis infantry fighting vehicle with four dismounts, Team 2 produced a similar design but with a wheeled design, while Team 3 also created a wheeled design but did so using a modified truck chassis that was simpler and would be cheaper to manufacture than the one conceived by Team 2. Eventually the third prototype, although technically inferior in some ways to the others, was approved thanks primarily to its durability and simplicity of design which appealed to the Ikyan representatives. The final design derived from prototype 3 would finish its trials at the Mount Jekara facility in October of 1982, receiving the designation A84 Inabarom after the wild dogs found in southern Charnea. Like the A45 Torka, the A84 Inabarom was designated after the year of its first entry into active service and not the year of completion of its trials at Mount Jekara. The vehicle was delayed from entering full mass production due to the difficulty of setting up production for the Inabarom's night sights. Mass production and entrance into general military service began in early 1984, allowing for small formations of the ICA to be equipped with the Inabarom in time for the outbreak of the Ninvite war the following year.

Design

The A84 Inabarom operates on a modified truck chassis, allowing for the vehicle to use many commercially available components for civilian trucks and easing the logistical strain on the military supply and procurement systems. The controls for the driver are likewise extremely similar to those of a regular civilian truck, facilitating the driver's task and reducing the training time necessary for a driver to be ready for service in the Inabarom. In order to maximize the driver's visibility and general situational awareness of the crew, a three-sectioned bulletproof windshield is provided for regular use. If necessary, the windshield can be sealed with armored covers with the driver navigating by periscope instead. Besides the driver, the crew of 4 consists of a turret gunner, a vehicle commander, and an optional rear gunner depending on the variant. The vehicles large rear compartment can accommodate nine passengers, allowing the vehicle to carry a full infantry squadron.

The armor protection of the A84 Inabarom is relatively thin, comparable to that commonly found on APC and IFV type armored fighting vehicles. It is capable of stopping small arms and small caliber armor piercing rounds as well as 20mm canon rounds such as those fired by a 20mm anti-aircraft automatic canon on the frontal arc. Protection against anti-tank mines and IEDs is afforded by the armored V-shaped underside of the vehicle designed to deflect the blast of a detonation underneath the vehicle. Such explosions almost always damage the Inabarom's wheels, axles and other elements of the drive system but is rarely able to fully penetrate the hull. Overall, the Inabarom is considered to have a high survivability against mines and IEDs.

Both the commander and main gunner sit inside the turret, which is located directly behind the driver at the front of the vehicle. Each has an overhead hatch which can be opened for observation, while the commander is given a cupola with all around vision blocks. The turret is fitted with only one night sight, preventing the commander from searching for targets independently of the gunner in low light conditions. In order to parallel the versatility of armament found on the open topped A45 Torka, the A84 Inabarom features an interchangeable turret module varying between a 90mm canon, 20mm automatic canon, 12.7mm machinegun or ATGM missile launcher turret types. The hull of all such variants is generally identical, simplifying production of the combat and support variants of the Inabarom as well as enabling one variant to be converted to another at a maintenance facility should the need arise. In order to maintain the simplicity of the design and to facilitate manufacturing, the Inabarom was never equipped with any airtight seal or filtration equipment. Therefore, the Inabarom remains incapable of amphibious operation and has no special NBC protection, requiring the crew to maintain NBC protection equipment commonly issued to infantry.

Variants

Designation	Description	Notes
Inabarom-RJ	Armed with 20mm automatic canon, with sufficient anti-armor characteristics to engage most APC, IFV and soft-skinned vehicles and a good rate of fire for anti-personnel use.	Standard variant. "RJ" designation stands for Rassaj Sataɤmal, meaning "General Purpose".
Inabarom-A	Equipped with a modified and enlarged turret to house large 90mm	Typically used in support roles to augment anti-tank and anti-fortification firepower of a formation. "A" designation stands for Amaɤsad or "Destroyer", referring to vehicle destroying capability.
Inabarom-O	Armed with 120mm mortar mounted inside the hull, with the turret removed to form a firing aperture. Used for mobile artillery support at the battalion level	Comparable to ICA portee motorized artillery. Designated "O" for Orafan, indicating it is a mortar carrier.
Inabarom-K	Inabarom-based command vehicle, armed with a 12.7mm heavy machine gun. Typically used for platoon, echelon or battalion level command in the field.	Non-interchangeable hull due to extensive modifications. "K" designation stands for Kumandi, or command vehicle.
Inabarom-T	Fitted with an anti-tank guided missile turret. Missile is wire guided and launcher is reloadable, with additional missiles stored within the hull.	Specialized anti-tank variant. Often replaced in formations with A45 Torka armed with ATGM launcher, due to that vehicle's lower profile suited for anti-tank ambushes. "T" designation stands for the A97A2 Tegere ATGM system.

Operators

Charnea

Federal Government of Upper Karana