Myrmeke Main Battle Tank
| Myrmeke | |
|---|---|
 A Mymreke Mk. 7 in 2000. | |
| Type | Main battle tank |
| Place of origin | Republic of Syara |
| Service history | |
| Used by | Army of the Syaran Republic |
| Wars | Granika Border War Refusal War |
| Production history | |
| Produced | 1950-1975 |
| No. built | 7,000 built |
| Specifications | |
| Weight | 36 tons |
| Length | 9.00 m (29 ft 6 in) (gun forward) |
| Width | 3.37 m (11 ft 1 in) |
| Height | 2.40 m (7 ft 10 in) |
| Crew | 4 |
| Armor | 100mm-205mm |
Main armament | 100mm rifled gun (Mk. 1-5, 7, 8) 110mm rifled gun (Mk. 6) 115mm (Mk. 9) |
Secondary armament | 1 x 12.7mm AA gun 1 x 7.62mm coaxial machinegun |
| Engine | V-12 water-cooled, later versions 38.88 liter diesel engine 650 hp |
| Power/weight | 15.5 hp/ton |
| Suspension | torsion bar |
| Speed | 51 km/h (32 mph) |
The Myrmeke is a series of main battle tanks first produced by the Republic of Syara in the 1950s. The Myrmeke was the first tank built Syara following the Siduri War and incorporated a mixture of Syaran experience in the conflict and the development of armor during the Great War Era. The Myrmeke became the backbone of the Army of the Syaran Republic for most of the 1950s and 60s, with more than 7,000 vehicles built before production ceased. The Myrmeke saw limited service in the Granika Border War and was used extensively by both sides in the Refusal War. Following the establishment of the Commonality the Syaran National Army withdrew most of the surviving vehicles from active service, though several hundred specialized models remained in use up until the Zemplen War.
Development
During the Siduri War the Republic of Syara had produced a wide variety of tanks from the light Amycus to the heavy Cyllarus. Most of the Syaran tank fleet had been decommissioned or scrapped after the war, and during the Occupation of Syara the Republic maintained only 200 tanks, the heaviest of which was the Beinor. As the occupation drew to an end and Syara once more had to look to its own defense, the modernization of the Syaran army came to the forefront of defense matters. The matter was complicated by the economic uncertainty of the Broken Years, the lack of contemporary experience among Syaran military designers due to the occupation, and the rapid development of armored fighting vehicles, tanks in particular, that had occurred in the years after the Great War Era. These issues prompted the Ministry of Defense to emphasize a production of a serviceable and effective armored vehicle that would still be easy and cheap to mass produce. The project was one of four major armored vehicle design programs that became known as the "Military Modernization Program", (Syaran: Програма за воена модернизација, Programa za voena modernizacija), or PVM, that would rapidly modernized and mechanize the Syaran army with streamlined production of a new tank, armored personnel carrier, self-propelled artillery platform, and armored utility vehicle that could served the basis of a combat engineering vehicle, recovery platform, and tracked self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.