The Anar Industries Combat Airframe, Buckaroo Buster Class.
The discovery of the Higgs field and the eventual tapping into it changed the face of war. It was a shift similar to the mid-twentieth century use of atomic weapons. During the transition in 2347 Anar industries realized that new Higgs based platforms, while efficient, were dauntingly expensive. To make the affordable war they pushed drone and AI+ hybrids to create the Buckaroo Buster fully automated airframe.
The Buckaroos or “BB’s” were popular with corporations and province land owners all across the world. The advanced AI was able to crowd control, execute extremists, and disrupt protests, while keeping social workers and police officers safe.
Low-cost wasn’t their only advantage. The airframes were engineered with modular components so they could move cargo, transport people, and even be fitted with a warhead and used as an impact projectile known as the Buckaroo Banzai.
The most famous use of this was the Whitman food riots in European controlled Africa. While protesting government food programs a group of extremists had managed to gain control of the Whitman City Fusion Reactor. Though they were horribly disfigured from ingesting a lifetime of radioactive food and mutagenic waste from local Higgs reactors, the police felt they were a credible threat. The Banzai module was installed on a police model Buckaroo protector and sent in. The blast took out the entire building the terrorist occupied killing the terrorist and all the ‘supposed’ evidence that was in the fusion reactor facility. Only terrorists were killed and the precision of the bomb led to sales nearly doubling for Anar.
As a sidenote, the Boson contamination that resulted from the reactor breach did kill nearly four hundred thousand people. None were European or American citizens, and all were members of local terrorist groups (According to the USA news network and Euro Fact Authority).
The airframes never went out of use and they found upgrades in the late 2300’s with their fusion engines being replaced with Higgs pods. Although this significantly increased their costs, millions were produced right up until cloud collapse.
The BB air frame is one of the most famous and reliable aircraft ever to be produced by humans, AI, or AC. A staple in the pre-collapse world and the cornerstone of many a warlord in the aftermath.