GPO-2 Backup Weapons....

[AmuroNT1]

That's probably the same reason why the GP02 concept was never really pursued again.

Unless you count the Gigantic from G Generation.

[domtropen]

and Rick Dias is partly GP02 offspring minus the nuke.

[Mark-II]

I'd always been wondering if the GP02 could've carried a second warhead if need be. In the first episode, they showed Nina loading the warhead and its booster into the Gundams backpack first, and THEN she moved it to the actual bazooka where the parts were assembled. The backpack is thus empty.

In theory, they should have left it in the relatively protected backpack section until they were actually going to use it, but for some reason Nina shifted it to the bazooka first. I guess they were GOING to test out the Gundam in live-fire the next day or something, but if the backpack were to serve a useful purpose it would be for safer transportation of the warhead.

What I'm getting at is that the GP02 *should* have the capacity to carry two shots for the bazooka if they had to. Given the enormous destruction wrought by just one warhead, it doesn't seem really necessary, but it seems possible.

Mark-II

[The Fowl Sorcerous]

considering that it was produced in tandem with 2 other units. perhaps it was meant have the gp01 and gp03 as support units.

[AmuroNT1]

I'm pretty sure the Atomic Bazooka only has enough room in the chamber for one round. And I REALLY question the idea that they were going to "test" a nuclear warhead out of the blue. Honestly there's really no explanation for why they loaded a live warhead into the GP02 other than "the plot said so" (unless there's some sort of retcon that says Zeon sympathizers at Anaheim set it up).

And I may be wrong but I don't think any of the GP Series were intended to be actual combat units; they were just technology testbeds. And again, why on Earth would the Federation need to deploy an MS whose sole purpose is to launch a nuclear warhead when they had no enemies greater than tiny pockets of Zeon resistance like Bitter's group?

[toysdream]

It's once we've fired a weapon of mass destruction which makes a sizable area and everything in it glow for several centuries.

Firing that nuke pretty much ends any fight.

Unless you're using it in the vacuum of space, where its effects are going to be much less dramatic. The depiction you see in Gundam 0083 is utterly contrary to actual physics; the depiction of nukes in Char's Counterattack is way more scientific.

And, as Amuro NT1 notes, there's no real explanation why the Federation Forces flew the GP02A to Earth, loaded it with a live nuke, and then walked away and left it unguarded in the hangar. Actually, the fact that the Gundam remained aboard the Albion while the nuke was loaded suggests that they may have intended to fly it back into space for testing; I should check the novel and see if it addresses this.

-- Mark

[ShadowCell]

i'm still kind of fuzzy on why they bothered building the GP02 at all*. i thought ordinary mobile suits were perfectly capable of delivering nuclear weapons? i mean, i thought that's how the early battles of the One Year War went, which is why there were so many wrecked colonies all over the place.

*well, besides "the plot demanded it"

[toysdream]

The more I think about it, the hinkier the whole scenario becomes. (And by the way, no, the novel doesn't explain any of it.)

For some reason, the question that's sticking in my mind is why the GP02A's nuclear warhead is designated as a "Mk-82" if it's been sitting in a storage bunker since early U.C. 0079. Aargh.

-- Mark

[Sume Gai]

made in 1982 perhaps *Shrug*?

It wasn't something that bother me till just recently but now that it comes the GP02 itself is a very strange Idea. The Federation isn't stated to have any foes with Nuclear Weapons such that MS based deterrence would be worthwhile, and there are already a number of readily available platforms should an urgent need present itself. Honestly it seems more and more like a 'lets see if we can' project. Which even our history has shown to be a bad move with Nuclear Weapons. Can't imagine after the rampant use of nukes and gas in the early OYW that this stigma would have abated.

[Arsarcana]

In-universe it really does seem to be a 'because we could' project (see also, the Jagd Mirage of FSS which is this concept squared) seeing that there were other ways to deliver nukes and the Federation wasn't really facing the kind of threat where a nuke wouldn't be massive overkill.

[toysdream]

Devil's advocate time here: If you apply real, non-0083 physics, a nuke isn't really overkill in space combat. It's certainly a practical way to get rid of a single large enemy warship.

In some of the Japanese books - I think it was mentioned in the Data Collection series - it's been claimed that the Federation was afraid Zeon had more of those Dolos-class carriers left after the war, and we know for a fact that a few Gwazines were unaccounted for. A nuke would also be useful for clearing out an asteroid base like Pezun or the Garden of Thorns. From Zeta onward, we have weapons like the mega bazooka launcher and the high mega cannon for performing these tasks; perhaps it's advancing beam weapon technology that actually rendered the MS-portable nuke obsolete.

...assuming, again, that we're applying real physics instead of 0083's magic fairy dust.

-- Mark

[Fritz Ashlyn]

...assuming, again, that we're applying real physics instead of 0083's magic fairy dust.*

-- Mark

*stardust

[toysdream]

Zing!

[flamingtroll]

What I'm getting at is that the GP02 *should* have the capacity to carry two shots for the bazooka if they had to. Given the enormous destruction wrought by just one warhead, it doesn't seem really necessary, but it seems possible.

If the other side of the backpack also stores another round plus one round in the chamber, I think it could fire three rounds maximum. Not sure if it's easy for it to load the rounds by itself though.

[Sume Gai]

It's a good point Mark but, clearly, the 0083 team didn't take real world physics into account so why should we? The GP02 was designed to actually survive a full power nuclear blast (even if that feature didn't work as advertised) so it probably wasn't built to shoot down singular rouge battleships.

It guess could have been built to intercept a falling colony but the idea that remnants could achieve that seemed to utterly shock pretty much everyone and they still had the Solar Ray system which were it not for interference seemed capable if doing the job more efficiently.

[toysdream]

Is the GP02A designed for real-world (and standard Gundam!) physics, or for the bizarro version that applied in the Naval Review episode? It's a good question, since otherwise there's no weapon in U.C. history that can destroy an entire fleet with one shot, aside from Keilas Guille or a colony laser.

In other words, we have two levels of WMD here. At one level, there are weapons that can sink a battleship or knock around an asteroid base; think of the mega bazooka launcher versus the Dogosse Giar, the ZZ's high mega cannon versus the Endra, the Nahel Argama's high mega cannon versus Axis and Palau, maybe the V2 Assault's mega beam cannon. At the next level, weapons that can destroy entire fleets with one shot, or disable an asteroid fortress; this would include the Solar Ray, Gryps 2, and (apparently) the GP02A's nuclear bazooka. I think the tactics of these two classes of weapon are pretty different.

Does that sound about right? Am I forgetting or mis-classifying any of these, or is there some kind of in-between midrange? Maybe the Solar System is in between; it seems to be able to melt a few ships at once, but it has to keep up a sustained beam to do any real damage, so it seems more like a continuous high mega cannon.


The other question, which may be unanswerable, is whether the GP02A was ever meant to be used or tested on Earth. From a real-world physics standpoint, the effects of a nuclear blast are vastly amplified by the presence of an atmosphere. While a Zaku-type mobile suit could get away with pretty light protection if it's nuking ships in space, the GP02A's super-heavy armor, massive shield, and extra cooling systems might be justified if it's going to use nukes in atmosphere, which I don't think any other mobile suit had ever done.

-- Mark

[Pegasus]

If the GP02A is designed with use of nuclear weapons in an atmosphere in mind the question is what's the target? It's gross overkill for the little Zeek bolts holes dotted around Africa. Seems to me the only logical target is a particularly hardened underground fortress, in other words Jaburo.

[toysdream]

Yes, that's a very good question. If the GP02A's protection is overkill for (physically accurate) space warfare, that suggests it was designed with atmospheric use in mind. This is further supported by the implication that they planned to test-fire a nuke on Earth, since they loaded it with a live warhead just before the start of ground testing.

So what terrestrial targets could they possibly have had in mind...?

-- Mark

[Pegasus]

The only things that come to mind are cities and military bases. The GP02A seems well designed to attack any Federation base, just imagine it popping up and lobbing a nuke at Jaburo. Even if it doesn't destroy the base outright it would weaken the defences sufficiently for a conventional attack.

The other notion is that the GP02A could be used to intimidate civilian populations. Though I can't imagine Earth was that politically unstable during this period.

[Fritz Ashlyn]

I found this tidbit on the Japanese Gundam wiki, which seems to usually be more trustworthy than the English one:

"核兵器 の使用は、 南極条約 をもって禁止されていたが、その後も ジオン公国軍 は核兵器を使用した実績があったため、今後も用いられることを想定してその対策として計画が進められた。"

From which I understand something along the lines of:
"The use of nuclear weapons were banned with/under the Antarctic Treaty, but because of the Zeon military's track record of using nuclear weapons, the plan was carried out with the assumption that it would be used as a countermeasure in the future."

That and the surrounding context make me think it's meant to be used in space, not on Earth, but then we run into the issue of the nuclear blast not jiving with what we saw from the beginning of the OYW.