Flak Track

The Flak Track is a light tank chassis carrying a rapid-fire anti-air gun. It looks to the sky first, and it is a cheap way to make a column safe from helicopters and drones. With no aircraft in reach, the same gun fires on vehicles, buildings and ships as a light cannon would.

How to use

Slot one or two into every army group as soon as you see an Airbase; they need no upgrade and keep pace with tanks. Its guns reach 6.5 tiles, a tile past a Cobra's missiles, so a helicopter that comes for the column comes into them first. Between air raids it is a gun in the army, not a unit waiting on the sky: good against light vehicles, weaker against medium armour, and little use against heavy tanks, buildings and ships. An aircraft in reach always pulls it off a ground target, so keep it inside the formation, not in front: when the sky calls, it stops answering whatever is shooting at it on the ground. Against a serious air force, upgrade to SAM Launchers, but Flak stays the better answer to swarms of cheap aircraft thanks to its fire rate.

Anecdotes

Every anti-aircraft gun ends up pointed at the ground eventually. Soviet crews in Afghanistan used the ZSU-23-4 Shilka to hose down hillsides until the other side named it shaitan-arba, the devil's chariot. In Grozny, Russian columns brought it along for the upper floors a tank gun could not elevate to reach. The Flak Track's gunners do the same whenever the sky is empty.