RX-78NT-1 Gundam "Alex"

The RX-78NT-1 Gundam "Alex" (RX-78NT-1 ガンダム「アレックス」) is the main mobile suit featured in the Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket OVA, and piloted by Christina Mackenzie

Technology & Combat Characteristics
As the One Year War raged on, the Earth Federation Forces realized that its greatest weapon, the RX-78-2 Gundam, had a major flaw with how it was working: its pilot. As Gundam pilot Amuro Ray's Newtype powers quickly emerged, the Gundam was overworked by its pilot's great reflexes. To improve Gundam's performance, the Federation set out to develop a brand new prototype, the RX-78NT-1 Gundam "Alex", to make the most of Amuro's Newtype abilities.

Unlike the Newtype Mobile Armors fielded by Zeon, the NT-1 didn't utilize wired pods or bits - due to the fact that the Federation did not have the same Newtype research that Zeon did and wouldn't have it until the end of the One Year War - and instead was developed to be much more responsive to its pilot, utilizing the Magnetic Coating pioneered by the RX-78-3 "G-3" Gundam and the brand new Panoramic monitor. Test pilot Christina MacKenzie (an Oldtype) noted that the machine was incredibly powerful, almost to the point that it was out of control.

Additionally, the Gundam Alex can be outfitted with a brand new set of optional armor known as the Chobam Armor, transforming it into the Full Armor Alex. However, the use of the armor increase the Gundam's total weight to a shocking 95 tons, effectively killing the speed the Alex was meant to have.

Armaments

 * 60mm Vulcan Gun
 * Mounted in the head, the pair of 60mm Vulcan guns have high rate of fire but low power. They are primarily used to ward off advancing enemies, shoot down missiles or other lightly armored targets.


 * 90mm Gatling Gun
 * Hidden under the forearm armor of the Gundam Alex, the pair of 3-barrel 90mm Gatling guns pop up when in use. While not as powerful as the Beam Rifle, the Gatling guns have high rate of fire, element of surprise and can easily penetrate through thinly-armored MS such as the MS-18E Kämpfer. The Gatling Guns are unusable when Gundam Alex is fitted with the Chobham Armor.


 * Blash·XB-B-09 Beam Saber
 * Beam Saber is the standard close combat armament of most Earth Federation Forces' Mobile Suit, and Gundam Alex stores two of them in its backpack. The beam sabers use Minovsky particles held in place by an I-Field to form an effective cutting surface that can slice through nearly any material. The particles for the beam sabers are stored in a rechargeable E-cap within the hilt of the sabers.


 * BOWA·Norfolk XBR-L Type-3 Beam Rifle
 * The beam rifle is the primary ranged weapon of the Gundam Alex. Making use of the Federations' E-cap (or "energy capacitor") technology, the rifle uses charged concentrations of Minovsky particles as ammunition. This gives the beam rifle firepower equivalent to that of a battleship's beam cannons. As the Minovsky particles destroy matter on a molecular scale, the beam rifle can penetrate even the thickest armor and destroy its target with a single shot. One weak point of the rifle was its energy limits.


 * Hyper Bazooka
 * Technically a large rocket launcher, it could fire several 380mm missiles to strike targets at long range. Almost no mass-production MS's armors can stop this weapon. While very powerful the Hyper Bazooka had a slow rate of fire and fairly little of ammunition. Most often used to take out slow, heavily armored targets.


 * RX·C-Sh-05 UBC/S-0003 Shield
 * A basic arm-mounted defense armament for many Federation mobile suits. The shield is a thick sheet of armor designed to take severe punishment that would normally destroy a mobile suit. Since the introduction of beam weaponry, shield is also treated with an anti-beam coating to withstand several beam shots before the coating wears off. Typically, physical shield can only take so much damage before it succumb to the pressure and break.

Special Equipment & Features

 * 360-degree Panoramic Cockpit
 * Replacing the original Gundam's costly Core Block System, the new panoramic cockpit give the pilot a complete view of the battlefield in all directions, allowing for faster reaction times. This technology eventually became a standard feature on all mobile suits.


 * Chobham Armor
 * First tested on the Gundam Alex, the Chobham armor was a series of heavy armor plates attached to the main body of the Alex. Though it granted the Alex superior defensive capabilities (it easily withstand a direct hit from the Kampfer's Jagdgewehr shotgun and protected the Gundam Alex from the explosion of the chain mine), it weighs down the suit tremendously and is unarmed. The armor would later be used to develop the RGC-83 GM Cannon II. When placed on the Alex the model number changes to RX-78NT-1FA Full Armor Gundam "Alex".


 * Magnetic Coating
 * A special membrane treatment applied to mobile suit joints to improve their response speed. The mobile suits developed by the Earth Federation Forces use special actuators called field motors, whose efficiency is increased by the magnet coating process. The treatment also reduces friction resistance in the mobile suit's joints. With this, the reaction time of the MS is greatly increased, but also made the "Alex" extremely hard to control, especially for an Oldtype. While the Gundam "Alex" wouldn't reach its intended pilot Amuro Ray, this technology still would be applied to the original RX-78-2 Gundam.

History
The RX-78NT-1 Gundam "Alex" was a brand new prototype developed by the Federation Forces to make the most of Amuro Ray's Newtype abilities. In the final months of UC.0079, Gundam Alex was delivered from the Arctic Base to Side 6 for testing, with Zeon's special ops Cyclops Team on its tail. The Cyclops Team rigged explosives on Alex, but was unable to blow through the Chobam Armor. Alex, piloted by Christina Mackenzie, then defeated Cyclops' MS-18E Kämpfer, while sustaining damages itself. In a subsequent assault, Cyclops's Bernard Wiseman made use of terrain and traps to put Alex at a disadvantage and critically damaging it with a Zaku, but lost his own life in the process. Shortly after, the One Year War came to an end and the Alex project was dropped in favor of psycommu-based Newtype weaponry.

Variants

 * FA-78-NT-1 Full Armor Gundam ALEX

Notes and Trivia

 * Due to the fact its only known pilot was a non-Newtype, the true capabilities of the Gundam Alex when piloted by an actual Newtype have never been definitively explored.
 * In the video game Mobile Suit Gundam: Encounters in Space, when Amuro Ray pilots the Gundam Alex, he will say "This Alex isn't just for show!" This is a reference to Char's Counterattack when Amuro tells Char Aznable not to underestimate the RX-93 ν Gundam.
 * In the video game SD G-Generation DS, on special mode, if the player has unlocked the first extra session, instead of NT-1 Alex getting destroyed along with Bernie and Mackenzie, Gato and Char would intervene, saving the Cyclops team. Through this event, the NT-1 Alex would be piloted by Amuro during the battle at A Baoa Qu.
 * The Gundam "Alex" received the magnetic coating before the RX-78-2 Gundam.