RGM-79 GM

At the onset of the One Year War, the Earth Federation did not take the mobile suit threat seriously. This was until the Principality of Zeon's MS-06F Zaku II completely decimated the Earth Federal Spaces Forces in space and then invaded Earth. Thus the Federation developed several mobile suit prototypes, the most notable of that being the RX-78-2 Gundam. From the Gundam came the Earth Federation's first mass production mobile suit: the RGM-79 GM. The GM would serve as the Federation's primary mobile suit throughout the war. The GM would also serve as the baseline of the Earth Federation's mobile suits for over fifteen years.

The GM was armed rather simply, with most of its weapons basically scaled down verisons of that of the Gundam. The GM was primarily armed with a beam spray gun, which was basically a downgrade in all aspects of the Gundam's powerful beam rifle. It did have the distinction still of being the first mass produced beam weapon ever made - something the Zeon forces had yet to do. However it was weak, had short range, and proved to be somewhat inaccurate. The GMs also used 100mm and 90mm machine guns, the latter having less ammo capacity but a better armor penetration rate. Heavy weapons wise, GMs used remakes of the Gundam's 380mm Hyper Bazooka. For close quarters combat, the GM featured a single beam saber, although earlier models had the twin-saber backpacks of the Gundam. Lastly, the GM had a pair of 60mm vulcan guns mounted in its head, which gave pilots backup firepower that was highly effective against aircraft and ground vehicles but woefully inadequate against mobile suits. Early in production, the beam spray rifle had yet to be completely mass produced so that most GMs were equppied with machine guns. By Operation Star One and Battle of Solomon, however, most the mobile suits used the beam weapon. It should also be noted that a small portion of the GMs stationed at the Federation General HQ in Jaburo also used the Gundam's beam rifle.

The RGM-79 was far more mobile in space than the Zeon's Zaku II, with a maximum thruster acceleration of 0.94 gees, better than that of the Gundam's 0.93 gees of thruster acceleration. The Zaku II had roughly half of the GM's acceleration. On the ground, the GM again proved its superiority over the Zaku II with a top running speed of 102 kilometers per hour compared to its top speed of 88 km/h. Armor wise, the GM had a titanium alloy hull. This too was stronger than the Zaku II's super-high tensile steel armor.

Overall, the RGM-79 GM was superior is almost all respects to that of the Zeon's Zaku II mobile suit. Still the Zaku pilots had more experience with mobile suit warfare than GM pilots did. It was for this reason that the Federation went with the 'quantity over quality' approach. By the time of the GM's true introduction at the Battle of Jaburo, the Zeon forces had already production the MS-09 Dom, a greatly superior mobile suit to that of the GM. When the war went back into space, the GM was greatly outgunned by the vastly superior MS-09R Rick Doms and later the MS-14 Gelgoogs, which both mobile suit units could handle even with large numbers of GM attacking.

However, this would not be the case towards the end of the One Year War. The Rick Doms and Gelgoogs would be held up by the bickering Zabi family politics and the equally insane high-level Zeon commanders attempting to bring the down the White Base and Gundam. In the end, the Rick Dom was produced in too few numbers and the Gelgoog wouldn't be deployed until the last two weeks of the war. Even with these powerful mobile suits, the Zeon forces had to rely on pilots with little to no combat experience and barely enough training to make them able to properly use their mobile suits. Not only that, but the Zeon forces had to once again rely on their Zaku IIs and even the MS-05B Zaku I. It would be the RGM-79 GM's greater number and more experience pilots that would win the last few months of the war for the Earth Federation.

The GM line was first established through the RGM-79[E] GM Type, a prototype GM verison that would set the basics down for the GM. During the One Year War, the GM would commonly be supported and paired with the RB-79 Ball mobile pod. The basic GM frame would later be updated and upgraded into the RGM-79R GM II during the mid-UC 0080s. The GM line successor would be the RGM-89 Jegan in the UC 0090s, until that time the GM would become of the most heavily modified mobile suits, spawning many variants.

Variants
Listed here is the various varients and upgrades of the standard RGM-79 GM.


 * RGM-79[E] GM Type
 * RGM-79[G] GM Ground Type
 * RGC-80-1 GM Cannon Test Type
 * RGC-80 GM Cannon
 * RGM-79L GM Light Armor
 * RGM-79SC GM Sniper Custom
 * TGM-79 GM Trainer
 * RAG-79 Aqua GM
 * RGM-79SP Desert GM
 * RGM-79F Land Combat Type GM
 * RGM-79D GM Cold Climate Type
 * RGM-79G GM Command
 * RGM-79GS GM Command Space Type
 * RGM-79SP GM Sniper II
 * RGC-83 GM Cannon II
 * RGM-79C GM Kai
 * RGM-79C Powered GM
 * RGM-79N GM Custom
 * RGM-79Q GM Quel
 * RGM-79R GM II
 * RGM-179 GM II
 * RGM-86R GM III