A Rhino Primaris of the Ultramarines Chapter
The Rhino Primaris is a specialised variant of the standard Adeptus Astartes Rhino Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) that serves a battlefield support and command and control function. As a designated command vehicle, it possesses an unusually powerful array of augur sensor arrays, cogitators and advanced communications gear to carry out ship-to-surface coordination of a planetary assault.
It often acts in concert with the Land Raider Excelsior, a variant of the standard Land Raider also intended to carry out command and control functions, to help target orbital bombardments from a Space Marine fleet in high orbit of the embattled world. The Rhino Primaris can transport 6 Astartes into combat.
The Rhino Primaris working in tandem with the Land Raider Excelsior for the Ultramarines Chapter
When working in concert, Space Marine command tanks can secure victory within only solar hours of making planetfall in a combat zone. Orders weighed and delivered by one of the foremost tactical minds of the Adeptus Astartes galvanise those Space Marines nearby to heroic feats of war, whilst targeting Augurs relay telemetries that make each punishing volley impossible to escape.
Not only is the strategic worth of these tanks hard to overstate, but they bring overwhelming destruction upon the foe. The Land Raider Excelsior's Lascannons swivel and track, annihilating those enemy vehicles not crushed by its forward Grav-cannon, while the battle barge high above unleashes the final blow. Guided by the Augur array of the Rhino Primaris, the resultant orbital bombardment hurtles out of the sky, leaving nothing but a crater in the planet's crust where a strongpoint lay moments before.
Unit Composition
- 1 Rhino Primaris
Armament
A standard Rhino Primaris is armed and equipped with:
- Twin-linked Plasma Guns
- Searchlight
- Smoke Launchers
- Orbital Array - An advanced Orbital Communications and Targeting Array that is used by the Rhino Primaris to guide orbital-bombardments from orbiting Space Marine or Imperial Navy fleets.
- Servo-Skull Hub - A hub that is used as a nest for various types of Servo-skulls. The hub can deploy Servo-skulls that collect targeting data from the surrounding area, repair nearby friendly vehicles or act as communication devices between units.
The Rhino Primaris may also have a variety of vehicle equipment such as:
Adeptus Mechanicus Technical Specifications
The Adeptus Mechanicus has not publicly released the technical specifications of the Rhino Primaris.
Sources
- Warhammer 40,000: Index - Imperium 1 (8th Edition), pg. 47
- Adeptus Astartes: Space Marine HQ Command Tanks (Forge World Model Set Data Sheet)