Power armor was initially designed during the mid 21st century as a means to add heavy support to infantry operating in urban conflicts. This tradition began a long line of heavy but short ranged weapons that could provide excellent support for infantry in urban environments. As the technology matured and power armor proliferated into other theatres of combat, however, the quest for heavy power armor weapons changed. This change sought out longer ranged weapons with knock down power that could shatter a 20th century main battle tank. Power armor portable rail guns were the first stage in this new requirement. While rail guns were ideal for some purposes - they were point of impact killing weapons. Enter the rapid fire field cannon. The rapid fire field cannon combined the technology of early 21st century 20 mm infantry support cannons with rail gun technology, to produce a weapon that could fling out two 20 mm armor piercing explosive shells, a nano-second apart, at high speeds to inflict far more damage than either a 20 mm cannon or even a rail gun of similar size and weight. Furthermore the modest blast radius increased the field of damage considerably, without causing the amount of destruction an automatic grenade launcher inflicts. When Salt Lake City fell the rapid fire field cannon was just coming into maturity. As a result the rapid fire field cannon saw only limited use by the military in the years preceeding the cataclysm since most of the R & D work into the project was believed destroyed by the Mexican Empire's nuclear attack on Salt Lake City.

      A quick note regarding rapid fire field cannons is that NO other manufacturers on RIFTS Earth have yet made the leap from producing pure rail guns into producing what is in effect a rapid fire rail cannon. The closest any manufacturer is to a rapid fire field cannon is ironically enough, Bandito Arms. The Bandit 6000 (As seen on pg. 176 of RIFTS World Book 14: New West.) was in fact one of the earliest prototypes of this weapon type. It was a functioning mock up built to showcase the proper conventional chamber feed. This was long before the E-Mag accelleration unit under development in Salt Lake City was intended to be fitted to a working prototype. Bandito Arms has become aware of this fact, over the years, and is presently working on an E-Mag accelleration unit, knocked off from the RFFC-17, for their own Bandit 6000. Once this project is completed, and they've knocked off the armor piercing shells as produced by S-Mart, the Bandit 6000 will inflict 1D6x10 M.D. on a rapid-fire two shell burst, but it will only have a blast radius of three feet. Weight will also be significantly increased to right around 85 Lb.