"You stay down by day, but at night you can move around.  The HKs use infra-red, so you
still have to watch out.  Especially for the Aerials..."    -Kyle Reese

Frakes and Wisher, "The Terminator"


 


 _______________________________________________
 

                                 BACKGROUND INFORMATION

It took SKYNET approximately sixty three minutes to murder ninety four percent of the human race and it spent the next thirty years trying to eliminate the other six percent ... so tenacious and stubborn were its soft creators (now turned its enemy) that what had seemed a logical, decisive victory had become a prolonged war of simple yet unavoidable attrition.  During SKYNET's extermination campaign, it created a wide variety of death Machines as well as basic service and logistics automations to populate not only the battlefield but also all layers of its installations.  The war against humanity was only one aspect of SKYNET's overall plan, although it is often the aspect which receives the most debate and discussion.  SKYNET's long range plan to control the world (and eventually the solar system and to expand beyond even that) was not one that would have been achieved through the sheer application of force, indeed, the actual combat Machines that SKYNET would produce numbered far less than all the other types of Machines it produced combined.  The simple fact of conflict is that it takes an incredible amount of resources to commit to a conflict let alone sustain it with any successful continued momentum.

The real struggle, as historians will one day bring to light, was the fight for raw materials out of which new weapons could be produced at a rate high enough to not only overwhelm the enemy but to beat the enemy into submission and finally defeat.  SKYNET's early loss of its forward momentum can be explained by the nature of its adversary.  SKYNET was designed and initially programmed to fight a large scale, rapid fatigue conflict where its industrial, technological and military might would crush the OpForce while allowing itself time to rebuild and reconfigure its own tactical and strategic assets to match any changes in industry, technology or military might the OpForce might evolve.  Once all organized human military might was neutralized in the world (if not completely then at least certainly on a functional response level), SKYNET was faced with a dilemma.  It was ill-equipped to deal with the sporadic bands of human survivors which its satellites could detect and those bands which it knew had to exist where its satellites could not detect them.  Suddenly SKYNET was left with an incredible amount of small, individual targets which were not close enough together to warrant a strategic strike and too few in number to warrant a tactical strike (in effect, it would have been like using a jackhammer to try to kill an ant).  Operational protocol effectively tied its options on the strategic level by preventing it from wasting its limited stock of valuable, large scale assets on small, individual targets or small groups, especially when such deployment of assets would further damage valuable resources in the target area.  SKYNET was also still uncertain about China and Russia.  If there were survivors in those two countries and those survivors not only organized but found stocks of strategic level weapons, then SKYNET would by protocol and design, have to save some of its orbital and intercontinental capable strategic assets for situations and scenarios which may yet arise should organized resistance form and should that resistance have access to weapons of mass destruction.

SKYNET quickly realized that what strategic nuclear strikes, fallout, radiation, plague, famine, disease and sickness had not accomplished, it would have to accomplish on an individual basis using highly specialized tactical rather than blunt approach wide area strategic assets.  Assets which it was in short supply of and for which it would have to adapt its production facilities .  SKYNET realized that its campaign to exterminate the human race would be more difficult than it had at first predicted, an error it rationalized due to its own haste and lack of experience in dealing with its foe. 

It was a mistake it would not make again.

Still, it was a mistake that historians will note was one of the early turning points of the war in Humanity's favor, that circumstance reduced SKYNET's ability to fight from a purely strategic, global manner down to a tactical mode of level operation.  When SKYNET could no longer eliminate large numbers of humans using strategic level tools, it had to learn a new way to fight, one it was not familiar with.
 

The wreckage of the civilization that SKYNET had attempted to destroy would become the raw materials for SKYNET's expansion and the fuel for its continuing campaign of eliminating the human race.  Wrecked cars, trucks, busses, semi-rigs, airplanes, hangars, sewer pipes, and the skeletons of Man's buildings were all removed, processed and transported from the ruins by tireless Machines which worked every hour of every day of every week.  Field maintenance of the reclamation units was carried out by yet another family of Machines, dedicated service Machines capable of diagnostic service and field repair.  Spare parts for the reclamation Machines was kept locally as well as in stock at the field and regional repair depots which SKYNET constructed as it moved its presence ever outward.  In order to keep reclamation at its most efficient rate and production at its highest, SKYNET carefully managed the production of Machines to the factories capacity.  When production could be expanded, SKYNET used engineering Machines and construction Machines to clear terrain for a new factory and then quickly build the installation.  SKYNET was careful to never overstep its limits, limits which even it might not be able to recover from.  Carelessness and waste were two facets of operation for which SKYNET had been carefully programmed to manage and keep to an absolute minimum, not for conservation's sake, but for tactical sense.  In war, you didn't waste anything.  It wasn't so much a tactical operational doctrine as it was a core aspect of SKYNET's very way of thought.

SKYNET expanded like a malignant mechanical cancer both above and below the surface of the planet.  It never tired, it never slept, and the Machines that it produced operated in a similar manner, enhancing its capabilities, modifying and building upon its existing installations without stopping.  With each new labor or service machine produced, SKYNET increased its work force and its ability to expand itself as well as its assets.  Machines built Machines in technologically advanced production environments which for all practical intents and purposes were so different from what they had been intended to be that they might as well be alien to the mindset and understanding of the human survivors who sometimes lived long enough enough to view them in operation ...
 

Production for the initial set of Machines was rudimentary, based off of a desire by SKYNET for updated intelligence and a need to recon its immediate territory before the start of its initial campaign.  After the nuclear exchange, SKYNET paused in its extermination campaign to take stock of the vastly changed battlefield.  So much had changed in such a short time, all thanks to its actions.  Much of Russia and China had been hit hard by the nuclear, biological, chemical and orbital exchange that SKYNET had initiated.  Global communication channel spoofing and misinformation had lead to a vast misunderstanding on all political and military levels around the world as to who had been the first to push the button and why.  The survivors around the world reeled in shock at the devastation; population centers, military bases and science / research installations in Russia and China had been specifically targeted.  What the American missiles didn't hit, the American orbital assets did, with pinpoint accuracy and effects often redefining the term long clichéd military term of "overkill."  The return salvo from Russia was carefully monitored and selectively engaged by SKYNET with what amounted to abject interest and surgical precision.  Any intercontinental munitions that might fall on SKYNET's military, research or production centers were intercepted either with next generation multi-stage, hypervelocity anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems or directed energy weapons (DEW).  SKYNET selectively tracked and allowed any incoming Russian weapons to strike population centers and military bases that might pose a future threat to it and which in turn had little or no salvage value in a post-exchange theater of operations.  The result was the complete destruction of every major city in the United States as well as most military installations but the selective sparing of critical support assets allocated to and controlled directly by SKYNET itself.

The American population was reduced to a tiny percentage of its former self in the period of a few hours and this percentage would fall even lower due to fallout and contamination in the long weeks and months to come.  A brief nuclear winter set in, lasting several months as ejecta from the detonations tainted the atmosphere with dust and debris, blocking the sunlight and plunging the world into darkness and cold.  Communications were disrupted on a global basis.  SKYNET's ELINT sub-processors and acquisition arrays listened for, gathered, correlated and analyzed any transmissions, often jumping to foreign telecommunication satellites, both public and government / military, at least the ones that were still operational or still in orbit.

Every nation and country on Earth was left in total chaos.  Those nations not directly hit in the three way exchange were experiencing massive social and political upheaval in the wake of the fallout and communications breakdown.  Several of the Middle Eastern nations took the cataclysm as a holy sign and began a series of Jihads against their neighbors with which long standing and bitter rivalries had existed for decades.  Iraq and Iran rolled their armies against each other, as did India and Pakistan.  Israel went to war with her neighbors and the Middle East ceased to exist as a civilized part of the world within the space a few days.  Tel Aviv and Cairo were both vaporized in retaliatory atomic strikes using weapons which SKYNET knew each belligerent to have.  The border between North Korea and South Korea dissolved under the mechanized treads of the their respective armies and the two nations joined in a new war.  Africa erupted in a series of small wars that quickly spread and died out almost as fast as the armies could be consumed.  The battles were interesting to watch, as SKYNET surely did, but ultimately they were short lived and futile in their desired outcomes, doing nothing for the participants and advancing everything for SKYNET.  Within a few weeks, all military forces around the world had ground to a halt, all campaigns came to various ends as the armies were unable to carry on any sustained local conflict let alone care for their civilian populations.  The Third World nations, in their hatred and haste, had accomplished what SKYNET could not and effectively removed their selves as any form of threat to the American defense computer system for decades if not centuries to come.

Disease and sickness began to spread, partially due to the fallout but also due to a variety of special biological and chemical weapons that had been deployed by both Russia and China as well as North Korea and some of the Middle Eastern countries (all against established international war conventions).  The human race continued to decline in number aided by a lack of direction and a large vector of fear mixed with the onset of ignorance.  Disease and sickness were carried by strangers seeking shelter and medical attention, often stealing what they could or murdering and raping those who would offer to help them.  Civilization collapsed rapidly into barbarism and began the long slide back into the Stone Age.  It took a far shorter time to slide backwards than it had taken to climb forward but then historians and theorists had predicted that scenario since the advent of the first atomic bomb with its widespread capacity for the destruction of population centers.

SKYNET was pleased with its initial work but still it waited, biding its time until the firestorms and the radioactive debris had declined enough for an initial foray into the ruins of civilization.  As the Earth died below, satellites and other orbital assets high above monitored, scanned, measured, and recorded.  SKYNET bathed in data, raw data, filtered data, estimates and facts, predictions and known statistics.  SKYNET took in strike damage assessments (SDA) and updated its threat tables accordingly.  SKYNET made plans, modified them, and modified them again.  As it grew in mental stability, so did it grow in awareness.  SKYNET expanded several times, it rediscovered itself, it filled out until it felt it could expand no more within the confines of its dedicated think tank and processor arrays.  SKYNET began to plan for its own needs.  It would require resources, larger power sources, greater storage arrays ... It felt confined.

SKYNET needed room to grow.

SKYNET had been built with that kind of operation as a preliminary action should the worst case scenario ever occur.  No one had ever dreamed that SKYNET would trigger its own awakening let alone that it would self-activate its own security protocols and not only turn on its creators but the entire world as well.  The people who had originally protested SKYNET were now ash ... right along with the people who had advocated its construction and activation.

While the human race struggled to survive, to find answers to the cataclysm that had befallen it, SKYNET went about its methodical analysis of what kind of Machines it would need in order to start the second phase of its campaign of extermination.  Only after the last human being was eliminated could SKYNET know safety and be assured of its continued existence as the ruler of a planet populated by machines.  Planning for that eventual outcome, SKYNET had to aggressively expand its holdings on the continental United States, secure critical assets, build a mechanized force capable of projecting military might near as well as far and be able to secure its own perimeter and operational sectors.  After that, it could expand with ease, moving into a new sector, pacifying it through direct force and then creating new installations to exploit the resources found there.  SKYNET would use the core elements of surprise, speed and superior technology to cleanse the Earth of the remaining fragments of the disease that was humanity.  SKYNET's best calculations showed that in thirty years, baring any significant resistance, it could be in complete control of the entire North American as well as most if not all of the South American continent.  From there, it would be an easy jump to Europe and then finally to Africa and the Middle East, consolidating its hold on natural resources and securing its hold on the surface of the planet.  To that end, SKYNET planned for and began an aggressive campaign of mechanized expansion, rapidly mobilizing what Machines it could and using them to not only repair what little damage its assets had sustained but also to modify and enhance the capabilities of those installations.

The key point to remember here was that SKYNET's success depended on not encountering "any significant resistance."  This meant that if SKYNET was to succeed in its plans for survival and expansion, it had to crush any threat to its plans and it had to crush that threat quickly, mercilessly, and totally.

 

"The Machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire..."

Those ten words were etched on a black memorial stone commemorating the struggle of man against his greatest creation and honoring all those who had fallen in the three plus decades of conflict.  A stone, coincidentally, that was erected in 2041 AD and resides just outside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex Memorial Military Park where the decisive last battle was fought in 2029 AD.  The park is located in North America, built around the ruins of the very heart of SKYNET's power and presence.  Those words, however, were imprinted at the suggestion of historians, learned men and women who had ample time to review the events and actions of the decades prior and pass judgment on what went before them, all in the comfort and safety of a world free of death Machines.  Hindsight was a precious luxury that the survivors of the human race could not afford to enjoy way back at the turn of the 21st century... indeed, hindsight was a commodity that was in even shorter supply than hope.  Nobody was looking back or forward, they were too busy trying to survive in the here and now, from day to day.

In late 1997, as Winter would normally be setting in, the effects of the approaching cold season were compounded by the apocalyptic exchange.  The Earth's magnetic field had been bruised, for want of a better term, by the energies of the exchange and would take some time to heal itself.  Gray and black snow began to fall in large swathes across huge areas.  The discolored snow brought with it radiation and slow death.  It fell on open areas, it fell across water sources and poisoned them.  The human survivors embraced their instincts and went underground, hiding in the ruins of their civilization much as their ancestors had once huddled in caves to escape the elements and dangerous predators.  Small bands of survivors fought other bands over the scarce resources left to them, raiding parties representing the strongest of the strong, ventured out among the ruins to claim what they could by right of might.  Small territories were carved out, boundaries were fluid and changed often when group fought group.  There was no cohesion, no leadership, no vision and no direction.  Human life became a day to day, hand to mouth existence that was as often as short and painful as it was brutal and violent.  Group rape and creative or random violence often formed the backbone of entertainment while cannibalism appeared in a few of the harder hit outlying areas.  The weaker minded fell back into superstition and strange religions formed often worshipping the simplest or most abstract things.

Into the still radioactive and sometimes biological contaminated ruins, SKYNET's initial probes would be sent.  Communication was still sporadic given the high energy particles loose in the atmosphere and the displaced weather patterns that were being created due to the abnormal conditions.  SKYNET was equipped and programmed to adapt its designs to changing conditions, changing technology as needed to match the scenario.  SKYNET's situational analysis took information from a variety of sensors at many different locations then adjusted its designs accordingly.  SKYNET built many drones which it used to seed ELINT assets within wide areas around each of its chain control networked installations.  Some drones were lost due to the weather and local conditions, two were shot down by different survivor groups and one simply vanished, having failed to report in halfway through its assigned course route and mission package.  SKYNET's cache of drones was not limitless and it conserved the supply that it had been allotted, planning upgrades and changes to the current design for the next production run.  While the data that the drone installed network of sensors and scanners supplied was incomplete, what data that the network did gather and send back gave SKYNET a solid picture of its territory, the external conditions of its installations after the exchange and also the ability to begin an inertial mapping project that would rely less and less on the old GPS system or the unsteady magnetic fields of the Earth itself.

While the first SKYNET ELINT units were primitive compared to later designs of just a few short years after, they were cutting edge for their day and did serve an important role in gathering information for SKYNET on the local areas that would fall immediately under its control.  The ELINT units also noted terrain types, temperatures, operating conditions, weather and a long list of other variables which immediately were implemented into the design tables of SKYNET's automated production facilities.  It took sixteen weeks for SKYNET to re-map the local area for 2400 square kilometers around its core installation and for 200 square kilometers around each of its networked production facilities.  The first Machines produced in SKYNET's automated production facilities were labor oriented models, Machines designed to produce other Machines, other equipment that would in turn also produce other Machines.  SKYNET's first phase of growth began in the early Spring of 1998 when two of its networked production facilities began to expand at a quick rate.  Within three months, the production capacity of the two facilities had doubled.  A month and a half later, it had doubled again and the facilities had not only grown beyond their initial perimeter, but also both above and below ground.  Machines cleared the terrain, smoothed down hills, felled trees, searched for local resources, collected them and processed them in the automatic smelters of the facilities.  New molds were brought online and a vast assembly line began to create an army of reclamation Machines which would systematically begin to find resources, extract them, transport them back to the automated facilities and return again to their collection programs.  By the end of 1998, SKYNET's network facilities were fully operational, linked through high speed parallel fiber optic trunks and acting as extensions of the computer itself.  SKYNET expanded its awareness into each networked facility and felt itself grow.  It absorbed all of the collected data, modified its plans, updated its time tables, and began to reevaluate its campaign.  According to its data, it was six weeks, three days, twelve hours, sixteen minutes and forty-eight seconds ahead of schedule.

 

                HK - HUNTER KILLER SERIES

The Hunter Killer or "HK" series of anti-personnel combat units were the simplest and most numerous of the various combat oriented Machines designed by SKYNET.  The HK series were the first and often the largest of SKYNET's combat units.   Originally evolved from advanced prototype American robot weapon systems under development at the end of the 20th century, the various series of HK units represented the largest areas of advances in design and technology over the course of the three decades long war.  Built in fully automated factories to precision tolerances using high technology, HKs were used as SKYNET's foremost force projection element to eliminate the human survivors in the ruins and to pacify or cleanse large areas of any feral scavengers so that the Machines could move in and collect the local resources or set up automated installations without the threat of constant harassment.  Their greatest success rates were observed during daylight hours by using a variety of advanced image intensification, dual input pixel comparison, and sonic based motion tracking capabilities.  Any movement was instantly tracked, analyzed, and if it represented a human target, weapons were brought to bear and the target was engaged.  If termination was not the immediate result then the HKs were programmed to judge the effects of their actions, calculate new strategies and options and to pursue targets based on a wide range of criteria.  Pursuit of any acquired target would continue until such time as termination could be carried out and verified or until the HKs had lost the track of the target for a predetermined time limit.  If the target tracking was lost, the HK would go to loiter mode, assess the situation, extrapolate possible hiding places or methods of escape, follow through with the most likely, and would attempt to reacquire the target.  If the target could not be reacquired, then the HK would relay the tactical information to all nearby units and resume its assigned patrol route.

In the first five years of the War, the rapidly evolving HK series of Machines were responsible for a large amount of post-strike follow up human casualties.  The initial high success rate was due simply to surprise; the human survivors were scattered into isolated pockets, disorganized, starved for food and information, cut off from most communication beyond local zones and unable to share information or request help from other still viable operational units.  The human survivors had little if any combat capacity and no access to high powered weapons.  Coordinated attacks by mechanized robotic combat units quickly pacified and cleansed large urban sectors of any survivors from the initial nuclear exchange and actively patrolled these sectors for several years afterwards, keeping the areas free from human infestation and migration.  The Machines roamed the ruins relentlessly, tirelessly, searching, tracking, eliminating.   Random patrols were the norm, supplemented by a large network of remote sensors and scanners which acted as "trips" to bring quick HK attention to any object or human entering into a scan zone.  Isolated human units were tracked with great efficiency by SKYNET's military aerial and orbital surveillance systems and were rapidly neutralized through force redirection by ground units operating with close air support.  When sporadic communication became available to the human survivors again, it came with a great amount of mistrust and caution, two huge advantages for SKYNET that were immediately noticed and acted upon to great effect.   Confusion continued to reign among the human survivors as ever newer, ever more advanced combat Machines made short work of any resistance, organized or happenstance.  The cities became silent tombs of littered bodies, those killed by the initial nuclear strikes and those who were killed later by the patrolling Machines.

HK units differed the most in size and mass, ranging from units not much bigger than a human's hand to huge multi-segment tracked zone pacification units.

 

                TERMINATORS

The first series of HK ground units were designed for rapid pacification of large areas but the smaller the area or the fewer the targets, the more difficult the task became for the large HK units.   While the large HKs were more than capable in their assigned tasks, they were easily fooled and outwitted by small groups of humans using dedicated tactics.  The HKs were simply too large, awkward and cumbersome to follow the humans down below ground and the few early models of bipedal units sent to infiltrate the human warrens never met with any high degree of success; it was just too easy for the humans to set traps or ambush what few types and designs of Machines SKYNET could deploy to follow the humans where they hid.  SKYNET realized that above ground, it had the advantage where size, firepower and armor could be matched with speed to run down anything that moved or tried to hide but the humans began a series of guerilla actions for which it was ill equipped (at first) to respond to.  Among the more substantial ruins and below ground in the subways, sewers and other maintenance areas of the old cities, SKYNET's designs were at an obvious disadvantage and suffered rapid attrition.  SKYNET owned the sky and the surface while the humans owned everything beneath.

The humans who survived the initial Machine attacks soon learned to hide from the Machines during the day, often in hastily prepared underground bunkers and old maze-like sewers while the HKs prowled the ruins above, searching and eliminating any humans found.  Initial resistance to the Machines came from small groups of humans banding together and working towards common goals.  Their tactics became clandestine, their actions harder to predict and provide countermeasures against.  Humans were moving underground, in increasingly large numbers, using old public utility, sewer and mass transit tunnels to remain, for the most part, undetected by SKYNET's surveillance systems.  SKYNET realized at an early phase that it would need combat units that could follow the humans where ever they went, even down into the cracks and depths of the ruins.  SKYNET began to systematically extend its awareness by using a network of sensors and scanners, everything from full spectrum visual sinks, motion and acoustic acquisition wells and olfactory catch basins.  Over a period of several months, small automated worker drones installed these sensors in carefully concealed locations throughout the underground ruins and SKYNET began a passive study of human migration and actions.  it began to see what it could not see before, hear what it could not hear before and smell what it could not smell before.  SKYNET was surprised and angered by the amount of humans that existed below the ruins and it was obvious that its original estimate of the effectiveness of the extermination sweeps had been in error to an unacceptable degree.  Small ARIGS (Autonomous Reconnaissance Information Gathering Systems) were dispatched into the depths below the ruins, most were very small (less than 1/6th of a meter in diameter) ducted fan surveillance units equipped with whisper quiet propulsion systems and short range, broad aspect all spectrum sensors.  The early ARIGS were cheaply produced, little more than engine, power pack, crude control surfaces, cut-rate command electronics and a basic visual, broad spectrum, auditory and olfactory detection suite.  As such, the ARIGS could do better than 4km per hour at full speed, moved silently and could hover at an altitude of up to one hundred meters.  Groups of humans were followed at a discreet distance, often observed silently from high up near the roof of the tunnels where the shadows were darkest and any sound made by the ARIGS would be hard to place or determine the source or direction from.  ARIGS grew smaller and more complex with longer ranges and greater operating endurance regimens within the space of just a few short years.  SKYNET methodically improved its intel systems, gathering all the information it could about the human survivors who were not only living under the ruins but were also apparently organizing into small bands of cohesive, force capable groups. 

This was unacceptable to the machine intelligence which saw any organized human activity as a direct threat.

SKYNET began to assemble a new series of combat unit designed specifically to go anywhere humans could go, to mimic the human capacity to adapt to differing terrain and conditions with ease.  SKYNET's new series of elimination Machines would not be stopped at the surface, instead, they would be able to follow the humans where ever they retreated to and root them out from their hiding places.  The new Terminator series anti-personnel Machines would support the heavier HK units while above ground but when humans retreated beneath the ruins, the new Terminator series of Machines could pursue and neutralize.  Until this new series of unit was put into production, SKYNET needed  a stop-gap measure to curb the human population and to bring their numbers back into check.  For this, the AI turned to designing variants of the ARIGS systems intended to become small, efficient yet semi-disposable anti-personnel weapon systems.  The new types of weapon systems were called AAPS (Autonomous Anti-Personnel Systems) and consisted of small, flight capable ARIGS units modified to carry a basic hunter killer electronics package as well as an extended power pack for increased loiter times, energy conservation subroutines to maintain peak power requirements and a sensor suite taken from the most advanced ARIGS design.  Unlike the ARIGS, the AAPS were designed to make an initial entry into the underground areas, find a secluded place and then lay in wait on lone humans or small groups of humans to pass by at which point the AAPS would engage and neutralize the target.  The programming of the AAPS allowed it to follow and engage individual targets at ideal situations, modifying its tactics as it went and learning from its experiences (one of the first of the new series of combat Machines to be able to do so).

Armament for the AAPS consisted of a variety of toxin dispensers, powered misters, high pressure fluid stream dispensers and powered hypodermic injectors.  The typical attack subroutine called for the AAPS to wait in hiding, preferably in a damaged section of wall or ceiling, in complete shadow.  When a target passed by, passive sensors would record the target's information and the unit would spin up to full power, a series of system initializations which would take approximately two point seven nine seconds.  The AAPS would then lift off from its perch silently on ducted fans, floating down out of its hiding place and approach the target from above, at an oblique angle out of immediate view even if the target turned to look behind them.  Speed would be gathered naturally by cutting power to the lift fans and letting gravity assert itself on the unit, increasing speed for the attack.  Once the AAPS was within one meter of the target, it would deliver a lethal dose of bio/neuro/physio toxin through a high pressure stream to the target's skin or other exposed area (sometimes to the face if the target turned to look towards the unit).  Absorption was nearly instantaneous into the skin and blood stream with debilitating effects taking place within six point nine seconds of dosage administration and lethal effect being achieved some nine point six seconds after initial dosage delivery, on average, depending on type of toxin and amount which actually contacted the skin.

SKYNET continued to refine its AAPS models over the years.  Later models evolved rapidly into lighter, more effective hunter killers.  The improved AAPS (IAAPS) had better propulsion, faster flight speeds, longer ranges, increased loiter times due to high density crystal matrix batteries, better sensors and more accurate, more effective anti-personnel weapon systems.  The initial toxin dispensers would remain (evolving into highly complex and highly effective delivery systems) but they would be supplemented by superwire based garrotes as well as contact hypodermic injectors and nearly silent toxin tipped frangible needles propelled to high speeds by induction field generated magnetic bias.  One variant of the IAAPS used its induction fans to power a ring of serrated surgical steel blades (later superwire edged adjustable pitch polyhedrons) to several thousand RPMs, turning the rim of its lifting surface into a viscous cutting edge capable of shearing through most substances.  Combine this with a high speed pass and the shrieking of the air passing through the cutting blades and the IAAPS truly became weapon of fear and terror in the dark, below ground areas.

SKYNET tried several countermeasures to the surge in human cooperation among the various groups with the most effective being chemical and biological in nature, both short term and persistent.  Some of the more successful designs of early killing Machines were little more than automated, self propelled, chemical and toxin dispensers with a large degree of mobility and just enough just programming to complete their task. 

During the period of 2005 A.D. to 2014 A.D., SKYNET introduced over a hundred and thirty-eight new and different neuro-, physio-, and bio-toxins to its catalog of weapons with most of these being developed through a rigorous joint laboratory and field testing regimen.  SKYNET pursued the human race in distinct phases, sometimes it stepped up its campaign of attrition to thin their constantly growing numbers and sometimes it actively allowed them a false sense of security, a fake hope in order to lull them into lowering their guard at which point it would perform massive coordinated sweeps to obtain live captives for use in its many scientific and weapons / technologies development programs.  The automated laboratories of SKYNET were horror factories and humans were the test subjects.  it didn't matter what condition the humans arrived in, alive or dead, young or old, women or children, all were experimented on until their usefulness was at an end and then they were disposed of in an expedient and orderly manner.

 

                            INFILTRATORS

 

 

                              MISCELLANEOUS SUPPORT AND GENERAL ATTRITION UNITS

 

 

_______________SCUTTLER AND SCURRIER UNITS

 

 

_______________MISCELLANEOUS ANTI-PERSONNEL UNITS

 

 

                              HS HUNTER SEEKER SERIES UNITS

 

 

                              HK HUNTER KILLER SERIES UNITS

 

                                AERIAL UNITS

 

 

                                    CLOSE SUPPORT UNITS

 

 

                                  TERMINATOR SERIES UNITS

 

______________________________________________

RETURN