Raptor II

The invisible BattleMech, the Raptor II is synonymous with the advanced Void Signature System, and infamous as a choice platform for recon and search-and-destroy under the Word of Blake, and later the Republic of the Sphere.

Said to stalk the field as early as 3067 in the months preceding the Jihad, early reports of what could have been the Raptor II blend easily with tall tales dismissed as flights of fantasy. Long-ignored tales of "invisible 'Mechs'" were nothing new, and long forgotten were the Star League era stealth technologies such as the Null-Sig or the primitive mimicry of the Chameleon LPS. Always rare, essentially extinct, even among the Clans, the technology had been left behind over their dishonorable nature - yet in 3058, the Word of Blake seized Terra from ComStar, and among the spoils was what would become Mimetic Armor. Debuting exclusively as a Battle Armor technology in 3061, it was initially regarded as a refinement of the Chameleon system that was too expensive and difficult to scale up to a full BattleMech.

This would be overturned come 3070, when ten years of Blakist development culminated in VoidSig, marrying the fidelity of Mimetic Armor, the scale of Chameleon, and the emission baffling of NullSig through the power of an onboard ECM suite. It is unclear exactly how long the Raptor II strode the Inner Sphere, but the RPT-2X and 2X1 are considered to have been formally introduced by 3073, with all known Blakist Raptors hailing from a classified factory somewhere on Terra. Although it would later be destroyed during the Coalition's Liberation of Terra, the development laboratory and specifications survived, allowing the Republic of the Sphere to restart production elsewhere with the RPT-3X as of 3084. The site of the Republic factory remains classified information, with little being known about their manufacture, save for the specially-molded sensor-deflecting Light Ferro-Fibrous armor, which, combined with the need to incorporate mimetic composites, slows the production of new Raptors. However, the best of the Republic's Special Forces are said to be assigned these machines.