Lascannon

Lore & history

Where the humble lasgun is the rifle of the infantryman, the lascannon is its terrifying big brother—the undisputed king of long-range Imperial anti-armour warfare. Across every theatre of the forty-first millennium, from the fortified trench lines of the Astra Militarum to the orbital drop-zones of the Adeptus Astartes, the lascannon is the weapon commanders call upon when enemy battle tanks, Chaos Knights, Ork Stompas or Tyranid Carnifexes must be stopped long before they reach the firing line. When a lascannon discharges, there is no arcing shell to dodge; a blinding, pencil-thick lance of purple-white light splits the sky with a deafening thunderclap of ionized air and punches straight through both sides of an armored hull in the same microsecond.

Within the regiments of the Astra Militarum, the Mars-pattern Lascannon is crewed by a two-man Heavy Weapons Team—one gunner to aim and fire from a heavy tripod mount, and one loader to haul and connect the massive seventy-kilogram power packs required to feed the beast. Within the Space Marine Chapters, a single Devastator Marine clad in power armour can carry a shoulder-mounted Ryza or Mars-pattern Lascannon on his own, drawing power directly from an enlarged backpack capacitor unit while his signum-linked Sergeant feeds targeting coordinates into his helmet visor.

Even more ubiquitous is the lascannon's role on Imperial armoured vehicles. Paired as the "Godhammer" twin-linked lascannon sponsors on the flanks of a Space Marine Land Raider, mounted in the turret and sponsons of the Predator Annihilator, or fitted to the hull front of Leman Russ Battle Tanks, Baneblades, Sentinels, Valkyrie gunships and Castraferrum Dreadnoughts, the lascannon has cracked open more enemy armour over ten millennia than any other heavy weapon in the Imperium.

Design, mechanism & battlefield effect

A lascannon operates on the same fundamental laser emission principles as a lasgun, but scaled up by several orders of magnitude in energy density, barrel length and capacitor draw. Because no portable battery can sustain a continuous beam of tank-piercing intensity, the lascannon is a pulsed-discharge weapon. When connected to its external power pack or a vehicle's main engine reactor, bank after bank of heavy induction capacitors draw in an enormous electrical charge until the weapon's status runes turn from amber to burning green.

When the gunner depresses the firing levers, the entire stored charge of the power pack dumps through the crystal-focusing array in a single microsecond pulse. The resulting coherent beam strikes with such concentrated thermal and photonic violence that the outer layer of the target's armour sublimates instantly from solid metal to plasma vapour, creating an explosive shockwave that blows a molten hole straight into the interior compartment and detonates ammunition racks or fuel cells.

Because a single shot completely drains a portable infantry power pack—or requires several seconds for a Space Marine backpack or vehicle reactor to recharge its capacitor banks—a lascannon cannot lay down rapid suppressive fire against swarms. Every shot must be carefully aimed at a high-value target, while the barrel's heavy cooling jacket vents a wave of shimmering heat after each discharge.

Patterns, variants & doctrine

Across the Imperium, lascannons are configured for infantry, walker, tank and aircraft mounts. The Astra Militarum fields the tripod-mounted Mars pattern in three-team Heavy Weapons Squads and bolts a single lascannon to the nose of every Baneblade, Shadowsword and many Leman Russ variants, as well as the side-mount of Scout and Armoured Sentinels. Space Marine Devastators carry the shoulder-slung Mars-Maximus pattern, which includes a recoil-compensating gyrostabilizer and helmet-linked optical sight.

Vehicle-mounted variants frequently pair two barrels together into a Twin Lascannon (historically known as a Twin-Linked Lascannon) to double the probability of a fatal penetration—most famously the Godhammer-pattern sponson mounts of the Land Raider, the turret of the Predator Annihilator and Razorback, and the wing-pylons of the Valkyrie Vendetta gunship. For the Skitarii Ironstrider Ballistarii of the Adeptus Mechanicus, twin cognis lascannons are slaved directly to the machine spirit of the walker for relentless anti-tank fire on the move.

Notable patterns & relic examples

• Mars-Pattern Tripod Lascannon: The two-man anti-tank heavy weapon of Astra Militarum Heavy Weapons Squads and Cadian Defence Lines.
• Space Marine Devastator Shoulder Lascannon: A gyro-stabilized, backpack-powered anti-armour cannon carried by a single Astartes warrior.
• Godhammer-Pattern Twin Lascannon: The famous dual lascannon sponson array mounted on both flanks of the Space Marine Land Raider.
• Cognis Lascannon: An Adeptus Mechanicus variant mounted on Ironstrider Ballistarii walkers, capable of firing with machine-spirit guidance even at a full sprint.

Wielded & Fielded By

Characters (4)

• 
  Ursarkar E. Creed · Lord Castellan of Cadia
• 
  Perturabo · Primarch of the Iron Warriors, Lord of Iron
• 
  Bjorn the Fell-Handed · Venerable Dreadnought, Last of the Company of Russ
• 
  Belisarius Cawl · Archmagos Dominus of the Adeptus Mechanicus

Units (25)

Devastator SquadSentinelPredatorLand RaiderLeman Russ Battle TankBanebladeValkyrieDreadnoughtChaos TerminatorsTactical SquadThunderhawk GunshipCenturionsInfantry Squad (Guardsmen)ChimeraSkitarii RangersKataphron Battle ServitorsChaos Space MarinesObliteratorsHelbrutesOnager DunecrawlerDefilersWarlord Battle TitansDark ReapersScourgesHekaton Land Fortresses

Related weapons & vehicles

LasgunHeavy BolterWraithcannon & D-ScytheSnazzgun, Deffgun & Big ShootaRailgun & Heavy Rail RifleHeavy Mining Laser, Seismic Cannon & Rock Cutter

Primary Faction

Astra Militarum