Rifleman Archive

While medium and heavy repeating blasters provide significantly more firepower than does the T-21, they are also bulkier and require crews of two to three soldiers. They take several minutes to set up or break down, and far too often military units don't have the luxury of waiting around for heavy support weapons.

By contrast the T-21 package is designed for use by a soldier on the move. The weapon, its belt-carried tripod, and the twenty-kilogram backpack generator can be set up and made operational in less than thirty seconds. While the blaster can be fired two-handed by a moving soldier, the light tripod offers improved accuracy. The tripod can be fully extended for instances when the T-21 is to be used as a weapon emplacement but a partially extended position is superb for sniper attacks, allowing the gunner to take advantage of the T-21's maximum range of three hundred meters. Rebel squads often used the T-21, which has an optimum range of one hundred and fifty meters, to eliminate Imperial weapon emplacements and cover advancing Alliance infantry.

While the T-21's standard power packs supply only enough energy for twenty-five shots, its separate continuous-feed power generator gives the weapon potentially unlimited fire capability, although the generator's low cooling capacity in turn limits the fire rate to once per second.

This weapon is devastating against infantry, wielding enough power output to slice easily through personal armour suits or break down force fields. The T-21 also can cut through the armour plating used on many light combat vehicles, such as armoured landspeeders. In the hands of a skilled operator the T-21 can eliminate on entire enemy squad in a matter of seconds.