G80H-TC Siege Pelican

"'Designed with World War II ball turrets in mind the Seige Pelican is the ideal incursion and exfiltration dropship within the UNSC arsenal. Offering superb protection for flight crew coupled with heavy artillery for defending occupants and berating enemies.' ""-Offacial description of the Siege Pelican."The Siege Pelican was a gunship pelican model similar to the G79 however offering greater defensive capabilities and more strategic weapon systems on board. Originally prototyped in 2558 and seeing production truly begin in early 2559. Shield systems are not standard on the G80 however they can be outfitted with them at increased production costs due to the scarcity of shield technology at the time of its inception.

Weapon Systems

 * Dual nose mounted GAU-53 70mm MBHRC auto-cannons and a single located on the rear ventral of the ship below the deployable boarding ramp.
 * Nose mounted Rail-gun scaled down for dropship usage
 * Dorsal, port, and starboard Ball turrets featuring M410 40mm dual heavy machine guns
 * Ventral mounted concussive grenade launching system for clearing those particularly hot LZ's

Function
The Siege Pelican serves as a strike dropship being capable of more easily invading heavily defended regions with its increased armoring and plethora of anti-personnel/anti-vehicular weapons load outs. Once clearing and securing an LZ rather easily the Siege pelican can implant vital infantry and vehicle units within enemy lines in order to stunt enemy defenses and allow for reinforcements to safely arrive.

Due to the specially designed nature of the Siege Pelican and its general improving upon the G79 with costly armoring, the G80 is more rare than most pelican variants in the field.

Weaknesses
While superb at anti-vehicular and anti-personnel operations the G80 is highly suseptible to enemy air units. In contrast to the dorsal mounted cannon found on the G79, the Siege Pelicans Dorsal mounted M410 is not nearly as effective and is more designed to deter light enemy air units as opposed to the G79 which has been noted to easily take down like-sized craft.

Trivia

 * Two G80H-TC's were part of the UNSC Deliverance's compliment.