Armored Personnel Unit

An APU (Armored Personnel Unit) is a fictional vehicle in the of films. The APUs are charged with the greater part of the defense of Zion.

Captain Mifune is the leader of the APU unit, as well as the most experienced pilot (though he never completed its basic training).
Usage

An APU is a bipedal, sapient-like robotic tank - albeit without armour - that is similar in design and function to some types of mecha. The pilot sits in a rollcage-like cockpit and controls the APU with foot pedals and flexible control arms which move the APU's arms and aim and fire its weapons. Movement appears to be based on not only the movements of the APU caused by the pilot, but also the pilot's own sense of balance.

The APU is armed with two belt-feed "slug thrower" 20 mm cannons mounted on its arms; the guns are effective against the Sentinels, as it commonly requires only one direct hit to disable a "Squiddy." An APU actually acts as a team with two parts, the APU itself (in constant combat conditions) and a reloading crew. When the APU's ammunition is exhausted, the pilot calls for a reload; the reloading crew brings the ammo to the APU on a motorized rack and feeds the ammo into the back of the APU. As shown during the combat in The Matrix Revolutions, the reloading crews are highly vulnerable to Sentinel attacks; thus, the crews are a three-man operation, one person to carry the ammo and the other two covering using plasma guns.

The APU was used in the first human-machine war (2097-2139), as shown in The Animatrix. The APU did possess armour, but it proved ineffective against the machines. As depicted in the The Second Renaissance, the machines were able to tear through an APU's armor and kill its pilot with great ease. Later variations of APUs, as seen in the Matrix Revolutions, possessed limited armor, probably because the humans do not have the resources to add armor on every APU, leaving its pilot almost completely exposed. This proved to be a disadvantage, as it sped up Captain Mifune's death.

APUs were also highly vulnerable in close-quarter combat. As seen in the 'Matrix Revolutions', Sentinels that were able to evade an APU's fire long enough to close with it, could use their mechanical arms to bind the APU's guns and kill its human pilot. Captain Mifune and several APU pilots fought in trios, back to back, possibly to counter this weakness by using the APUs' multi-directional firing to cover all directions of attack. However, as the battle wore on, and his fellow pilots were killed one by one, Mifune found himself alone and vulnerable to Sentinel swarms.

There were about 150 APUs defending Zion during the Matrix Revolution.

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See Also

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