Further research involving expandable units has met with favorable results in recent months, at least among drone units. Deployment speeds continue to improve, and short-term performance and reliability has improved primarily through improvements to unit armor. Durability is still a concern, though field testing has shown that this may be more readily addressed by adjusting tactics, programming the units to focus more heavily on using the environment for improvised weapons and armor. A door might not actually be much protection by itself, but in a panic an enemy combatant may be more likely to shoot around it, or be more concerned about avoiding the large piece of wood now flying at their face.

Little has been done to address the long-term survivability of expandable units, on the grounds that existing super-soldier programs are better-suited for extended campaigns. Drones, already disposable, can be modified, expanded when needed, then thrown at a problem, and usually through walls, with relative abandon. A rebel cell finally managed to get some footage of an expanded unit in action shortly before she smashed the recording equipment, and the reaction has been exactly as expected. As with most Korps terror weapons, the threat of their use is at least as powerful as the units themselves, and we look forward to watching our opposition scramble to find a counter to the three-thousand-pound gorilla in the room.

Tangental to its main goals, the rapid expansion that units undergo has been a useful testbed for cosmetic Korps applications; ViX in particular has shown a particular interest in creating new lines of clothing meant to fail in very specific and eye-catching ways based on research conducted on behalf of this project.

LittleNapoleon has a tendency to take sketches that catch his eye, put them on a disturbingly long 'shortlist', and then make sacrifices to a dark god until the picture threatens to rip a hole in reality itself. I am inordinately pleased to see what he managed to make of Ashley here.

Original sketch: KrakenTango (original)
Dark magic: LittleNapoleon (original)