Aliens has always been one of my favorite films, in no small part because it uses one of my favorite tropes — a squad of hardasses squaring off against a superior foe.
And while in the case of the Colonial Marines, those hardasses are a “team of ultimate badasses,” you need a little more than grit to to face a horde of warrior xenomorphs. It’s going to take some serious hardware.
In what has to be the most anticipated accessory pack of this line yet, NECA gives us a handful of additional small arms and gear, and two very sought-after heavy weapons. In attendance here are the venerable M41A Pulse Rifle, the M240 Incinerator, a VP70 pistol, an Ithaca “shorty” shotgun, and a helmet, an ammo bag, and a fighting knife, with some fire effects for the top two. Certainly nothing I would turn down in an accessory pack, as you can truly never have enough of this stuff, but the real stars of the set are these two UA 571-C Sentry guns.
Another aspect that has helped make this movie so timeless and enjoyable is the very lived-in practical weapons and equipment the USCM use. While using 10mm caseless ammo in fiction, most of these guns were built on very real and most vintage frames, with the sci-fi elements used sparingly. It’s one of the reasons I’d love to get some computer terminals or something similar in an accessory pack or playset someday — they look as at home in 1980s as they would 2179.
Specifically in the instance of the Sentry guns, this is very evident first in their small laptop controllers. Though still pretty high-tech in terms of their size and portability in 1987, they are almost quaint to look at today. But they are perfectly functional, and still feel like a functional and practical controller for this kind of weapon.
The sentry gun itself is based on another WW2 classic weapon, and it’s an armorer’s favorite: the MG42. Around that, there is a lot of the USCM’s style of modular casing, battery packs, and a Maxim gun magazine thrown in for good measure. The MG42 also makes up most of the M56 Smart Gun, so it gives it some more realism in terms of it having parts in common with other weapons systems, as it occurs in modern weapons as well.
In canon, the franchise’s “bible” describes it as such:
Each remote sentry unit weighs in at 19.6 kg and can be assembled in under 150 seconds. The major components consist of a snap-open tripod mounting, battery pack, breech and barrel assembly, sensor unit and 500-round ammunition drum. A microwave datalink connects the sentry to a remote command console. Once deployed, the system may be set to sweep wide arcs up to 360° (subject to terrain and emplacement restrictions), though doctrine is to set several sentries to cover smaller, interlocking fields of fire on a narrow frontage. The UA 571-C mounts the pulse action M30 Autocannon firing the 10×28mm HE Armor Piercing round used by the Corps’ M56 Smart guns. The weapon has a cyclic rate of 1,100 rpm and is air cooled, with an automatic cutout preventing the loading of any more rounds into the breech should overheating cause a chance of ammunition “cook-off.”
Getting two of these in a package certainly helps my OCD since they are deployed in pairs, and, as I recall, the Sulacco’s away team only had four of the units in total. So one more pack should do the job. Although, if NECA decides to offer up some USCM or Weyland Utani crates and such, a couple more would look amazing in an armory backdrop. As video game fans have no doubt noted, these sentry guns have made many appearances in media, and not just in franchise games. These guns would look just as home in a Call of Duty setup, if you somehow have one of those.
In terms of bang for your buck (pun not intended), this set is a welcome upgrade from the somewhat light Covenant creature pack. So definitely, you should get a couple. And then tell NECA how much you love it, so we can hopefully get more Marine gear!
