Kallon Industries have been well known throughout the Innersphere for their anti-aerospace weapons platform known as the Partisan. As Kallon looked to furthure (SP) diversify their portfolio, they wanted to offer something new to supplement the Partisan.  

One engineer\mechwarrior Capt. Kampson decided on a totally new course of action, instead of build another new tank or variant of the Partisan he began looking into mechs and new technologies that the Renaissance has brought into being. As the Capt.Kampson looked at Star League technical guides, and current designs being built by clan and Innershpere companies the engineer had an idea. Why not take a tank and convert it to a mech for use in anti-aerospace roles. The idea was intriguing because he could mount a fully traversable turret to a mech offering a complete 360 degree firing arc and offering a haul down position in order to help hide the mech.

After much debate the executives of Kallon Industries was intrigued with the idea of a turret on a mech. However, the cause for the debate was the choice of converting a vehicle chassis into a quad mech.

While using and modifying a vehicle chassis would initially solve some of the problems with the expense of R&D it would later prove to be more expensive than if the engineers had designed a proper chassis. The turret would also come from a heavy tank that was being designed to further save time and money in development expenses. Another effort to cut costs was the use of as much of the Partisan's equipment as could be used. Despite the draconian cost saving measures the project was almost shelved twice for cost over runs, but in January of 67 the mech walked off the assembly line and into trials.

The show piece of the Fly-Swatter is the traversable turret allowing the mechs weapons to stay fixed on a target as long as the mech is engaged. The turret is controlled through a special computer allowing the pilot to merely look at his/her target, a sensor tracks the pilot's eyeball then aligns the turret while locking the targeting computer to the target. Once locked the turret stays with the target until either a new target is chosen or the target is destroyed.

The addition of a Guardian ECM suite allows a Fly-Swatter lance composing of one FS-1 and three FS-2 (see variants) to bushwhack aerospace and atmospheric based fighters. The addition of the same C3 suite found in the Partisan only makes the mech even more deadly to airborne foes and makes for a stubborn mech in defensive fighting by allowing the lance to concentrate its firepower on a single foe.

For weaponry the Fly-Swatter features one rotary autocannon 5 with 2 tons of ammo, and two er-medium lasers. While this may seem weak to mechs of the same size this quad takes full advantage of the C3 suite and traversable turret in an attempt to put quality over quantity.

11 tons of standard armor and the inclusion of both a case system to protect from ammunition explosion, and the use of a standard fusion engine do help the Fly-Swatter to survive a fight. However should the turret become damaged the mech could quickly find itself in a unique situation of having its weapons locked in a firing arc that could prove to be useless.

As noted earlier, a variant known as FS-2 swaps the master C3 computer for a slave unit. The weight saved and the removal of one extended-ranged medium class laser is replaced with a single extended-ranged large class laser mounted in the turret providing a longer range punch and increased firepower than that of the FS-1.

An unofficial variant has been produced by multiple pilots in the short time the Fly-Swatter has been available. The use of "improvised armor" has been adopted from vehicle crews to help protect the vulnerable turret. Generally this armor is formed with the use of old fuel/water cans filled with water, sand, or other substance after which they are placed in a rack that has welded to the turret ((as shown in accompanying pictures)).   The theory is that the shells will exploded against the jerry cans and lessoning the punch against the actual turret armor. Though this armor has proven itself of dubious protection on vehicles, pilots still insist on it being mounted and is quickly becoming the first thing a pilot will do when assigned to a Fly-Swatter.

The Fly-Swatter is currently offered on the open market for all buyers where it is currently enjoying a brisk sales pace. However, due to the massive rebuilding efforts by both the Federated Suns and Lyrian Alliance most of the Fly-Swatters have found their way to these two armies.