Arsenal Gear

Arsenal Gear was a submersible, mobile fortress developed for the United States Navy, with the ability to monitor, block, and tamper with internet communications in order to further the goals of the Patriots. It also has access to the Military's Tactical Network, allowing it to have absolute control over the nation's armed forces and it's nuclear arsenal.

Arsenal Gear is a metaphor for the change of warfare in the last decades of the 20th century, from a nuclear war to a war of culture, information, and espionage. Its concept was inspired by the U.S. Navy's Arsenal Ship Project.

Background
On January 24th 2000, a notorious cracker group perpetrated a signal data hacking assault on the NSA facility in Fort Meade, |which suffered a total system shutdown for a 72-hour period. The result was a full review of NSA's safety measures, which in turn led to the decision to shift the data-gathering operations to an isolated location that would be safe from physical attack as well as cyber-terrorism (in other words, the start of the Arsenal Gear project).

After the sinking of the U.S.S. Discovery in 2007, the Patriots sent out a dummy tanker to the exact spot where Discovery was sunk, sank it, and used it as a means to cover up the construction of Arsenal Gear, the biggest and most fearsome Metal Gear the world had yet realized. Arsenal Gear was used as a means of global censorship, control and support. Within Arsenal was housed GW, the AI designed by Emma Emmerich, which controlled the entire warship.

The Arsenal Gear also contained an entire payload of nuclear warheads, including an experimental purified hydrogen bomb (developed during James Johnson's Presidency), which would only become launch-capable upon the activation of Arsenal Gear.

In 2009, Raiden and Solid Snake infiltrated the Big Shell and eventually made their way to the main computer room to upload a virus, created by Emma Emmerich, into GW. Snake and Olga Gurlukovich then allowed for Raiden to be captured, gaining them access to the inside of Arsenal Gear. After a brief torture session at the hands of Solidus Snake and Revolver Ocelot, Raiden was able to escape and enter the "stomach" of the massive warship.

While inside, GW began to malfunction due to the virus, before eventually ceasing communication with Raiden completely. After Raiden did battle with the small army of mass-produced Metal Gear RAY units guarding Arsenal, Solidus revealed his plans of handing over Arsenal to Dead Cell leader Fortune, as he knew she would use the warship to challenge the Patriots' power. However, after betraying Solidus and shooting Fortune, Ocelot piloted the prototype Metal Gear RAY and attempted to kill Solid Snake, Raiden, and Solidus, but Fortune used her abilities to save them from Ocelot's assult.

After Ocelot's failed attack, Liquid Snake's spirit took over Ocelot's body and escaped in the prototype RAY, though not before sending Arsenal on a direct collision course with Manhattan, in order to later recover the damaged GW AI on board. Crashing into the banks of New York City, Arsenal destroyed a sizable portion of the lower westside of the city before stopping at Federal Hall and flinging them onto the rooftop, allowing them one final battle atop the national monument. During its descent on New York, Arsenal destroyed several United States monuments, including the Statue of Liberty, which was pushed to the front of the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island. Presumably, the Patriots were able to use their core AI to cover up the truth behind Arsenal's crash into the city.

By 2014, Liquid Ocelot had managed to piece together the fragments of the damaged GW AI, installing it within a stolen Arsenal Gear-class battleship that served as the base of operations for his PMC mother company.

Payload
Arsenal Gear was an extremely large warship, housing – and also requiring – a significant force for its defense. As Arsenal headed towards lower Manhattan, it was just small enough to fit under the width of the Verrazano Bridge. Its on-board security defenses included:
 * 25 mass-produced Metal Gear RAY units, each seperately operated by Arsenal's core AI, GW;
 * An elite detachment of Arsenal Tengu, power suit equipped and highly trained Gurlukovich Mercenaries armed with P90s and H.F. blades;
 * Numerous surveillance cameras for indoor security;
 * An entire payload of nuclear warheads, including a purified hydrogen bomb.

One of its flaws (as pointed out by Solidus Snake after GW was destroyed) was that it was virtually worthless without a nuclear payload, the unmanned mass-produced Metal Gear RAYs to protect it, and full sea, land, and air support. Unless it was capable of sustaining such needs, Arsenal Gear was nothing more than "a gigantic coffin."

Trivia

 * The areas inside Arsenal Gear are named after regions of the intestines.
 * Arsenal Gear was the only Metal Gear to not have legs of any kind, a drastic deviation from Dr. Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin's original concept, hence its new name.
 * Solidus's criticism of Arsenal Gear is essentially true of any large warship.
 * Though Metal Gear RAY's design was based on the manta ray, Arsenal Gear possessed a more similar shape to said animal.

Behind the scenes
It is unclear how Arsenal Gear could physically contain the cavernous internal space named "Rectum" in-game, or what purpose this vast, seemingly all but empty location served. Whether this area was some kind of VR simulation or hallucination is not known. The central platform is similar to the one Solid Snake stands on in the camera missions from Metal Gear Solid: Integral.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the sequence of Arsenal Gear crashing into Manhattan Island was edited to remove the actual crash sequence entirely. Instead, the sequence jump-cuts from Arsenal Gear heading towards Manhattan to it already at rest against the side of Federal Hall. The unedited sequence has not surfaced since the release of Metal Gear Solid 2. However, some footage was discovered on the disc. This footage included a shot of the Statue of Liberty, made to look like a news broadcast. The music playing over the footage, and the female news reporter who was going to be talking over the footage, were both references to Policenauts. It was also intended to humorously reference that it took Liberty more than a century after its arrival to go through registration, and the final question (about whether Liberty shall finally get her own green card) to the players about whether they are even fit about making decisions on their own. The actual crash was kept in the novelization, however.

The original script from Metal Gear Solid 2 states that it was in fact Liquid Snake who caused Arsenal to crash into Manhattan, though the dialogue was likely removed from the final game for the same reasons that the scene itself was cut. The official novelization for the game kept the dialogue intact. However, the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database erroneously claims that Solidus Snake was responsible for crashing Arsenal Gear, despite claiming in another article that he lost control over it. In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Otacon also statess that it was the Patriots themselves who were responsible for Arsenal Gear going berserk, although it is never specified if they actually intended for Arsenal Gear to crash as Liquid had.

In Hideo Kojima's Grand Game Plan, Arsenal Gear was originally to have had a shrine onboard, in which Raiden would fight Vamp, but this ended up being cut from the game. The Arsenal Gear featured in the game, was also intended to have been one of several constructed beneath the Big Shell, with each Arsenal operated by its own AI system.

There is an item in Metal Gear Solid 4 called Arsenal Compress, a type of back pain reliever. On the front and back of its box shows an image of Arsenal Gear.