“Go go go!” yelled the tank pony towards his passengers, which at the order of the junior lieutenant immediately scrambled like ants out of the crouched airdropped infantry fighting vehicle, in an instant dropping themselves to the ground, readying up their various equipment (Ranging from AK-12s, PKPs, SV-98s and RPG-26) and firing up at a suspected enemy position, the air quickly filled up with machine gun tracers and rocket exhausts as the small squad suppressed the location.

The tank pony, who stood up right after the last soldier left, pointed up at a yellow derelict tank with his gun turret on top of his head, and then fired, a loud ‘BOOM’ echoing through the battlefield as a rocket propelled grenade went off the gun barrel and quickly speeded towards their inevitable destination. The rocket, upon making contact with the enemy tank’s gun mantle, exploded in a conflagration of shrapnel around itself, a conical copper liner breaking through the thick armor of the mantle and piercing the front turret armor as a jet of molten metal, spall being directed everywhere from the entry point, and the jet of copper reaching a medium-size crate right next to the gun breech, a crate labeled “90mm APFSDS”…

…In less than an instant all hell just broke loose as a small amount of the ammunition inside the crate exploded in colossal flames, the overpressure inside the tank strong enough to send hurling the turret & hull entry hatches up towards the sky, a huge geyser of flames erupting from the now-open hatches as the poor target practice tank burned inside out. It kept sprouting huge plummets of fire for a few seconds, as the other crates of ammunition suddenly detonated the fire stopped, to give way to a spectacular explosion which blew away the entire turret assembly, completely obliterating the horizontal turret drive, turret ring and whatever other thing kept the turret with the hull. The tank burst like a soap bubble as the turret flew some meters and fell down in the same tank, upside down, a thick trail of smoke visibly indicating the fate of the dummy tank.

The crowd meanwhile, erupted into a cheer as the awesome (And full of pure Michael-Bayness) explosion caught everyone’s attention, some of the ponies yelling about how that tank just went to 100% to scrap metal. It was the first time the Equestrian Air-Landing Forces made such public presentations (And the first time for the whole Equestrian Army in general), and the public fell in love with the explosions and sound of gunfire that flooded the area. Atleast when they were in a safe area protected with unicorn magic, that is.

The tank pony trotted a little forward, stepping on some weed in the way, towards the audience that was spectating them in awe, then quickly pointed his left hoof at them and yelled above the sound of warfare ”NOBODY, BUT US!”, with a smug and proud face that would’ve been more ubiquitous in a certain Pegasus of the mane six, the crewmembers inside proceeding to get out of their positions and wave at the civilian populace. One of the military police that was in charge of not letting the crowd get too rowdy silently making a facehoof which couldn’t quite hold his giggling. Darn it, those tank ponies were really proud of what they did, didn’t they?

Either way, one thing was quite clear; the crowd was very much enjoying the whole airdropping demonstration so far, and the occasional cheers confirmed that this sure was going to be a popular event, as Celestia herself foretold.

A drawing I made to see if I could draw an actual tank pony (Well, technically this isn’t a tank, but an airborne infantry fighting vehicle, but let’s not get picky :P), this was originally supposed to be a doodle I would share with my friend to see if it was an good approach, but ended up being a regular drawing I took way too much effort into.

The tank pony is a BMD-1, an air droppable IFV used by the Russian Airborne Forces (A.K.A VDV), more specifically this is a BMD-1P, characterized by the lack of the 9M14 “Malyutka” ATGM launcher on the mantlet and the addition of the pintle-mounted 9M113 “Konkurs” ATGM launcher (The little telescope thing on the turret).

I highly based the tank pony’s design off these: >>379960, >>670946, >>1152455, the last one for the side treads in the hindhooves. (Which I would imagine would work if the tank ponyloafs :P). Didn’t really base the camouflage on anything at all, though the little writing on the front hull says “I’m cute and fluffy” in Russian (Just think a crewmember did it as a prank DX)

The background is basically an airborne assault, with a flustercluck of soldiers and tank ponies falling from the sky, the ‘land part’ is just an aiming range, with some derelict tanks and fake houses.