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The Anti-Aircraft Battery is used almost exclusively as a giant ground to air battery in Halo 3.

"They're setting up an AA battery. That thing'll tear the Dawn apart..."

— ODST

The Anti-Aircraft Battery is a Covenant ground-based stationary anti-aircraft emplacement. It fires bolts of plasma that are extremely damaging. A single round can severly damage a C709 Longsword-class Interceptor.

Appearances

Halo 2 E3 Demo

The AA Battery was first seen in the Halo 2 E3 Demo. When the Covenant invaded Mombasa, they stationed a handful of artillery pieces on the ground, which demolished UNSC buildings. Eventually, SPARTAN-117 and his group of Marines encountered one, and Sergeant Banks called in a Longsword air strike to destroy the stationary mortar. They fired plasma bolts similar to that of Wraiths and in indirect parabolic trajectories. A sizable difference is that in the demo the Anti-Aircraft Battery is larger than its Halo 2 and Halo 3 successors.

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A Covenant Artillery piece from Halo 2.

Halo 2

The roles of the AA Battery pieces as an active part of the Covenant assault were greatly downgraded in Halo 2, as the entire Battle of Mombasa was downgraded. The Covenant apparently placed several artillery pieces on the beachheads of Old Mombasa, but did not fire them.

It is possible they were a form of Artillery rather than an Anti-Air unit as it is called that in the Halo 2 E3 gameplay trailer. In the trailer the wounded Sergeant Banks tells HQ that he has hostile Artillery 200 meters north/northeast of his position.

Halo 3

The AA Battery shoots down a Longsword Interceptor

In Halo 3, the AA Battery can be seen in the level The Storm and is the main objective of the level, which is to destroy it so that Lord Hood can start attacking Truth's ships. This time, the bolts that it fires are in a teardrop shape similar to shade and plasma rounds and in an almost straight trajectory. The plasma bolts are extremely powerful, since even their wake is able to take down a Longsword. However, the battery must cool off and release its excess plasma after every shot. This makes the AA battery vulnerable to infantry and ground vehicle attacks. An AA Battery under construction can be seen in the level The Ark. Troops are often stationed on and around the gun to safeguard it from ground forces.

Trivia

The Covenant often make use of Phantoms to construct their AA in good time, as seen in Halo 3.

• The Covenant Locust bears noticeable resemblance to the Halo 2 design of the AA battery.
• Oddly it can be destroyed by overcharged plasma pistols. Template:Fact
• In Halo 2, it is unknown whether the Covenant placed them as a deterrent or as an effective offensive weapon, since none appears to be fired.
• In Halo 2, if you mod the maps with the AA battery present, you can witness the intended projectile of the weapon. It is very similar to the E3 Demo projectile. This projectile looks exactly the same as a Wraith's Plasma Mortar shot, but has very high damage and an extremely large explosion radius, which is about twice that of the Scarab's main gun beam.
• It is found in the Halo 3 level The Storm and The Ark.
• It is unclear about how powerful these weapons are. In The Ark, it was reported that one AA gun could "tear the Dawn apart!"
• The versions of the Anti-Aircraft Batteries featured in the Halo 2 E3 Demo appear to be several times larger than the ones featured in the final version of the game. An explanation for this could be that Bungie did not want to scrap the model after rewriting the layout and storyline for the level Metropolis. As a result, Bungie downsized and reused the model for the level Outskirts in order to avoid having to scrap the battery's model which they had worked so hard to design.