The Longinus represents the Free World League Military's attempt to replicate the standard Clan Elemental battle armor.
         A joint effort by the League and Word of Blake designers, the Longinus is an impressive design, though the development of the battle armor proceeded much more slowly than the development of battle armor by the Federated Commonwealth and Draconis Combine. Unlike comparable DCMS and Federated Commonwealth designs, however, the Longinus features a version of the Clan Elementals' SRM launcher.
         Eighteen months after initial research began, the prototype Longinus began trials on Atreus. Despite high expectations, these first trials proved disastrous. Armor composites shattered under test firing and the suit's power systems failed without warning. Eventually, these problems were traced to a ComStar sympathizer on the design staff. After some minor design revisions, a second prototype was tested three months later. The Longinus passed three initial trials, but still had a long way to go. Not satisfied with the pale duplicates of Clan battle armor being developed by the other Successor States, the League wanted its battle-armor suit to be the equal of Clan battle armor in every way. But even with technical assistance provided by the Word of Blake, League designers found the road longer and more difficult than they anticipated.
         Ultimately the inclusion of a backpack-mounted SRM launcher proved the main obstacle to meeting the ambitious design goal. Every attempt to combine full jump capability with the launcher met with failure. A myriad of configurations were tried, but each time the prototype would become too heavy to maneuver effectively on the ground or too ungainly to control in mid-jump. Finally, the designers reached a compromise solution and the Longinus became reality.

         The Longinus incorporates an SRM launcher similar to the Clan launcher, but with internal safety mechanisms to prevent the wearer from engaging the jump jets until the missiles are used and the launcher is jettisoned. Despite this breakthrough, the launcher only carries a single pair of missiles because the Longinus lacks adequate space to supply reloads like the Clan suit.
         The Longinus was fitted with sophisticated armor composites-near perfect copies of Clan battle-armor composites-capable of stopping a large laser or small-caliber autocannon hit. However, the new armor required new manufacturing processes, which dramatically drove up the cost of manufacturing the battle armor. The development cost of other Longinus components also exceeded budget projections and took an excessive amount of manpower away from other, vital projects. These factors caused the LCCC to balk at continuing the project, until Captain-General Thomas Marik himself authorized additional funding for the project.

         The first Longinus suits entered service with the FWLM in December 3057, too late for use in Operation Guerrero. They fought well during the Jihad though, and all member states of the Free Worlds League use the design. Second only to Clan-tech BattleArmor, the Longinus is easily one of the better suits in use throughout the Human Sphere.