The SLH-X Sloth BattleArmor is a heavily armed suit once fielded by the Federated Commonwealth.
         The Sloth owes its existence to a daring raid on a Jade Falcon facility on Twycross, where the First Somerset Strikers managed to make off with a significant amount of materiel and data.   The importance of this data is recounted in the following excerpt from Intelligence Secretariat Internal Document no. 64821/CTC, sent to Archon Melissa Steiner-Davion from Marshal Daniel Darwith of MI2:
         "We received technical maintenance documents for the Vulture Class BattleMech, as well as documents and samples of the Toad class PowerArmor suits.   The long-term impact on our weapons programs will be considerable.   The Clans have made great improvements in fire-control systems, weapons, power plants and basic metallurgy.   The Strikers' information will save our R&D teams years of development time in those areas ... .   The technical data on the Toad BattleArmor also helped us surmount a technological barrier in our IFR-X and SLH-X battlesuit programs.   The myomers we used to drive the legs were too short to generate the power necessary for the suits to maneuver effectively on the battlefield.   As you know, the longer the myomer, the greater its contraction when exposed to an electrical current.   A review of the Clan technical data showed that Clan designers solved this problem by giving their myomers a pseudolength twice their actual length."

         This information came at an opportune time for the Federated Commonwealth, which sought to produce a heavily armored suit to supplement its light Infiltrator design.   To meet that goal, the Sloth's designers decided on an impressive weapon load of two small lasers and a special anti-'Mech mine launcher.   To support the additional weapons on the chassis while maintaining stability, the designers adopted an unusual four-legged configuration for the Sloth.   This configuration raised some eyebrows among Commonwealth troopers, but any doubts about the configuration were soon quelled by the enhanced firepower and stable firing platform it provided.
         Unconfirmed reports claim that Franklin Sakamoto--allegedly the bastard son of Coordinator Theodore Kurita--actually tested the Strikers' very first Sloth suit in combat alongside the first Infiltrator on Waldorff V.   Leftenant General Adam Steiner, commander of the Strikers at that time, confirms that the test-pilot's name was indeed Franklin Sakamoto, but he supports the official Draconis Combine statement that the pilot is no relation to the Kurita family in name or title.   Apparently an unsubstantiated rumor, but one which would bear considerable irony if true--who would imagine that the scion of the ancestral enemy of House Davion would field test one of its top-secret weapons?

         As with the Infiltrator, the Sloth was deployed in limited numbers across the Federated Commonwealth just before the start of the FedCom Civil War. That conflict and the Jihad resulted in the destruction of most Sloths in national service though, and no major government builds them at this time. Their quadraped nature and lowtech manufacturing requirements however make them the easiest of any BattleArmor design to build, maintain, and pilot. As such, numerous "knock-offs" of the Sloth exist, piloted by para-military and security firms throughout the Human Sphere, where the heavy firepower, high speed, and versatility of the deployable loads of the popup mine dispenser are in high regard.