During the mid 3060s, Blue Shot Weapons entered the new construction craze of exoskeletons by building the Groundhog combat engineer exoskeleton. A very capable design for its job, the Groundhog began shipping throughout the Inner Sphere, even in the midst of the FedCom Civil War. The Word of Blake Jihad cost Blue Shot Weapons their main factory though and their survivors fled to Nowhere, the Solaris Home Defense League's headquarters, along with as many Groundhogs as they could carry with them. They only made it out with the help of the single prototype combat Warthog armor that had been made for testing purposes.
         In Nowhere, they put over three years of research, and a few days of lessons learned in combat, into practice, retrofitting the surviving Groundhogs into a true armored combat suit. Project Spartan's stated goal was to make a cheap, easily worn, effective suit of armor that would massively increase the combat potential of an infantryman. It also had to be simple enough to build that they could mass produce it by hand since they no longer had access to their primary factory.
         The new Warthogs entered full scale production within months of the Word assault, giving the new Solaris Irregulars a powerful weapon against the Word invaders. The mass-produced Warthogs never matched the capabilities of the prototype suit, but they did their job and allowed the defenders to match the Word super-soldiers in a fight.

         The Warthog's Mjolnir armor gives it impressive protection, effectively tripling the survivability of an infantryman in combat. It also makes use of modular equipment adaptors though the standard configuration tends to use nothing more than armored gloves so it can carry infantry weapons. The adaptors enable technicians to quickly configure the suit for field operations based on the mission needs.
         To aid in nighttime operations, the Warthog features an integral searchlight, and equipment slots around the suit allow it to plug any number of other sensors into it. The readout from these sensors can be displayed on the helmet viewscreen and/or analyzed by the onboard core "betty" system. Capable of keeping the Warthog trooper aware of the mission parameters and current conditions via verbal communication, this system allows the trooper full access to a full array of electronics without slowing down to fiddle with buttons or to look away from the action.
         Interestingly, the Warthog can use almost all of the manipulators that the old Groundhog could and Blue Shot sales representatives often offer the complete line of manipulator configurations in full "two-hand" sets. Standard manipulators, battle claw (sometimes with magnets), mine clearance gear, a salvage arm kit, cargo lifting gear rated for a half-ton maximum lifting capacity per suit, and even paired industrial drills for use in the construction (or destruction) of infantry field works and other industrial operations.

         Blue Shot Weapons began building the Spartans in true mass production after Solaris defeated the Word, and has helped to keep its soldiers protected ever since. They sell the design to the member units of the Allied Mercenary Command, and have granted licenses for them to build the design as well for a small per-unit fee. The end result of those programs is that Warthog powered combat armor has become the most common mercenary suit in the Human Sphere. They can be seen everywhere, on the battlefield or helping to build a school, or the dozens of other jobs they can do. A single modern BattleArmor transport can easily carry two full squads, making them easy and quick to transport.
         Interestingly, the original Warthog still exists. Most often simply called "The Spartan" by the Solaris Irregulars, it has become the traditional armor of the senior noncom in the Irregulars.