RVR-02 "Vambrace"

The RVR-02 "Vambrace" is the secondary protagonist ship in Thunder Force V. It was constructed as an improved successor to its earlier counterpart the RVR-01 Gauntlet, and was the first RVR craft to be able to use the Brigandine Extra Body Equipment, allowing the craft to reach outer space. Only one such craft is known to exist.

Thunder Force V

The Vambrace project started after concern arose about whether or not technology provided by a mysterious starfighter dubbed Vasteel Original by the humans was found in Earth's atmosphere. The craft designed to be a superior to its predecessor the Gauntlet, which lacked the ability to exit the Earth's Atmosphere and fly across space like the mysterious spacecraft it was designed after. To allow this, a large support-type equipment known as the Brigandine was designed to give it the extra boost to allow it travel in space.

Unfortunately, the Vambrace was proven to be far too advance to use and expensive to create. The amount of material needed to construct one Vambrace craft could be used to build twelve crafts of its predecessor; in addition, numerous failed flight tests resulted in the lost of most of its prototype models. As a result, the Vambrace project was suspended until further notice while its predecessor the Gauntlet was mass-produced in its place.

Eventually when the Guardian Supercomputer went rogue, the computer destroyed all the Gauntlet crafts (including the one piloted by Cenes Crawford), forcing the humans to resort to revive the Vambrace by launching the last known craft that was known to exist.

The Vambrace used the new Brigandine module to enter space and destroy the brainwashed Vasteel Original, before breaching the "walls" of the virtual world inside the Guardian Supercomputer in order to confronted and destroy the inner data space of the Judgement Sword. The craft succeeded, but only because the Guardian Computer later revealed that it "let" the humans win, for a more malevolent force would later arrive and declare war against the humans in the near future.

Afterwards, the Vambrace was retired, and by the events of Thunder Force VI, the Vambrace (as well as its Brigandine module) was replaced by its successor the RVR-00 "Phoenix".