Hover Tank

Artwork by Eli Maffei.

Everyone knows that Power Floats. And everyone knows that Cool Tanks are power incarnate. So what happens when you make a Cool Tank float? You get a Hover Tank of course!

Powered by Applied Phlebotinum, Hover Tanks are the go-to Rule of Cool war machine. They usually hover inexplicably only a few feet off the ground, often bobbing slightly. Many may have a variety of Anti-Gravity drive, rather than air-powered thrust like real-world hovercraft. They may also turn from a hover tank to a normal tank and back again, possibly in a similar way to Hubcap Hovercraft. Oddly enough, even when a Hover Tank can float/fly high off the ground, it's usually still built like a ground tank, with its turret and weapons all only covering the top of the vehicle.

Hover Tanks would be utterly impractical using real world technology, as they would burn a lot of fuel just to stay up and yet wouldn't clear most terrain obstacles. They would suffer from recoil issues (due to not having ground friction to push against), or have to burn more fuel to counteract it. The amount of armor and equipment they could carry would also be severely limited. Of course, all that usually doesn't matter in fiction, though some settings do restrict hovertanks to lighter designs. Though that still leaves the tank ramming itself into the ground every time it fires. However, this can also be averted by giving the tank in question a more-or-less realistic energy weapon, soft launch systems, or bazooka-like barrels, which would give little to no recoil.

In strategy games, they may be faster and more maneuverable than their land-bound counterparts, but more fragile. They are usually amphibious and can travel over water at full speed. Another advantage, seen particularly in third-person vehicular shooter scenarios, is the ability to 'strafe', or move from side to side while still pointing the same way and firing, which most tracked or wheeled vehicles can't do, and which allows the Hover Tank to dodge incoming slow-moving projectiles and attack while moving in and out of cover.

Vehicles in the style of real-world military hovercraft aren't included. They ride on a mundane air cushion, barely lift off the ground, and have a difficult time operating on non-flat terrain.

Sub-trope of Cool Tank. Contrast with the Spider Tank, for cases in which the conventional treads have been traded in for legs instead of a floating propulsion.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Electris Kataphrakt in Aldnoah.Zero is one of these as it floats and lacks legs in contrast to all the other Kataphrakts in the series.
• Desert Punk has the Fire Dragon Kong, a massive hover tank wandering around the desert and was almost completely unstoppable, being the most powerful weapon in the Kanto desert.
• Gundam series
  • Mobile Suit Gundam introduced the Dom, a heavily-armored Hover-Humongous Mecha. It's oversized forelegs contained jet engines that it used to "skate" across the ground.
  • The Tragos mobile suit from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing in it's walker mode is basically the tank of mobile suits, a huge beast with massive armor plates, huge twin shoulder cannons, and a rifle for close combat. With a couple of attachments it can transform into a hover-tank mode, especially useful for navigating desert terrain. The rebel Maguanac Corps also had a hover-based Mobile Suit called the Oliphant, which was apparently used as an unmanned drone since all 40 members of the Maguanac Corps pilot the eponymous Maguanac mobile suits.
• The "Air Balleles" (probably a corruption of Barrel, from the Alternate History name for tanks used in the works of Harry Turtledove) of The Five Star Stories. They are actually capable of genuine flight, but prefer to stay close to the ground and generally behave like real tanks to avoid enemy anti-air fire.
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman has Jinpei the Swallow's tank buggy vehicle: while it is the slowest of the team's, it is also the most versatile with it capable of functioning in the air and even better underwater.
• The vehicle trope is played with in Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross/Robotech: Southern Cross/The Robotech Masters, where the VHT-1 Spartas is a hovertank, but only in its tank mode for the purposes of transportation. To use its maximum firepower, it must go into Guardian Mode to engage its heavy cannon, but at the cost of being highly restricted in movement. Finally, there's Battleloid Mode, which is more a humanoid robot configuration is used when the pilot needs more maneuverability for combat.

Comic Books

• A variation appears in Astro City — during World War II, the Germans attacked Romeyn Falls with the Bund-O-Teurs, a Nazi squad using propeller-driven one-man flying turrets.

Film — Live-Action

• Sgt Bilko: Fort Baxter is supposed to be demonstrating a hover tank. The problem is while it can hover fine, it runs into that pesky Third Law of Motion when it tries to fire its cannon with nothing bracing it. When asked to demo this defective technology at the film's climax, they fake it.
• Star Wars: Any repulsorlift vehicle from the franchise, such as the Trade Federation's AATs. Oddly enough, hover tanks don't make all that many appearances in Star Wars films or games, considering that they look a whole lot more practical than those walkers we see all the time. This is justified in the Expanded Universe where it's said that terrain effects and enemy countermeasures can easily knock out repulsortanks and leave them vulnerable, hence the Empire's emphasis on walkers. This is alluded to in The Rise of Skywalker during the final battle at Exagol, when Finn, Jannah, and others land a troop carrier on the deck of General Pryde's flagship. Pryde orders a subordinate to jam the repulsorlifts of the Rebel's speeders, but the landing team had the foresight to ride into battle on Orbaks.
  • In some of the games, we see "fighter tanks", one-man repulsortanks that emphasize speed and agility over armor. Though some of them make up for that weakness by packing Deflector Shields. Some have a laser turret, while some just have forward-firing guns.
• Perhaps the first ever example of this in live-action was in the 1953 film of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. As trying to convincingly create the novel's "Tripod" walkers with the available special-effects (and budget) presented difficulties, the film changed the Martians' war machines into a type of Hover Tank.

Literature

• The later generation Bolos have anti-gravity capable of full-blown flight. Yes, sapient tanks with weights measured in kilotons can fly.
• Empire from the Ashes: The climactic battle of the first book in this trilogy has both the Mutineers under Anu with medium tanks and the Loyalists under Horus with heavy tanks. The tank on tank action ends about as well as one might imagine.
• David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series of short stories features fusion-powered air-cushion tanks. Each lift fan has its own armored nacelle to protect it from anything that damages another fan; "while a single broken track block would deadline a tracked vehicle, a wrecked fan only made a blower a little more sluggish."
• Grav tanks in the Honor Harrington universe utilize a hybrid design, having both countergrav-driven hovering for quick bursts of movement and conventional treads. Their IFVs follow the same pattern.
• The Panzers in Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams are a special kind of hover tank controlled by cybernetic linkup. Like many veterans, the main character drives/flies his hovertank "Pony Express" across the Divided States of America, smuggling all sorts of contraband.
• A variant appears in Seafighter by James Cobb: US Navy LCAC^note Landing Craft, Air Cushion hovercraft fitted with armor plating and heavy armament to turn them into the 21st-century equivalent of PT Boats.

Live-Action TV

• In the Space: Above and Beyond episode "Pearly" the alien Chigs have floating tanks. Of course,it's no match for the eponymous Pearly, who is a tank of the good, old-fashioned tread kind.

Tabletop Games

• 2300 AD makes extensive use of air cushion hovertanks, with all the major nations (and the alien Kafer) fielding their own. They're hydrogen-fueled but indeed use giant lawnmower fans for lift.
• The hovercraft from BattleTech, which are unique in that they actually use air-cushion based lift, like real-world hovercraft. True to form, they're fast and zip over water with ease; on the other hand, they're lightweights compared to many conventional tanks, limited to fairly open terrain, can only safely move at full speed while traveling in a fairly straight line, and can be easily and rudely grounded by a single lucky shot. That said, their speed gives them a decent chance against Mechs in open combat, while other tanks usually need an ambush. While most hovercraft do have air skirts, some use vectored thrust to stay afloat rather than using skirts, making them look much more like a regular hover tank, such as the Hephaestus or the Epona. Most of them get around the pesky fuel requirements by using fusion engines.
• The basis of the Tabletop Game Grav Armor.
• The Grav Tank in GURPS: Ultra-Tech can travel at the speed of sound and is nearly invisible to sensors until it starts shooting.
• Heavy Gear has Hovertanks as one the main units of the Colonial Expeditionary Force. It hovers by using a turbo fan, but it has jump jets that allow it to jump over obstacles. The CEF arm their tanks with particle cannons which are powerful enough to punch holes through mechs.
• OGRE has GEVs (Ground Effect Vehicles) which is basically a hovertank with a fancy name.
• Renegade Legion has grav tanks that can hover and fly at up to 500mph.
• Rifts has a number of hover tanks, as well as ones with regular treads. The hover ones are generally bit more maneuverable, but otherwise they only seem to exist due to Rule of Cool.
• Shadowrun has LAVs (low altitude vehicles) aka Thunderbirds that typically use vectored thrust from jet engines. Notable for being incredible fuel hogs. They are not quite light tanks in their armor and armament, but are far tougher than any aircraft, fixed wing or rotary. Piloting them (at least in earlier editions) was a separate skill from driving a ground vehicle or flying any sort of aircraft.
• Tomorrow's War has both semi-realistic air-cushions and anti-gravity as options for AFVs, though both limit the amount of armor they can support.
• Traveller has Grav-tanks, often equipped with Plasma Cannons and missiles. In-game it's stated that they've taken over the roles of both helicopters and fighter jets on the future battlefield.
• Warhammer 40,000 has several examples, usually wherever the "skimmer" and "tank" vehicle descriptions align.
  • The Eldar are the undisputed masters of anti-grav technology (at least initially as later editions keep adding floating vehicles to factions left and right), and use it for everything from squad support weapon platforms to jetbikes to flying tanks. Their Falcon grav-tank can operate at high speeds and altitudes like an attack helicopter, the Wave Serpent variant trades some weapon options for a protective force field and increased passenger capacity, while offshoots like the Night Spinner, Firestorm and Fire Prism are basically fast-flying artillery pieces. Even the Eldar's superheavy vehicles like the Scorpion and Cobra are Lightning Bruisers able to keep up with their smaller brethren while dealing out hideous amounts of firepower, and though they lack the durability of Imperial superheavy vehicles, the Eldar equivalents are protected by holo-fields that baffle sensors and disrupt targeting.
  • During the Imperium of Man's glory days before the Horus Heresy, it could field hovering armored vehicles like the Caladius Grav-Tank and Coronus Grav-Carrier, though such hardware was limited to the Legio Custodes, and eventually became another example of Lost Technology. More common is the Land Speeder used by the Space Marine chapters, a two-man, open-topped recon vehicle that can be thought of as a flying armored car.
  • Around the close of the 41st Millennium when the Primaris Marines were introduced, new hover tanks were developed to support them. In practice, these new toys are beefed-up version of iconic Space Marine vehicles of old: the Impulsor is a floating Razorback (APC), the Gladiator is a floating Predator (battle tank), the Repulsor is a floating Land Raider (heavy APC) while its Executioner variant replaces some transport capacity for a BFG), the Storm Speeder which is a more boxy Land Speeder, and finally the Astraeus Super-heavy Tank. However, none of these save for the Storm Speeder and the Astraeus is considered a flying unit on tabletop as of the 9th edition.
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus have the Skorpius Duneriders and Disintegrators, troop transports and battle tanks respectively. Like the Primaris Space Marine vehicles above, these are not considered flying models on tabletop.
  • Canoness Superior Junith Eruita repurposes a huge pulpit in to a floating gun platform. Unlike most examples here, this one places its weapons below the hull, as said weapons are heavy flamers best suited for dealing with infantry and swarm units.
  • If a piece of Tau military hardware isn't a mech, it floats, and their Hammerhead tanks and Devilfish APCs are able to circumvent dangerous terrain as they advance across the field, though unlike Eldar grav-tanks, Tau skimmers aren't classified as "fast" vehicles. The Devilfish is infamous for being part of the notorious "Fish of Fury" metagame during 4th Edition.^note The shooting rules forced units to fire at the nearest available target - Tau players were able to keep squads of Fire Warriors safe by sandwiching them between Devilfish transports, which they could shoot "under" during their turn, but would block incoming fire during the enemy's turn. The game's 5th Edition made changes to the shooting rules and ended this practice.
  • The Necrons has the Ghost Ark, a transport whose hull looks like a boat-shaped rib cage. Also the Doomsday Ark, which is basically a floating self-propelled artillery piece; not that it lacks "small arms" to deal with lesser targets though. Their Monoliths and Obelisks might count as well, but these are better described as floating fortresses.

Video Games

• Ace Online: The Anima Mortar, or A-Gear is a fully flight-capable Hover Tank, armed with an awesome Siege Mode for its main gun.
• Hover tanks can be researched and built in Armada 2526 to be used to defend and attack planets. They require special transports.
• If 20 Minutes into the Future and beyond in Battlefield were of any accurate prediction of what armor we'd bring to a fight in the future, the bets are on hover tanks.
  • The Pan-Asian Coalition of Battlefield 2142 fields Type 32 Nekomata hover tanks. They were no less durable than the more traditional European Union A-8 Tiger tanks, but they traded the turret in for the very useful ability to strafe.
  • Russia makes some next-generation hardware in the Final Stand Downloadable Content for Battlefield 4: say "Hi!" to the HT-95 Levkov. Fan speculation describes the Levkov and the other futuristic Final Stand weapons this as DICE's little love letter to the Nekomata and the Pan Asian Coalition. Perhaps the Russian Ground Forces and People's Liberation Army could have helped establish the PAC, after all.
• The N64 game BattleTanx had hover tanks called Hover Tanks, which were basically Abrams with turbines and a flat bottom. Though a bit squirrely to control, they could strafe sideways while firing, float over mines without problems, and pick up an impressive amount of speed for ramming other players.
• All vehicles in Battlezone (except the walkers) use vectored thrusters to hover. Battlezone 2 included tracked vehicles which were immune to being sniped and had more armor, but could not strafe and were clumsy in low gravity. The vector wireframe vehicles in the original 1980 arcade game might have been, but at that resolution who knows?
• Blaster Master, once Sophia gets Hover Mechanics.
• Brigador: Agravs (short for anti-gravity units) are one of three vehicle types in the game. Unlike other types of vehicles that are bound to Tank Controls, agravs can strafe, giving them unique mobility.
• Civilization: Beyond Earth features these as the top-tier version of the "cavalry" and "artillery" unit, with various changes depending on your choices (such as longer weapons range/higher damage, more mobility within turns, and so on). Furthermore, the most powerful units that can be built by Purity-aligned factions are the LEV Tank, which is capable of hovering over canyons and mountains and packs quite a punch, even able to bombard targets with impunity. Its big brother is the LEV Destroyer, the ultimate Purity unit, which looks like an enormous floating fortress, although it's more of an artillery piece than a tank.
• Both Civilization: Call to Power and Call to Power 2 have Fusion Tanks, which fill a similar in game role as modern day tanks, and can also travel over shallow water.
• Command & Conquer series
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun the Global Defense Initiative fields Hover MLRSes. They were fast and able to easily traverse any reasonably flat terrain, including water, but had light armor and were grounded during Ion Storms. And in the next game, Tiberium Wars... GDI went back to treads, ditching a lot of the bleeding edge propulsion technology they were formerly known for.
  • GDI regains hover technology in the Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars expansion Kane's Wrath, with two types of hovercraft to their name: the Slingshot, a light, fast, moderately armored mobile anti-aircraft turret, and the Shatterer, a weaponized Tiberium decontamination vehicle with a very impressive sonic cannon.
  • The Scrin vehicles don't have wheels, so either hover or walk. The Seeker and Devourer are designated as tanks.
  • Red Alert 2 did not feature armed hovercraft but the Allies did develop robotic hovertanks in the Yuri's Revenge. Robot Tanks, as they were called, act like remote-controlled Hover MLRSes: they could fly over water, but if their control station was destroyed or lost power, they would fall into the drink.
• Cyberpunk 2077 brings us the Militech Basilisk, which, despite being called a tank by several characters is actually more of an APC/armored transporter than a true tank, and is actually considered obsolete by the time of the game's setting, with its primary buyers being less-fortunate countries and government organizations that cannot afford true tanks. However, to the Nomads who steal it and use it against the Wraiths harassing them, it is just as good as a tank for them. One of the ending branches even has the Basilisk make a reappearance as the Nomads use it to spearhead an assault on Militech; despite taking heavy damage, it plays a critical part in the battle and even survives to the end.
• The obscure polygonal arcade/PlayStation game Cyber Sled is Virtual-ON with hover tanks. The vehicles in the game (some of which take more generosity than others to call a 'tank') are extremely agile and can move in any direction (save vertically) with ease, and in spite of a reasonable array of textures on the vehicles, caterpillar treads are conspicuous with their absence.
• Both sides in Dark Reign use hovertanks for their heavy tanks, with the Imperium using hover technology for all their vehicles.
• As noted above, Dawn of War had the Eldar and Tau's hover tanks (though the Falcon is the transport). However, only the Eldar tanks are able to jump over terrain, while the Tau's Devilfish is invisible.
• Doom Eternal introduces the Doom Hunter, the top half of a heavily cyberized Agaddon hunter grafted onto a hovering "sled" outfitted with lock-on rockets, machine guns, and a shield generator for the fleshy bits. Since the sled itself is unshielded, it's something of a weak point that when destroyed will not only disable much of the Hunter's offensive capabilities but also its shield.
• Earth 2150:
  • The Lunar Corporation. Seriously, just take control of its forces and trust us, its army's nothing but hover tanks.
  • The expansion pack gives them some tracked vehicles, playing this trope straight in that they're more mobile bunkers versus their usual swift and fragile hovering ones.
• Emperor: Battle for Dune: In another of Westwood's games, House Ordos got kickass hovering tanks with laser cannons and force fields, making them fast, hard-hitting, and surprisingly tough (unless a laser-armed enemy hit their force field).
• Empire at War features several: the base game includes the Rebellion's T2-B Hovertanks (light, maneuverable, and shielded, but not terribly effective against anything larger than infantry) and the Empire's 2-M Repulsor Tanks (also shielded, less maneuverable, but with a cannon that's highly effective against vehicles). The Forces of Corruption expansion adds the Consortium's Canderous Assault Tanks (heavily armored and shielded, with two mass drivers that are useful against a variety of targets) and Garm Bel Iblis's absolutely enormous Gargantuan tank (big enough to have destroyable hardpoints instead of using Critical Existence Failure, with four laser cannons, two turbolasers, a Shield Flare that expends its shields to damage anything nearby, and the ability to carry a few troops, to boot).
• Empire Earth: The first game has a hovertank unit that, for some bizarre reason, traverses underwater, probably because of engine limitations. It cannot be built outside custom maps, either.
  • Later games in the series replaces conventional tanks with hover-tanks in the late epochs.
• In Epic Battle Fantasy 5, Lance's Valkyrie tank is upgraded into this, complete with Tron Lines.
• In Grey Goo (2015), all of humanity's hastily recommissioned autonomous combat drones either float or fly. The twist here is that humans are the Higher-Tech Species and even these machines that haven't seen use in generations are still centuries more advanced than anything the alien Beta have (they prefer the classic wheels, treads and legs).
• The Hoverdynes from Ground Control, which are faster but frailer than conventional tracked Terradynes.
  • Hoverdynes also have a stronger punch, thanks to their energy weapons as opposed to conventional ballistic ammo of the Terradynes.
  • In the sequel, the Hoverdynes make a comeback with some support from walkers. The alien Virons also have Centruroids, which are, effectively, Hoverdynes.
• Halo:
  • In all games, the Covenant have the Wraith, a large, bulbous mortar tank that hovers close to the ground and fires massive blasts of plasma. While they have the ability to strafe and are well-armored, they have low clearance and move slowly due to the weight of their armor.
  • Halo: Reach features the Covenant Revenant, similar in design to the Wraith except that it moves much faster at the cost of power and armor.
  • Halo Wars 2 features the Banished Marauder, which is sort of a Brute version of the Revenant.
• In Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Kiith Gaalsien vehicles all hover using scavenged Lost Technology, including their carriers. Which makes them faster but less durable than the Northern Coalition's wheeled and treaded vehicles.
• The Atari Jaguar games Hover Strike and Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands has the player pilot a futuristic hovertank against enemy tanks and bases to rescue colonists from Space Pirates.
• Hovertank 3D, obviously.
• Incoming Forces included hovertanks as well as conventional tanks as playable units. Their advantages over conventional tanks were tenfold - they could slide sideways for evasive manouvering.
• March of War has the R-57 Hover Platform; though it is more of a hover self-propelled gun than an actual tank.
• Mass Effect 2: The Hammerhead, a replacement for the first game's Mako, which is used in the Firewalker and Overlord DLC missions. It's much faster than the Mako, but it's got wet tissue paper for armor.
• MechWarrior Living Legends, set in the same universe as BattleTech, features allows the player to pilot several hovertanks. The Harasser is an actual hovercraft with a rigid skirt, allowing it to accelerate, move, and turn very quickly, though it frequently nosedives if one tries to transition onto water too quickly. The Epona and Hephaestus lack skirts and instead use vectored thrust to move about. Previous games have had the Harasser, though as a worthless cannon fodder unit used only by the singleplayer enemies.
• Mega Man (Classic): Quite a few of the Wily Machines are like this. The first game's Wily Machine is also noteworthy as the remake's version is grounded for the first phase before taking to the air.
• The Vanu Sovereignty in PlanetSide gets these, in line with their super-futuristic and unconventional array of weaponry. In the original, the pilot had an anti-infantry plasma machine gun while the gunner had a turreted railgun, whereas in the sequel the pilot controls the main cannon while the gunner uses secondary Anti-Armor, Anti-Infantry, or Anti-Air weaponry; it also gains a Nitro Boost ability that lets it scale mountains.
• One of the two usable vehicles in Quake IV. It's the Lightning Bruiser to the Mighty Glacier Combat Walker.
• Saints Row 4 has an alien Hover Tank called "Destructor" that can be acquired early in the game. The Third Street Saints later get their own and Kinsie makes an upgraded on for the "*batteries not included" mission. Destructors are also used in the "Tank Mayhem" missions to cause as much property damage as possible in a set time limit.
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Hovercrafts are amphibious Lightning Bruisers, but their high cost makes them nearly Awesome, but Impractical.
  • A video of one secret project shows a Grey Goo-like "pool" of nanotech consuming battlefield debris (including human remains) to make a shiny new hovertank in a matter of seconds, complete with Midair Bobbing.
• In Sonic Colors, the Wii-exclusive Green Wisp's power is to turn Sonic into an organic version of this, which also allows him to fly across trails of rings.
• The Diamondback was one in StarCraft II for a while, but it got dropped (from the normal lineup at least) later. It remains as a campaign-only unit in Wings of Liberty, featuring a pair of anti-armor railguns and the unique ability to fire while moving.
• The Star Trek: New Worlds game has the player constructing a Federation, Romulan or Klingon colony on an alien world and features a wide variety of hovering vehicles, including tanks. Others include APCs. unarmed scouts and science vehicles and photon torpedo-armed mobile artillery pieces.
• The Interplay-published game Tanktics gives players D.I.Y. tanks that can ride on five types of propulsion. One of these propulsions is the aptly-named "hover base". They allow tanks to go over all terrain, though are balanced by being slow moving.
• Steel Reign has several varieties of Hover Tanks at your disposal, including the Sidewinder and the Viper. As Hover Tanks, they are considered the Fragile Speedster: Faster than treaded tanks like the Diamondback or the Copperhead, but are very lightly armored. These tanks also tend to be equipped with just a single shield generator, as opposed to the quad shields found on many of the other machines.
• The Raven of Stellar 7, is the most advanced fighting vehicle made by humanity. It's a hovertank that can turn invisible, so it's an extremely stealthy tank that can outrun and outmaneuver almost any vehicle the Arcturus empire throws at the Raven.
• Supreme Commander features both Fragile Speedster and main combat versions. In addition, all Aeon Engineer units hover, as opposed to the more traditional amphibious nature of the other races.
• Tanarus has the MagRider, a hovertank similar to the one from Battlefield 2142. It is also the only tank with a turret that cannot be swivelled, with the turret swivel commands instead allowing the tank to strafe, while a built-in Dampener negates any damage from falling at height, making it a Mechanically Unusual Fighter.
• TerraTech allows the player to build these, although they are extremely hard to use due to lack of friction with the ground.
• Total Annihilation featured Hovercraft in it's Core Contingency Expansion, to the point that they were essentially merely hovering versions of the normal ground vehicles. Useful on the wide variety of swamp maps however.
• Several of the larger warrior-type Transformers in Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron can turn into hovering tanks, most notably Megatron and Brawl for the Decepticons and Warpath for the Autobots. Shockwave from the latter game also appears to be some kind of mobile artillery platform, and is effectively close enough in form and function to call him a hovering tank.
• Hovercrafts armed with machine-guns are available units to both NORAD and WOPR in WarGames Defcon 1, capable of traversing swamps and rocky terrain, the downside being that they couldn't run over enemy infantries. A mission in Louisiana even made it a plot point where the player is given six hovercrafts, due to the swampy terrain being unavailable for using tanks or heavy vehicles.
• Warzone 2100 includes a hovercraft option for propulsion, which unfortunately wander into Awesome, but Impractical territory; they're fast but poorly armoured, but if weighed down with the more powerful late-game weapons their speed drops noticeably. Their one advantage is that they're amphibious, enabling attacks from unexpected directions.
• Wing Commander IV: Hover tanks make an appearance in cutscenes of the Circe mission branch. They're pretty much just Cannon Fodder for the good guys, though, and don't even get the dignity of counting in killscores.
• X-COM has the Hovertank (in variants with Plasma and Fusion Launcher) like this. Of course, they are a crossbred of your basic tank drone with enough of scavenged Flying Saucer tech to build your own.

Webcomics

• Juathuur: The title race use Fluur rings to power their sleds and boats.
• Schlock Mercenary: Taken to its logical conclusion; there is no difference between a tank and an air-superiority fighter. The same gravity technology that allows them to float a meter off the ground allows them to dance through the air, fly through space, and throw up powerful shields. They fulfill a variety of roles, starting with air support.

Western Animation

• The Neosapien Hovertanks from Exo Squad. They were built specifically to defend Phaeton City against Exofleet but fortunately for the latter, La Résistance managed to capture the factory where they were produced and used them against Neosapiens themselves.
• The SWAT Kats have the HoverKat, which they only used once against a rogue AI named Zed; it was explicitly a jet-powered hovercraft.
• Vehicle of choice for Sgt. Hatred on The Venture Bros..

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