Juggernauts

So what's with all those weird winged Garlean gunships I see wrecked in parts of Eorzea? I noticed we never fight one (didn't even see any at at Castrum Meridianum), but there's still some (probably years old) wreckage of them here and there. I thought I saw Lahabrea riding one in a cutscene.

In fact, there seems to be a lot of debris in Larkscall. Was this something that happened in 1.0 or are the sylphs that hardcore?

yeah, those weird flying things are seen transporting ultima weapon early in 2.0.

I guess the few that remain fly around patrolling the skies and shooting down whatever airships they can? It was said that the reason why they don't use airships as often anymore is due to the garleans shooting them down.

However, I do remember a scene in 1.0 where the Garleans were bombing Gridania from above. Pretty sure there was quest to shoot them down

This is their description of them on the official site. "This flying magitek machine consists of an upper cylindrical section for aerial propulsion and a lower bipedal section for terrestrial locomotion. The juggernaut can transport an entire squad of soldiers, and is often used to land troops in enemy terrain." Although judging by the size that some of them are idk how they can carry a squad of troops, nor how they enter or leave said transport.

The Juggernauts were more common in version 1.0, where they seemed to serve as the Garlean Empire's main fighter/mobile weapon system. Plenty were seen in the original 1.0 opening movie during the Battle of Silvertear Skies (where one crashed onto the malboro Derplander was fighting, only to inadvertenly scoop him up and fly off with him, and during the battle the dragons were one-shotting them!), and they were also shown later in the game storming the Black Shroud in a cutscene during the main story quest Together, We Stand as part of a Garlean operation targeting the sylphs - which was the beginning of a deterioration in sylvaan relations with the 'spoken races' that led to the eventual summoning of Ramuh.

And during the final Tanaka-era story quest Future's Perfect the player actually encounters one in battle along with a Imperial Centurion and two grunts - alas the Juggernaut is untargetable and cannot be destroyed, instead the trick was to lure the soldiers into the Juggernaut's targeting AoE field, so that they would be caught by the Juggernaut's powerful magitek cannon. Of course if you were too slow or lag screwed things up, it would one shot you instead. :p

But as the Battle of Carteneau didn't seem to show any being used, it appears the Juggernaut has been supplanted by the Reaver (FFVI style magitek armour) as the Empire's main ground weapon. And as Myahele said, they're often shot down by the citystates - the marooned ex Garlean fighter pilot Drest the player encounters in Eastern La Noscea was one such casualty.

I'll go through my 1.0 screenshots and post the relevant scenes here. :)