Airborne Assault Blues

You could, of course, think about a flying tank (here they call it an "amphibian"). But on Europa there is no atmosphere of its own, so anything that even remotely resembles an airplane or helicopter is out of the question by definition. The government simply has no money for antigravs. That leaves something that flies so fast that the ability to provide long-term, deliberate infantry support with fire has completely atrophied in it…

2128.
Europa, Jupiter’s moon.
Day 364 of the conditional year, day 202 of the solar year, day 11 of the Jovian year.
A tank in extraterrestrial conditions is a long list of problems unsolvable even in theory—yet, nonetheless, happily solved by mad engineer-fanatics. For example, a tank on Pluto is something impossible in principle. Therefore, in about twenty years it will certainly be built. A tank on Mars differs from its Earth counterpart by only a couple hundred percent. A tank on Europa is the golden mean between the Martian and Plutonian versions. That is: it must move across solid ice at a temperature of −100°C, shoot without drifting a kilometer forward or two back every time it fires, not be carried off the surface by an explosion happening too close at a speed sufficient to turn it into an independent celestial body. And all this with gravity that is weaker than on the Moon…