File name: Tate, Robert
Primary Military Specialty: Infantry (Close Quarters Combat specialist)
Secondary Specialty: Special Tactical Operations
Rank: O-3
Birthplace: Norwich, England

Iron Grenadiers are Destro's elite personal guard, a small army unto themselves charged with protecting Destro and his holdings. Highly trained and disciplined, they are more than just simple security guards.

Captain Robert Tate is an example of the best the Iron Grenadiers has to offer. He is former SAS, with numerous covert and overt missions under his belt and is trained in a wide variety of clandestine and anti-insurgent/anti-terrorist operations. As an officer he is trained in strategic and tactical operations as well, and can operate as part of a team or alone with equal efficiency; he is well armed and equipped to handle most any situation. Affable and friendly off duty, he is serious and capable when the fighting breaks out. Loaned out to assist Cobra against GI Joe, he IS Iron Grenadier.

Tate views his duty as more than loyalty to either his employer or Cobra. A married man with a young son, he sees GI Joe as a threat to peace and democracy worldwide. Their idea of "peace through power" smacks of Stalin and Hitler to him, and he seeks to do all in he can to smash their nightmare vision of dominance.

Iron Grenadier's preferred weapon is the H&K G36, fully loaded. He is ambidextrous and capable of firing guns akimbo. He is also trained extensively in the use of stealth and close quarters combat. His helmet contains built-in night vision goggles and a limited-use filter mask; his body armor is capable of stopping rounds up to 7.62mm at medium range. He is in effect, a walking one-man army.

"G.I. Joe preaches 'peace through power', but their idea of peace would have soldiers on every street corner and secret police hauling people away in the middle of the night; you need only to look back at Hitler and Stalin to see that. I don't want my son to grow up in a world like that, and that's why I fight GI Joe wherever they may be." - Iron Grenadier

I wanted to create a more bad-ass looking IG, but also make him human--hence the Link Talbot head, which just somehow worked for me in this case. I felt it conveys a sense both of toughness and warmth, the sort of thing you'd expect from Cobra in the Mirror Universe.

I modified the Firefly torso by shaving off the pistols, then filling in the gap they left (plastic beneath is very thin) with a sculpy/putty patch, sanding that, then adding several layers of paint. The bandolier is a plastic banding strap with the grenades glued on; I created a holder for it at the shoulder level with putty to match that of the original IGs. Everything else on him was a straight repaint-dry brush of parts except for the lower legs, which needed to be modified to keep them from rubbing.

Overall I think I met my goal with him, and using the Firefly torso let me keep the Cobra symbol on the back in place. The Red Spot helmet was a perfect fit/look, enough to distance him from the original IGs but at the same time maintain the look, and the G-36 just seemed the perfect weapon for him.