Mirage tank (Red Alert 2)

The Mirage tank is a camouflaged Allied support tank in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge.

Background
The tank is a technological marvel created by Albert Einstein. Developed relatively late in the war, it incorporated technology allowing it to take on the appearance of any organic item in order to disguise itself. Like in Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Mirage tank was designed so that the forest could move.

The Mirage consists of a hemispherical turret mounted on a light tank chassis. The most prominent features, when not in hiding, are the twin projection units extending from the sides of the main turret. They change the tank's appearance to that of a nearby tree in the eyes of the enemy. They can take out enemies using a surprise attack. They attack with a heat-ray weapon.

In-game
It can quickly snipe almost all infantry, Soviet or Yuri, in just one or two shots and destroy most tanks in between three and five. Light vehicles like the Flak track do not stand much of a chance against the Mirage tank. A group consisting of 3 to 4 Mirage Tanks can quickly destroy most enemy buildings except for the construction yard. However, its best use is as a defender of vulnerable areas, as a group of them can lie in wait and then ambush nearby enemies to offset its apparent lack of armor protection.

Their first appearance is in the Mirage mission, when the commander had to defend Einstein's laboratory and his Chronosphere.

Quotes
Note: in Red Alert 2, the Mirage tank shares its quotes with the Grizzly battle tank.

When selected

 * Mean, green, and unseen.
 * Aren't the trees lovely?
 * Perfect hideout.
 * Natural sanctuary.
 * Want some shade?
 * Nobody's here but us trees!

When moving

 * Layin' low.
 * Look natural.
 * Creeping ahead.
 * On the prowl.
 * Re-planting.
 * Going mobile.
 * Now you see me, soon you won't.

When ordered to attack

 * Surprise!
 * Ha-ha!
 * Sneak attack!
 * One more for the landfill!
 * Time for an ambush!

Cameos
Pre-release cameos, in order:

In order: English, French, German, Korean, Chinese. Top row is standard, bottom row is veteran.

Trivia

 * An M42 Duster model was used for the alpha icon.
 * In its late alpha appearance, it had twin cannons.
 * A British Challenger 2 model was used for the final icon.
 * In the icon, the Mirage tank has its turret rotated, while this is not possible in game. This is required for its camouflage logic to work, as problems occur when the game tries to disguise two joined voxels.
 * Originally, the Mirage Tank was supposed to be able to select the terrain object such as rocks, signs, light posts, etc. in addition to the standard trees, to disguise in a similar manner to the spy. However it was felt that this caused too much micro-management - one had to 'deploy' the tank (like the Siege Chopper in Yuri's Revenge) to get it to disguise, then it could only fire when disguised. Finally one had to 'undeploy' the tank to move it again.
 * The core behaviour of the unit (camouflaging as a tree when idle) is identical to the stealth archer cheat unit from the 1997 video game Age of Empires.