When the Zeonic Company’s space combat MS-11 Act Zaku development project was canned, the Zimmad Company quickly responded by making a variant of their well-proven MS-09 Dom ground combat mobile suit. It was near the end of the One Year War in UC 0079, and the Principality of Zeon, realizing that the outcome of the war was going to be decided in space, devoted all of its mobile suit manufacturing resources to space combat units. Refining the Dom design for space was simple, and mostly involves replacing the hover jet thrusters with standard rocket thrusters. The result was the MS-09R Rick Dom, and Zeon manufacturers begin cranking out hundreds of these new units late in the war, replacing the aging MS-06F Zaku II as the premiere front line combat unit. A variant of the Rick Dom that had its generator enhanced for the testing of mobile suit-portable beam weapons. It was armed with a "beam bazooka", an experimental high-powered beam cannon originally used by mobile armors. Due to issues with the cooling system, the beam bazooka was impossible to mass produce and only assigned to a small number of veteran pilots.