I've been doing some thinking as to the kinds of developments might lie in the near future of Starfleet after Nemesis and the Dominion war and three ideas have stuck out.
Verteron (Pulse) Torpedo In the TNG episode "Force of Nature" we see a "verteron mine" used to disable subspace systems aboard starships. Particularly, warp nacells are rendered inoperable until purged nad concievably other subspace systems such as impulse engines and computer cores could be affected. Such a warhead, if mounted in a standard photon torpedo casing coul dbecome a useful, non-leathal, weapon. The idea would be to direct these torpedos at a target's warp nacells to knock it out of, or prevent it from going to, warp for some number of hours.
This system would be ideal for law enforcement and convoy escort duties during peacetime to provdide a non-leathal way of disabling a target and aprehending criminals. It could also be used to allow smaller and out gunned starships (such as scouts or transports) to disable attackers and escape at warp speeds without pursuit.
The weapon could also be employed in a lethal fashion. A target saturated with vertons will likely loose computer control of key systems such as warp containment. Also if fired at a target travelling at warp directed only one nacell, the verteron pulse may cause an asymetric collapse of the warp field causing relativistic differential velocities across the target's spaceframe resulting in stresses which could destroy the ship.
Modern day analogy (sort of): EMP weapon.
Polaron(?) Torpedo Starfleet has developed the quantum torpedo as an improved standoff weapon with over 3 times the yield of a photon torpedo (suggested by the DS9 tech manual). However, increased yield has only limited gains in effectiveness and effeiciency while productions costs remain prohibitively high for mass production.
Throughout the Dimion War we saw examples of how polaron-based weapons could easily penetrate standard shields. If this technology, perhaps in the form of a polaron pulse generator, could be incorporated into a photon torpedo one could effectively create a shield-penetrating round. The yield of a standard photon torpedo should be sufficient to destroy a virtually unshielded target. A shield-pentrating photon torpedo is not only more efficient, but overcomes a basic weakness inherent in explosive weapons: that only a portion of the blast is actually directed at the target. A shield-penetrating round overcomes this weakness by using the target's own shield bubble to trap the explosive energy of the warhead, increasing its destructive power. These systems would utilize existing technology and be far easier/cheaper to produce than quantum torpedoes.
Modern day analogy: armor-penetrating anti-tank artilery. *Another improvement to the photon torpedo would be an equivilant to shaped-charge rounds.
Long Range Warp Capable Tactical Missile (WCTM-LR) At present, starship combat resembles gun ship battles prior to Earth's 21st century. Ships close to weapons range at sublight speeds and procede to "slug it out" with phasers and torpedoes at close range. What is needed is a true standoff weapon capable of destroying targets in one or two hits and facilitating tactical maneuver at warp speeds.
the WCTM-LR would be a shuttle- or runabout-sized vehicle with its own warp drive, sublight propulsion, computer, sensors, and coummications equipment. It will carry a photon or quantum warhead capable of destroying most targets possible with the aid of shield penetrating technology. The missile should be able to cruise at wf 8 to a range of ~.5 light year with terminal attack velocity in excess of wf 9.9. The missle will be capable of semi-autonomous operations and manuever at sublight speeds. They could also be dropped along the predicted path of target vessels and thus used as effective mines.
Such a weapons system would revolutionize starship tactics for the coming century. Linear phaser arrays would be optimized as point defense anti-missile systems, while pulse pasers would be optimized for slugging it out with targets at now extremely close range compared to the new expanded battle space. Also, such system would increase the importance of sensor capabilites for early detection of targets in incoming missle threats, an area in which Starfleet seems to have an edge over other powers.
Modern day analogy: Anti-ship cruise missile such as the French Exocet or US Harpoon. Mine function is similar to an encapsulated torpedo mine.
Comments, Suggestions, Questions?
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
I do like those possible weapons after Nemesis, although...
Wasn't the Long Range Warp Capable Tactical Missile (WCTM-LR) found in the ST: Voyager episode Dreadnought built by Cardassians. And didn't Harry onboard Voyager encounter another one of those when he was on Night Watch?
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
Dreadnought was much bigger than what I'm proposing and WCTM-LR would have nowhere near that level of AI. Also, it was a strategic weapon, not a tactical one. It's like comparing an anti-ship cruise missile with an ICBM.
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
So what you're proposing is somewhat in the size of a micro-torpedo and not a standard torpedo then.
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
No, it would be the size of a shuttle or runabout (10-20m), much bigger than a standard torpedo (~2m) and would need to be launched froma shuttle bay or specially constructed launching bay. Dreadnought, on the other hand, was the size of a small starship at ~100m. For an analogous size comparison to real world weapons: photon torpedo - artilery shell WCTM-LR - cruise missile Dreadought - ICBM
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
I think the whole weapons tech would have to go in another direction completely. How much more bang can you pack in a torp without it getting ridiculous? I always wondered why Genesis had never been studied as a true weapon. All that power in one man sized shell? Also, why aren't transporters used as weapons. you could make a solid rock materialize inside an enemies injectors and plug up there warp core or such. Or just dematerialize the hatch to the bridge and instantly decapitate the ship.
I think that Trek tech has reached its apex of current weapons and needs to go into some "far-out" systems for any real impact.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I don't think that works. I mean, OK, you're just talking about size, but a photon torpedo clearly isn't anything like an artillery shell, and is already a warp capable, guided weapon with potentially more destructive power than any real nuclear warhead yet built. (If I am remembering my nerd figures right. I looked it up, and some website was claiming upwards of 90 megatons for 1.5 kg of matter vs. an equal amount of antimatter, assuming a simple though wholly unrealistic total annhilation.)
These are neat ideas, but I guess I'm not so convinced of their, you know, necessity. "Obviously," were there real Star Trek battles, they wouldn't look much like their TV versions. I mean, space gunfights don't take place within ranges of a few hundred meters because anyone thinks they're realistic, but simply because they look cool.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
(Also, transporters are clearly too finicky to be used as weapons in most circumstances. Or at least such has to be the case for a Star Trek TV show to remain recognizable. Teleportation without such limits turns it into some sort of weird Larry Niven setting. And anyway we've got lots and lots of examples of transporters being blocked by phenomena both natural and manmade, so there'd be no shortage of transporter-impervious materials or energies with which to line sensitive areas.)
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
May I toot the senior creator of a site to which I contributed? Paul Cargile and Baloo had some similar ideas about advanced weaponry in the wake of the Domninion War at Starfleet Military Reserves. Might give you ideas of what might be involved in these kinds of weapons.
Posted by Neutrino 123 (Member # 1327) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: (If I am remembering my nerd figures right. I looked it up, and some website was claiming upwards of 90 megatons for 1.5 kg of matter vs. an equal amount of antimatter, assuming a simple though wholly unrealistic total annhilation.)
Unrealistic? I'd think there would be plenty of matter lying around to annihilate with the antimatter. I'm sure the torpedo case itself is more then 1.5kg . You don't need to get special matter to annihilate the antimatter and try to get them to collide just right!
Also, 3 kilograms of matter/antimatter converted to energy would give about 2.7x10^17 Joules or 65 megatons. Using the actual TNT value rather then the conventional measurement gives almost 100 megatons (I don't think that's the most common choice of unit, though). To compare (in conventional units) hydrogen bombs are on the order of magnitude of one megaton, and the Hiroshima bomb was about 13 kilotons.
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
quote:Originally posted by WizArtist II: Also, why aren't transporters used as weapons. you could make a solid rock materialize inside an enemies injectors and plug up there warp core or such. Or just dematerialize the hatch to the bridge and instantly decapitate the ship.
Transporters aren't any more an effective weapon than phasers. Transporters are projected beams of matter that will be bocked by shields (frequency "windows" aside) like any other projected weapon like phasers or torpedo with the added disadvantage that they don't reduce the targets shields any. Once the shield are down you can do what youlike, but it would be much simpler to hit them with more "conventional" weaponry at that point.
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: I don't think that works. I mean, OK, you're just talking about size, but a photon torpedo clearly isn't anything like an artillery shell, and is already a warp capable, guided weapon with potentially more destructive power than any real nuclear warhead yet built.
True, my comparison was only meant as an analogy. Actually, modern rocket-assisted artillery shells are now both guided and provide some of their own propulsion to extend their range considerably, much like a photon torpedo. Also, photon torpedoes are only capable of 75% increase of speed over the firing ship (TNG tech manual, if I remember correctly). They aren't really warp capable in any independent sense and only if fired from a ship at warp. They are also guided only in a limited sense since on-screen evidence (Star Trek VI aside) usually shows them following near-ballistic tragectories. They are not true stand off weapons (I'm suggesting a range of half a light year or more, ~4 hours at warp 8) capable of independent propulsion or guidance or have hit-to-kill lethality with only one or two rounds.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
"Unrealistic? I'd think there would be plenty of matter lying around to annihilate with the antimatter. I'm sure the torpedo case itself is more then 1.5kg [Wink] . You don't need to get special matter to annihilate the antimatter and try to get them to collide just right!"
1.) The 3 kilogram payload (half deuterium, half antideuterium) is, I think, from the technical manual, though I got it, again, off some website.
2.) The unrealistic part is expecting every bit of antimatter to meet up with and annihilate every bit of matter. It's an unrealistic but useful mathematical abstraction, like the ideal gas law. Obviously, you could build a matter/antimatter weapon of arbitrary size. (Isn't that exactly what they do to blow up that giant space amoeba?) I'm just going with what my (brief and lazy) research returned as the "official" figures.
Also, I guess you could say that torpedoes are unguided because we usually don't see them fly around, but, again, that's a dramatic (and cost-saving!) thing. Torpedoes certainly zoomed around to find targets in "Way of the Warrior."
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by WizArtist II: I always wondered why Genesis had never been studied as a true weapon. All that power in one man sized shell?
The ladies say that about me all the time...
quote: Also, why aren't transporters used as weapons. you could make a solid rock materialize inside an enemies injectors and plug up there warp core or such. Or just dematerialize the hatch to the bridge and instantly decapitate the ship.
I brought this up some time ago in another thread. While the federation and Klingons would not use transporters as weapons for reasons of morality and honor, pricks like the Romulans would likely concentrate their technology on quickly dismantling an opponent's shields, then just beaming the crew into space (or their ship's replicator's stores for protien).
I think weapons using subspace as a medium could be made (like the Dominion's "hoodini" mines) that could penetrate a ship's shields and hull before materializing and detonating.
Of course, there's always the possibility of converting a target to antimatter: probably not too difficult for races that have transporter and replicator technology down pat.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
But, the point about the transporters is that you can't use them 'til you get the other guy's shields down. And, once you've done that, what's the point? Just blow them up.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Why blow them up when you can have their ship, it's technology and all it's computer secrets?
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
And the time it takes to transport everyone off the ship would allow the crew to just destroy their own ship.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Just beam the bridge crew into space. Or beam anestetic gas through the ship. Or just beam the air and all it's pressure off the ship. Or just beam everyone's skin off for a great psychological weapon when your enemies find their derilict ship... Or beam over 100,000 stinging insects....
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Yes, but then you're just getting into stuff that would be done by some creepy psycho captain. In your typical battle, space or otherwise, your objective is to destroy the other guy, or get him to surrender. Not to find new and exciting means of watching him die in abject torture.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Mirror Captain Kirk would've done it.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Well, you could always just beam large chunks of his ship away....say the lid off his warpcore.
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
Perhaps the relative merits of using transporters as weapons should be its own thread? Just a thought.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
One other thing... why couldn't you just beam in a singularity and just have the ship colapse on itself? or form some of those subspace "tears" that gave us the crewman in the deck scene of TNG?
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
BTW.... didn't Bear or Benford(possibly Clairmont?) write a book where the Earth was destroyed and some chosen survivors chase down the culprits? One of the scenes if I remember is that a trap is set and some of the fighters and crew are turned into antimatter so that they blow up when they contact with the mother ship
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yes. That's Greg Bear's (incredible) book Anvil of Stars.
Bad guys set a trap for the revenge-seeking crew of humans by turning the attacking bombships into antimatter (a couple of which impact with the main ship on their return).
Of course, those same bad guys had rigged the solar system's star to nova as part of that same trap- they were not fucking around. Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, if you can create instant black holes anywhere you want them, you're probably beyond starship combat as a meaningful strategy, and well on your way to throwing stars around to solve your astropolitical problems.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I always thought the whole "artifical singularity" was well beyond Trek's technology level. At least for the Romulans.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Either way, I'm not sure it's even possible to beam a black hole. The practical problems like getting one on the pad without imploding the whole ship aside, I doubt a transporter beam is capable of ripping apart the atoms of a super-compressed singularity, never mind reassembling them.
If you're going to use contained singularities as a weapon, it'd be more practical to use them as mines, where they won't indiscriminatly suck your own ship into oblivion or if you really want to commit a war crime, they'd be devistating in a planetary bombardment. To be honest, I can see more peaceful applications for such a devise. Like ignighting a gas giant into a star to bring new life to a dying system. Or to cleanly obliterate a rogue moon on a collision course before it enters an inhabited system. Of course there is the small problem of what to do with the black hole after you've used it. One might assume that the artificial singularities that the romulans use cannot sustain themselves without some form of containment field, hence us not seeing black holes sprout everytime we've seen a Warbird blow up.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I think there's a significant difference between being able to make one at all, and being able to do it on a whim at the spur of a moment. We don't know what the Romulans have to go through to create one. And we don't really know what they mean by "artificial." Just that they're man-, well, Romulan-made, or do they differ from a real black hole in some weird subspace voodoo way?
Posted by ChristopherT (Member # 1634) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: I think there's a significant difference between being able to make one at all, and being able to do it on a whim at the spur of a moment. We don't know what the Romulans have to go through to create one. And we don't really know what they mean by "artificial." Just that they're man-, well, Romulan-made, or do they differ from a real black hole in some weird subspace voodoo way?
Artificial as in "Romulan-made" and requiring outside support systems to maintain. I like Reverend's point that given the history of Romulan self destructive tendencies, you'd expect to see more black holes hanging around after a battle.
I agree that current Star Trek battles look like remakes of "Iron Ships and Wooden Men", but maybe that's not so bad. At least they don't have a "God Gun", though the "Q" might qualify in that regards.
Christopher
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Just beam the bridge crew into space. Or beam anestetic gas through the ship. Or just beam the air and all it's pressure off the ship. Or just beam everyone's skin off for a great psychological weapon when your enemies find their derilict ship... Or beam over 100,000 stinging insects....
Or dogs with bees in their mouths that when they bark, shoot bees at you?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
The Romulaqn singularities must need to containment fields to prevent them from disapating somehow into subspace- otherwise, the ship would collapse into the singularity when the containment field is breached in battle.
Mabye the singularity only exists in subspace? That would explain how they can move a singularity with their starship and it explains why the Voyager crew was so impressed by the subspace array's artificial singularity power source- that one was an actual tamed black hole in real space.
For weapons, it seems that subspace weapons are the way to go- the ol' "ubspace shockwave" seems to the the most destructive thing in Trek thus far.
...though a starship that could emit a really strong external containment bottle could use a solr flare as a narrowly aimed firehose o' destruction.
mmmm.....destruction. Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
"the ship would collapse into the singularity when the containment field is breached in battle"
Seeing as how the black holes they carry are likely to only be a few atoms across, with the mass of one or two tall mountains, I think you're overestimating the power of gravity.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Hmmm...could you have a black hole that small? It one of those "only because we know nothing about the subject matter" kind of things that could go either way.
If the singularity is only a few atoms across, how are they tapping it for power?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
It is only because it is so small that you can pull useful amounts of energy out of it over timescales relevant to humans or humanlike things.
Here's something: why cant the transporters be used as a defensive weapon?
They already onvert matter and energy: why not use them to lock onto an incoming torpedo or energy beam nad disipate it?
Yah, I know that energy weapons should strike at lightspeed but that's obviously not the case in Trek.
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
I think the primary of issues with using transporters in this way (against torpedoes, I don'y think you can beam a directed energy weapon) would be targeting, transporter range, and time to complete the transport sequence. If targeting weren't an issue, one would assume that torpedoes could be brought down with a ship's phasers. Also simple magnetic fields (Rura Penthe, Borg ships as in Best of Both Worlds) have been known to block or deflect transprter beams; it would seem a simple matter to fit a torpedo with a magnetic field generator to thwart attempts to transport it.
Perhaps these issues could be resolved in the 25th century, but probably not in the immediate future of late DS9/TNG movies.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Or, why couldn't a self replicating mine be created that automatically stopped just short of the shielded ship, envelop it with clones and then simultaneously impact. That should cause havoc. Sorta like a MIRV on Viagra.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
quote: I don't think you can beam a directed energy weapon
Well, there are a dozen examples of our hero being beamed out as directed energy beams whizz through him. At times, heroes are also beamed out when they are discharging their own directed energy weapons. In none of those cases does the transporter room or the transporter operator gain extra ventilation holes...
So yeah, it's probably at least horribly difficult if not impossible to catch an energy beam in mid-flight. Not that the transporter operators in those cases would have been specifically trying, tho.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"Yah, I know that energy weapons should strike at lightspeed..."
That rather depends on the kind of energy they fire.
Posted by Captain Boh (Member # 1282) on :
Transporters convert matter to energy, not energy to energy, after all.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
. You don't need to get special matter to annihilate the antimatter and try to get them to collide just right!![[Smile]](smile.gif)