INTERCEPTOR AND E-WEB TECHNOLOGY |
INTRODUCTION |
The Interceptor grid and the E-Web are two mainstays of
the Earth alliance defense technology since their inception, in
the early 2150's, and are still today a classified technology.
Their diffusion is strictly controlled, and, while after the
constitution of the ISA the interceptor technology has been made
available, upon request, to other Isa members, the E-Web is still
an Earth Alliance proprietary technology. In this essay are
presented in an organic form the basic working principles of both
Interceptors and E-Web, but the detail internal technologies that
allow the effectiveness of these systems, particularly the ones
of the E-Web, cannot be diffused beyond a certain degree, so we
apologize in advance for the unavoidable partial censorship.
In the first stages of his development, Earthforce directed his efforts assuming as correct the statement that the space fightings will imply engagement at ranges of tenth or hundreds thousands kilometers, but a small time frame and some experiences and information gathering allowed to discover that, usually, given the tactical implications of the Hyperspace jumps and of the ambush tactics, the ship - to ship engagements generally took place at very closer distances, from 15-20000 Kilometers to a few tenths kilometers. The meaning of this is that the best weapons known at the time (2150 or so) for these fighting distances were the particle beams and the plasma cannons or similar. (and eventually the railguns, but the Earth Alliance is the only known user of these effective short range weapons).
The problem was how to defend against plasma bolts and particle beams and the response were two: the Aegis multi layered armor, whose effectiveness, both in the original form and in the "Carbonat" evolution, is well known and proven, and an active defense system, that was exactly the Interceptor/E-Web barrier.
First of all, must be made clear a fact: the interceptors are made
of two projective elements: one of them, the "Bolt
Interceptor" works
against plasma and ion bolt weapons, operats with bolt
weapons as active subcomponent, and, theoretically, each
plasma/ion bolt weapon can operate as interceptor in this mode, that
essentially is an high rate of fire
plasma/pulse weapon, with a targeting system that enables the
weapon to hit the incoming plasma bolt.
The plasma bolts are maintained in their shape and density thanks
to the particular conformation and internal dynamics of the bolt
itself, that is structured to generate a self containment
magnetic field. From the physical point of view, it is a plasma
structure able to generate his own magnetic containment bottle.
The self containment field decays progressively, and this is the
reason of the limited range of the plasma/ion bolt weapons
respect to the beam weapons: on the other side, a plasma bolt,
given the same power feeding requirements of a weapon, ensures a
greater terminal effect, both in terms of penetration and
explosive terminal damages. This is the main reason that pushed
to merge in the OMEGA
cannons and in similar systems both the pulse and beam
capabilities and in other systems the laser/bolt
capabilities; a plasma bolt is relatively slow respect to a
particle beam (this last operates with relativistic speeds)or a
laser (light speed), but has mass and energy capable to deliver
both thermal/blast effects and concussive/momentum related
effects, with heavy damages.
Overall, the concept of the interceptor is simple: an incoming
plasma bolt is perfectly traceable with a radar, and his
trajectory can be extrapolated with high precision. Another
plasma bolts that hits the enemy projectile destabilizes his self
containment field, and so the bolt explodes leaving the attacked
unit unharmed.
The difficulties emerged from the fact that, to obtain the direct
hit against the center of an object that travels at 10000 or
20000 meters/seconds and presents an useful target of a few
meters, are required an awesome accuracy in a series of
subsystems: for example, the tracking radars must obtain the
position and the speed of an incoming bolt with an error of less
than respectively 1/300000 for the position and 1/500000 for the
speed, the angular overall error of the interceptor (so the sum
of the angle errors of the tracker and of the weapon) must not
exceed 1/150000, and the speed error of the interceptor bolt must not
exceed 1/2000000.
The technology of the "bolt" interceptor is just this: an extreme
accuracy and speed of the tracking systems, of the weapon turret
movimentation engines, of the closed loop bolt speed control
systems of the interceptor bolter, and an exasperated accuracy of
the bolter itself.
Must be remarked that the development of the first interceptors
required three years, but was possible in such a small time frame
because large part of the subcomponents and subsystems (mostly
the tracking radars and computers and the high precision, high
torque electric engines required for the aiming of the turrets)
were yet available, mainly because were developed years before
for an experimental anti-railgun laser defense system developed
by the DARPA in the early 2100's.
The other active element of the interceptor is a "Focal Field
Projector", a powerful
and narrow beam electromagnetic field emitter, that, aimed against an
incoming particle beam, is capable to disrupt it, with the same effects
(but in a higher scale) of the E-Web.
The Focal field Projector in its original incarnation was extremely
effective against the charged and neutralized particle beam weapons
commonly used among the Youger races, and, while requiring the same
accuracy of the bolt interceptors, with the further complexity that is
related to the relative obliquity between incomping beam and focal
field beam, was an extremely effective component of the Earth
Alliance's defnsive grid.
These subsystems, and the whole system engineering, has never
been developed at the level of refinement of the Earth alliance
by other alien powers: the Narns has always followed the weapon
engineering guidelines of the Centauri, the Centauri put their
bets on the gravitic shields, the long range weapons and the
electronic warfare, the Minbari, after some work in the field of
the interceptor technology, put the whole research and
development activity out of their area of interest for a series
of reasons, essentially because their superior technology and
ranged firepower and the Stealth system allowed them to win a
fight well before the possibility to be hit by plasma weapons*, while the
Shadow beams, the other potential menace, seemed
uninterceptable**.
So, actually, the Earth Alliance is the only master of the
Interceptors, that, given the actual potential menaces, are back in the
limelight.
*Must
be remarked the fact that the interceptors could have had a
material effectiveness against the Minbari Anti Neutron beams,
but the tracking system of the Interceptor Mk1 was exclusively
radar based, and so had strong difficults in tracking a neutral
particle
(anti neutrons/neutralized antimatter) beam, and jammed by the powerful
ECM of the
Minbari.
The interceptors Mk2 (Omega and others) and Mk3 (Warlock and
others) are unjammables and able to track a wider range of
different types of incoming fire. A further remark is that
the Minbari ships lacks a close-in interceptor capability against
the plasma bolts, and so, in the few occasions in which our most
effective warships ( Nova ) survived until a very short range,
until to acquire the Minbari units with the manual emergency
weapon controls, the plasma cannons of the Novas were able to
inflict devastating damages to their warships.
The short range firepower of the Novas was considered impressive
even by an advanced and powerful race as the Minbari, that,
particularly in the last period of the war suffered not
negligible casualties in forced short range fightings (see Flynn
colony battle). After centuries of all-beam armed warships, the
Minbari resolved to design the Whitestars with neutron pulse and
fusion pulse cannons, besides the main Neutron Beam cannon.
**A shadow
beam, as all the Bosers, can indeed be intercepted and partially
dissipated by the Focal Field Projectors of the EA interceptor Grid, as
happened with the bosers used by the Drakhs in their war against us.
The plasma projectiles of the Shadow
fighters and Scout ships are interceptables, and were intercepted
by the Mk2 systems of the Hyperion-N's
and of the
Nova-N's
of the EFNI in the fighting that ensued between EFNI
units and a Shadow patrol in the "Bright
Eagle" mission of October 2259, and that allowed to
gather relics and pieces of equipments from the destroyed shadow
units.
This is the only known real fight between Earthforce ships and
Shadow ships, even if encounters between shadow units and EA
fighters or ships have been documented, and some missing
explorative units of the EA have been probably captured or
destroyed by the Shadows, while fighters of the Babylon 5
garrison squadrons fought bravely against the Shadows in the
Shadow War (2259 - 2261).
Historical note - Effectiveness of Plasma Bolt Weapons
|
In this paragraph are provided only the general working principles of the E-Web. The technical details and data are still classified, as classified are the details of the Focal Field Projectors integrated in the interceptors.
The E-Web was born as a defensive electromagnetic shield
against the particle beams, and quickly evolved in a two-stage
system, effective against both charged particles and neutralized
particles beams, (except pure neutron or anti neutron beams) and
with an additional effect against plasma bolts.
Essentially, the E-Web is a grid of clusters of field projectors,
that are commonly known as "anchors" or
"pits", placed in a regular pattern. The field
generated by these projectors can be represented as a regular
mosaic, as can be seen in fig.7 (in fact, the E-Web is invisible). The
whole systems is fed by an
high frequency, high voltage current, and, given the nature and
the position of the projectors, are generated synchronous
electromagnetic fields. The combination of perpendicular fields
has a dissipative effect on a particle beam, whose inner core
(see fig 8) is spread on a larger area.
The overall energy released on the target is about the same of
the undisturbed beam, but it is released on an area that varies
between about three and seven times the original impact area; the
piercing power of the beam so is proportionally reduced.
It is clear that the E-Web reduces, but does not eliminate the
terminal effect of the beam, and a passive material armor is
needed to avoid the hull penetration.
The E-Web alone is unable to avoid the effects of an hit, but the
combination of E-Web and multi layered armor allows an overall
high resistance against the incoming beam weapons fire. Must be
added the fact that the E-Web, while extremely effective against
charged particle beams and neutralized particle beams, it
is ineffective against neutral particle beams, so, the
Antimatter/antineutron beams used by the Minbari ships were partially
immune to the dissipative effect of the E-Web Mk-1, while the more
common
neutralized particle beams or heavy particles beams, used in
different forms by Dilgars, EA, Centauri, Narns, LONAW, are
subject to the dissipative effect of the E-Web, as the Boser Beams.
Fig.7 - General structure of the E-Web - in the picture the E-Web field is colored (blue) to show his shape, while, in fact, it is invisible. | Fig.8 - Dissipative effect of the E-Web against a particle beam. |
A further step in the E-Web technology, introduced in 2185, was
the integration of the capacitive layer (E-Web second stage) in
the Earthforce armors: the EA armors have a multi layered structure
(see Armors), and , to
work properly, they need some void spaces between some particular
layers. The addiction of two thin conductive plates on the
internal faces of the void layers, and the charging of these
plates with an high difference of electrostatic potential
(billions of Volts) transformed the system in a powerful
capacitor.
Effects of the second stage of the E-Web against a Plasma
Bolt.
fig.9 - The plasma bolt penetrates the external layers of the armor. | fig.10 - The plasma bolt is disrupted. | fig.11 - The plasma bolt is spread on a larger area of armor, with reduced penetration. |
A plasma bolt (that is intrinsically conductive), when it comes
in contact with both the charged plates (after a partial
penetration of the armor, fig.9) short circuits the
capacitor,(fig. 10) and a powerful current, an electric
discharge, travels through the plasma bolt, disrupting his
structure and spreading it on a larger surface of the inner
layers of the armor (fig 11). Even in this case the armor is
ablated and partially destroyed, but the structural integrity of
the hull and of the internal systems is protected, and the ship
is still able to fight, being subject only to the phisycal
(momentum) impact of the plasma/ion bolt. This, obviously, until
a certain level of power, after which the armor is pierced.
Anyway, the addiction of the second (capacitive) stage to the
E-Web near doubles the overall resistance of the armor against
the Plasma/ion weapons.
CONCLUSIONS AND NOTES |
The combination of interceptors and E-Web, used on our
warships from the beginning of our presence in the interstellar
arena, was one of the most important factors in the overall
effectiveness of our ships: even against more advanced races,
like the Centauri, some worlds of the LONAW, the Narns (They were
more advanced than the EA until the reconstruction after the
Earth-Minbari war), and the Dilgars, our Navy was always able to
easily survive fire barrages that would have left just molten
slag of the vast majority of the capital ships of other races,
allowing to reply to the enemy fire with deadly effectiveness.
The relative ineffectiveness of the Interceptor Mk1 and of the E-Web
Mk1 and
the unlucky behavior of our armors against the Minbari weapons
was one of the most relevant factors, besides the blinding of our
sensors because of the Minbari Stealth equipment and Electronic
Warfare systems, of the terrible losses suffered and of our hard
defeat in that war.
Actually, the evolution in both the passive (Carbonat Armors,
Nanotechnologycal Armors) and active (interceptors Mk2 and later, E-Web
Mk2 and Mk3,
Ion bolt interceptors) defenses has enormously improved the
situation.
At the date, the Earth alliance ships are by far the hardest and
most survivable crafts of the younger races, and among the better
armed, and this combination has proved again to be extremely
effective during the Drakh War, compensating with a large
gain the relatively low speed and lack of maneuverability of our units.
Against the Drakhs we had a loss rate of 1 to 1.8 in our favor during
the Earth battle of 2266
an 1 to 4.2 in the "Sudden
Nemesis" battles of 2270.
NOTE |
The interceptor technology, as remarked, is extremely
effective against bolt weapons: the mainstay of the Thirdspace
Aliens weapon systems is an antimatter bolter of inusitate
power (see Thirdspace
Warship technical essay), but even this weapon can be
intercepted; the interaction between the antimatter bolt and
the interceptor plasma bolt is extremely effective, and ensure
the dissipation of the incoming bolt.
The acknowledgment of this fact was at the origin of the
strategical sacrifice of the Earth Alliance, that allowed access
to the interceptor technology to the members of the ISA, namely
the Narns, the Centauri and the Minbari. Both the Centauri and
the Narns integrated some parts of the technology in their weapon
systems, the Minbari were yet developing their own proprietary
technology, and, BTW, refused to allow to the EA the access to
some heavily needed Minbari/Vorlon technologies like Vorlon Bio
Armor, Vorlon Shield, and neutron beam weapons. This is a
behavior that can be explained, but must be remarked that the
Thirdspace Aliens are a clear and present danger, that a war
against them will be won or lost by all the members of the ISA
united, and the price of a defeat will not be an unfavorable
peace treaty with heavy conditions, but the total extinction of
our peoples.
Maybe that the concept of racial extinction could seem something
abstract to the Minbari, but the Human race have been on the
verge of the extinction two times in less than thirty years, and
this is a legacy that leaves an definitive brand in the memory of
a people.