Minbari Incident of sector 88 -
"The Strelas'tha Incident" - Intelligence Report - May
24, 2263
Summary
At the end of the Year 2263 were reported by three civilian
freighters some seeings of a Minbari Warcruiser in sectors 87 and
88. The Minbari Governement denied knowledge of patrol activities
of his own war units in the area. ISA tasked an Anla'shok unit,
belonging to the Whitestar class, to investigate about the
reported seeings. The Whitestar was able to contact the
officially unidentified unit, and to assess the identity of the
ship, that resulted to be the "Strelas'tha" Sharlin
Warcruiser.
This identification was origin of some concerns in the ISA,
Minbari and Earth Alliance Governements: the Strelas'tha was one
of the three Minbari ships (Tragati, Strelas'tha and Vindira),
manned by the "Star Riders" Warrior Clan, that seceded
from the Minbari Military immediately after the
"Surrender" at the Battle of the Line. As known, the
Tragati crew tried to start a new Earth-MInbari conflict in 2259
(Tragati incident of
Babylon 5) with a well organized plot aimed to provocate an
armed reaction from the Babylon 5 military garrison and so to
generate a "casus belli". The reappearence of one of
the units of the "Rebel Fleet" in a period of politic
turbulence (in the wake of the Earth Civil War and Minbari
Revolution, les than two years after the bloody Shadow war and
just a few months after the ISA-Centauri war and the Centauri
secession from the ISA) had essentially a significance: troubles.
The Minbari Governement was well happy to transfer the management
of the situation to the ISA and to the Anla'Shok, because this
allowed to avoid an eventual fratricide encounter between a rebel
crew of an higly debated Warrior Clan, and a Warrior crew that
could find himself in a loyalty conflict.
In this situation, the Earth Alliance had his own problems: in
2262, a governement expedition in sector 88 made a lucky
discovery in the Delta Pavonis system, sector 88: diffused veins
of Quantium 40 in the asteroid belt of that star. The
exploitation of such resources went on well: the sector 88 is
still today an almost unexplored area at the border of the EA,
and the Delta Pavonis system, because of the lack of inhabitable
planets, was claimed by none of the known powers excpt the EA. In
the mid 2262, EA opened a jumpgate in the system, and a
consortium of civilian enterprises led by the Westinghouse Energy
Co. and by the Lockheed Ltd. placed a logistic facilty in the
orbit of Delta Pavonis III and two pilot minerary installations
in the local asteroid belt.
In accordance with a request of the Industrial consortium, that
in that period was concerned essentially by some piracy
activities in the sector 87, Earthforce organized a regular
patrol service in the system, with a task force of two Hyperion
cruisers and a squadron of Starfuries based on the logistic
orbital facility.
On April 20, 2263, a small accident happened: one of the two
Hyperions experimented repeated shutdowns of the main reactors:
Earthforce ordered the return of both the ships to the nearest
depot for maintenance (a ship with the reactors out of order must
never travel alone in the Hyperspace), and, in replacement of the
two units for the period of their absence, was sent in the system
the nearest available ship: the E.A.S. Sorceress, a brand new
Warlock destroyer. This unit was obviously an excellent deterrent
against the piracy, but was a bait for another ship: the
Strelas'tha, that, unseen, was hidden in the outer area of the
Beta Pavonis system.
The rebel Minbari Crew perceived this change as a clear and
opened challenge, and replied in a very direct manner.
On 21 April, the Hyperspace probes of the Sorceress detected a
large ship in the hyperspace, and the staff of the Destroyer
presumed to be in presence of a pirate unit. The crew was
alerted, and the ship, luckily, was in combat ready conditions
when a jump point opened, and instead of a pirate carrier, came
out a Sharlin Warcruiser.
The MInbari unit opened fire against the Sorceress with his main
weapon at close range (175 kilometers, raking through about 250
meters of the side armor and damaging the right missile rack: the
hit on the side of the Destroyer ablated the outer layer of
armor, but was unable to pierce the inner hull or to damage
internal systems. The Crew of the Earth Destroyer replied with a
salvo of the missiles in the left rack and a burst of the FWD
railguns: the electronic warfare systems and stealth device and
the defensive fire of the Minbari unit was able to deviate or to
intercept the incoming missiles, except one of them (Sandia
Shillelagh with 80 MT fusion warhead, that detonated at less than
2400 meters from the cruiser, and four attack vehicles of a Blue
Phoenix heavy missile, that detonated in close proximity of the
Sharlin: the Minbari Cruiser wasn't destroyed by the explosions,
but suffered some damage at the reactor/propulsion system, or,
more likely, an emergency shutdown in the main energy grid. The
few seconds of stop in the maneuvres of the Minbari unite were
decisive: they gave to the Sorceress time enough to close the
distance and place some shots of railgun in the rear fin of the
cruiser's gravimetric drive (About 90 kilometers of range),
slowing it down and reducing his maneuvability, and sufficient
time to charge the G.O.D.cannons.
The Sorceress ordered the Strelas'tha to surrender, but the
Minbari unit tried to aggressively maneuvre to face the incoming
Earthforce unit, that at this point (about 8500 meters of range)
fired a full power discharge of the G.O.D cannons against the
minbari unit, that was destroyed.
The whole engagement sequence has been recorded by the
destroyer's system and by a mining prospector robot probe of the
Westinghouse Co., the communications between the E.A.S. Sorceress
and the Strelas'tha have been monitored and recorded by the
Whitestar 165, and the complete documentation and registration
allowed to contain the political troubles generated by this
incident.
Photogram extracted from
a footage obtained by the long range
video-recorder of commercial probe Nr.2456.
Tactical report
1- This was the first time that an Earth Force warship survived
an one-to-one, open space engagement with a Minbari unit, and the
first time a single Earthforce warship won a direct open space
engagement against a Minbari unit.
2- The engagement was successful even if the Minbari unit had the
initiative advantage.
3- During the first phase of the engagement, the Sharlin fired a
full power discharge with his main Bow neutron cannon, but the
beam was unable to totally penetrate the armor of the Warlock:
- 3.a - the impact angle was about 30° from the perpendicular of
the plate
- 3.b - the outer ablative anti-neutron layer has been totally
destroyed
- 3.c - the intermediate special technology layer has been
partially penetrated
- 3.d - In case of perpendicular path of the beam, both the outer
and intermediate layer would have been ablated, but the inner
armor should have been able to resist the penetration.
- 3.e - the other two (2) direct hits of the Sharlin damaged
(perforation) the right missile rack and ablated an area of 3*74
meters of outer armor on the hull (no perforation).
4- The safety systems of the missile warheads worked very well:
there were not secondary explosions in the missile rack hit by
the Minbari fire
5- The Minbari ECM and stealth systems are still effective
against our long range sensors and fire control systems: the
acquisition and tracking systems of the missiles have been
strongly jammed, and the terminal endgame sequence of the
missiles has been made on telecommand guide through laser
data-link, on a line-of-sight direct attack path: this enbled an
effective anti missile fire by the Minbari unit, and a lack of
precision in the endgame sequence. Both the optical trackers and
the laser uplinks have been unharmed.
- 5.a - It is urgent the upgrade of the missile trackers at the
block IV-A standard (Multispectral optical wideband/laser
semiactive homing)
- 5.b - The proximity fuzes of the warheads have been decepted by
the Minbari EW systems. The radar proxy fuzes must be replaced by
Lidar proxy fuzes as secondary system, while the primary fuze
must be the impact delayed fuzes model M185 or similar.
6- The Minbari stealth systems are uneffective against the
hyperspace probes and the passive tachion scanner.
7- The Minbari stealth systems are only partially effective
against the XGL-1 LIDAR. an improved system is needed, but the
premises are good.
8- The Minbari stealth systems are uneffective against the A.M.S.
IRIG-6 Optical/Infra-red long range search and track system, that
was a decisive system in the engagemnt, providing affordable and
stable target tracking and positive lock-on, and allowing the
whole missile engagement and the other weapons fire control.
9- The high rate of fire, small calibre railguns (Super Rapido
127/748) have proven themselves effective in terms of piercing
power and terminal damage, and have shown excellent accuracy.
10-The Aegis Mk. V G.O.D. cannons have been used at short range,
so out of their optimal (long range) tactical environment:
neverthless, they have shown a deadly terminal effectiveness,
piercing from side to side the main hull of the Sharlin and
causing the Warcruiser to explode. The Warlock destroyer was able
to outmaneuvre and engage at short distance the enemy ship thanks
to the reduction in the maneuvre capability caused by the partial
demolition of the gravitic drive rear fin by the railgun
penetrators.
Conclusions
Overall, while still inferior to the Sharlin/Shargoti class
warcruisers in terms of sensors, mobility/maneuverability,
electronic warfare, and probably point defence/antifighter
systems, the Warlock class Heavy Destroyers are positively
superiors to the Minbari warcruiser in terms of armor, structural
sturdyness and damage tolerance, and have an edge in sheer
firepower.
The two classes of ships are actually roughly equivalent, except
for the superiority of the Minbari in the electronic warfare.
This engagement was won by the Earthforce Destroyer thanks
essentially to a correct tactical approach and to the firepower:
Improvements in the area of the sensors and in the missile
guidance and fuzing systems will eliminate or improve the most
relevant weak points of the Warlock class Destroyers.
The "Deep Eyes" **
Program of the EFNI is actually working in this direction.
Note**this
was one of the most demanding activities developed by the EFNI
Technical Division, and weighed heavily on the Service's budgets
from 2263 to 2265; the first outcomes were the systems operative
on the E.A.S. Styx: EGAD,
I.L.S.S. and I.O.W.T., that actually (2278) are standard
equipment of the first line Earthforce ships.
I want to express my most sincere thanks to Brandon
Bray, Who made the beautyful CGI picture of this
page, and kindly allowed me to use it on my site. A
Gallery of His CGI work can be find here, while his good
will and work maintains alive these two beautyful sites:
whose links are presents in the Main page of
this site too.
NOTE: The fanfiction of this page has been
written by me, so I'm the only responsible of the
containts (and mistakes). The containts are not
intendend as an offense to anybody.
