Section 2 Technology

2.3 Weaponary

2.3.1 Tactical

Federation ship's employ a navigational deflector to deflect incoming matter but where the angle of incidence of material is on a course where the deflector will be ineffective the ship employs a shield grid to protect the ship and crew. The deflector shields are arranged along the seeming etched grid of the hull. The shields are in operation during all flight configurations but can be brought up to increasing output during threat situations. The shield generators are fuelled by plasma energised from the matter/antimatter reactor system.

For warp flight the energy required for the main deflector for velocities below warp 8 only one generator is operational but for warp 9.2 and above all three generators are required. This means for warp 8, 6 * 128 MW generators are in use. For velocities below warp 8 the 768 MW power output can be reduced by 80% efficiency: 80% normal output = 614.4MW. For warp 9.2 and above the energy requirement is 2,304 MW for ship operations.

Running in conjunction with the navigational deflector are the deflector shields, which are an independent system. The main generators are described below and each has twelve 32 MW emitters for nominal system output peak for each generator is 473,000 MW for 170 milliseconds but normal output is 2688 MW.

5 field generators on deck 10 primary hull

3 additional generators on deck 31

2 additional emitters on each nacelle

For normal cruise functions one generator in each of the three major areas must be functioning, these include:

Primary Hull, Secondary Hull and one each for the nacelles. The normal cruise mode requires the combined generators to output 1152 MW. Federation shields work on a set frequency, if the frequency of the shield is known it becomes possible to breach them. (Star Trek Generations). The reason for this is the tremendous energy requirement to screen all frequencies and the need for windows at frequencies where sensors are required to operate. Voyager’s shields are susceptible to a weapon set at a frequency matched to the shield harmonic. Shielding can be remodulated to deflect the weaponry but if hostiles know the manner in which the shields are remodulated then the weaponry such as the disrupter, can be recalibrated in a consistent manner thereby penetrating the shielding continually. (Maneuvers: Voy). Some of the most recent shielding in Starfleet uses a multiadaptive shielding, this most probably uses a method of remodulation over a random frequency to prevent attacker penetration. Remodulating of shields can be used to throw off targeting scanners. Other ships are susceptible to penetration by frequency matching as demonstrated by Voyager's attack on the asteroid ship in late 2373 where shield modulation is known and phasers were used to penetrate them (Rise). If shields begin to fail and strength is reduced, it is possible to re-initialse them at full power by taking them off line and recharging the emitters. This procedure takes45 seconds on Nova class starships (Equinox Part 1)

Comparatively recently Starfleet has perfected a defensive subsystem that has been in development for several years. The new armour is referred to as ablative armour and is employed on many new ships including tactical vessels, such as the Defiant class ships and the deep space tactical ships such as the Prometheus class. The armour works in a two step procedure. In the event of a shield breach the incoming radiation or phaser energy impacts the hull and the armour's molecular matrix boils off at a controlled rate. The armour boils and creates a gas density that surrounds the armour and impedes continued beam fire. The armour seems to have been successful in the engagements with the protracted Dominion/Cardassian war.

The primary weapon employed by Federation ships during sub-light operation is the phaser (PHASed Energy Rectification). and was introduced circa 2267 to replace the pure electromagnetic laser and particle beam weapons. Phasers work by manipulation of nadions, short lived particles possessing properties including liberation and transfer of the strong nuclear force. There appears to be two types of modern (Type X) a larger and shorter form, the larger being obvious around the saucer of the ship's such as the Enterprise D, and the smaller being found lining the underside of the nacelles. A typical large phaser array on the USS Enterprise upper dorsal consists of two hundred emitter segments in a dense linear line. This line of phaser arrays forms a shallowly raised curve, but the raised region is just a part of a much larger complex system of components submerged in the space frame.

The USS Enterprise D is equipped with a type 10 emitter, with each segment able to direct 5.1 Mega Watt emitters. The emitter is constructed by a series trifacted crystals that discharges the beam. Each emitter has dimensions of 3.25 metres * 2.45 metres * 1.25 metres per segment and a chemical composition of: Li ><Cu >>:Si::Fe>:>O (Sternbach and Okuda 1991)Given that in the long arrays there are two hundred emitters it seems that at maximum output the phasers can output is around (5.1 * 200 =1020). This means a maximum output into the gigawatt range. As a tactical system phasers are limited in range to approximately 300,000 kilometre range but their real weakness in tactical value is that their effectiveness approaches negligible as impulse speeds increase and are next to useless at warp. Though there is work on improving effectiveness at warp in most cases photon torpedoes are preferred. There are examples where phasers are effective, including, in recent times, the destruction of a Nebula Class starship by the commandeered USS Prometheus in 2374. Most Federation ships employ a beam phaser from the arrays, as was used by Prometheus, but most ships can vary between beam and pulse. The pulse phaser has been upgraded recently and implemented in the Defiant class ships. Pulse fire from the Defiant has capability to store charge for 2.3 nanoseconds and release it as a layered pulse. This method of pulse fire has been found to be far harder for shields to disperse. Modifications and innovations continue in the design of phaser technology and recent Starfleet R&D in Tokyo have grown large nearly flawless crystals in ground based microgravity conditions and Recent emitters have increased the nadion production by 8.35%. The upgraded defence systems on Deep Space Nine uses Type 10 arrays (each with 4.8 MW crystals) and newer version of the Type 11 planetary defence emitter. Including three new Type 11 arrays with 16 emitters. (Sternbach and Okuda 1991)

The main threat weapon in use in the Alpha Quadrant was typically the disruptor and has been seen installed on Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian ships among others (Gorn etc.). At some stage the Breen have used this form of technology but sometime prior to 2375 began using a form of energy dampner on their ships, given the small amount of information available on this species it is unclear if this technology has always been in place or if this was a new innovation. The Dominion fleets use phased polaron weaponry as well as disruptors and Cardassian ships are most recently employing Spiral Wave disruptors (Zimmerman et al. 1998)

From information gathered by Federation spy nets it seems that the rating for enemy weapons is of a similar order to Federation ships. Information from Sternbach and Okuda 1991, describes attacks from Ferengi and Romulan ships rating the weapons fire as:

Ferengi Marauder 500MW electroplasma wave

Romulan Warbird 20GW phaser pulse

The use of phasers aboard the Romulan ship contradicts typical ordnance which is most typically disruptor based. The 20 gigawatt range is above that used by Federation ships being some 19.6 times the maximum discharge of a Galaxy class starship's phasers and 17.36 times above normal deflector shield output. The Galaxy class ship can increase individual generators to 473,000 many times above the threat weapon discharge and given the vessels ability to use multiple generators in conjunction and the standard alert status is to have 7 generators keeping a nominal output of 2,688 MW the Galaxy Class could increase shielding sufficiently to counter the threat weapon. DS9 has three large, vertical, shield generators mounted at the end of booms situated below ops. these are backed up by supplementary short range secondary shield emitters which are located around the docking ring. The shield emitters on DS9 450.5 megawatts with nine phased locked capacitance banks that can be used to amplify the shield output power to 2,5779.3 megawatts. (Zimmerman et al. 1998)

Given that a standard one megatonne explosion contains approximately 2,977,789,639,020,840 joules of energy. The Romulan gigawatt discharge outputs 20,000,000,000 joules per second. This means that a 1 megatonne explosion is contains as much energy as a Romulan phaser blast sustained for 148,889.482 seconds. This is 41 hours 21 minutes and 29 seconds. Given that a typical photon torpedo as employed by the Enterprise D is some 90.55 megatonnes it becomes clear that they are by far the more powerful attack form. A new style quantum torpedo detonation has a near instantaneous release of 112.03 megatonnes or 333,601,773,259,504,705.2 joules. (333.6 Peta joules). The peak momentary load of any single shield generator is 473 Gigawatts, with all 7 generators working that gives 3311 Gigawatts or 3 terrawatts which is orders of magnitude below the explosive yield of the quantum torpedo. The question becomes as to what level of energy from the photon detonation hits the shields over what level of time. If the energy arrives over a longer length of time the shields are more easily able to compensate for the explosion and there is almost certainly a significant portion of energy that is wasted in the vacuum.

Table to Show Comparative Alien Starship Weapons

Table compiled from Zimmerman et al. 1998 and Sternbach and Okuda 1991

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