Hypothetical scifi weapon

[OmegaGuy]

Instead of the usual idea of simply overwhelming the opponent with more and more firepower, how about a way of getting more bang for your buck, by doing something like this:

A beam which is equivalent to, say, a 200 megaton explosion, having a diameter of only 0.1 microns, and releasing all of its energy in half a picosecond.

Theoretically this would be able to overwhelm and penetrate shielding or armor which is designed to take gigaton or teraton - level attacks, because it wouldn't be designed to deflect so much energy concentrated into such a small space over such a small time. And the attacker would have had to expend much less energy than he would need conventionally.

Assuming something like this could be built, would it be effective in the SW/ST/40K/B5/Misc. scifi-verses?

Or is this a really stupid idea and I'm missing something obvious?

[Darth Wong]

A beam which is equivalent to, say, a 200 megaton explosion, having a diameter of only 0.1 microns, and releasing all of its energy in half a picosecond.

So a super high-powered, highly focused energy beam. Ooooh, that's original.

[General Zod]

Instead of the usual idea of simply overwhelming the opponent with more and more firepower, how about a way of getting more bang for your buck, by doing something like this:

A beam which is equivalent to, say, a 200 megaton explosion, having a diameter of only 0.1 microns, and releasing all of its energy in half a picosecond.

Theoretically this would be able to overwhelm and penetrate shielding or armor which is designed to take gigaton or teraton - level attacks, because it wouldn't be designed to deflect so much energy concentrated into such a small space over such a small time. And the attacker would have had to expend much less energy than he would need conventionally.

Assuming something like this could be built, would it be effective in the SW/ST/40K/B5/Misc. scifi-verses?

Or is this a really stupid idea and I'm missing something obvious?

So, like a turbolaser but smaller?

[OmegaGuy]

Well the idea was to defeat strong defenses using less energy than would normally be necessary.

[Patrick Degan]

Well the idea was to defeat strong defenses using less energy than would normally be necessary.

Your logic is fundamentally flawed. How would any defence which can withstand a 2TT assault possibly be overwhelmed by a beam delivering an energy charge several orders of magnitude weaker?

[Connor MacLeod]

As far as I can read it he's not looking at the dfense in terms of pure energy, he's looking at it:

a.) high power - basically I imagine he is trying to suggest that the energy is delivered far faster than the defense could handle it (kinda like how the dissipation rate in SW is handled independent of the heat sink.)

b.) high intensity - the idea is to overwhelm the defense "locally" (IE defeating armour.)

I suppose it COULD work, but it makes alot of assumptions about the defensive systems that may or may not be accurate.

For example: when the Ep2 ICS came out there wer a bunch of guys who thought that you could defeat SW shields simply by high wattage (IE if you delivered X joules in Y fractions of a second, the shields will be defeated.) You saw alot of people claiming nukes would overwhelm shields.

The problem, of course, is SW shields aren't just about the "wattage" figures, the dissipation rates. There's also the heat sinks (the absorption capacity.) You can dump the energy into the shields at a rate far faster than the shields can dissipate, but then it simply gets absorbed into the heat sinks - you still have to overwehelm the heat sinks before the shields fail.

In that case, the aforementioned "hypothetical weapon" won't do much against SW shields, because 200 MT of energy isn't enough to overwhelm the heat sinks on a capital ship, even if it could (in theory) overwhelm the dissipation rate.

Edit: on further reflection I'm guessing the "gigaton and teraton" weapons are probably not nearly as "high powered" or "high intensity" - something with a larger surface area of effect like a nuke or something.

[OmegaGuy]

Yes, I was talking about large bombs compared to this focused weapon

[Connor MacLeod]

Yes, I was talking about large bombs compared to this focused weapon

well then its basically how Mike said it. That's basically a laser or particle beam as is (or a bullet vs conventional explosive, ,really.)

And it's still going to depend entirely on the defense system(s) in question and how it/they work.

And technically speaking, yes, it will ALLOW you to penetrate the armor (as in pierce it) but that doesn't neccesarily guarantee effective damage. you could just as well drill a very narrow hole very quickly in the armor and end up doing damage.

[Darth Wong]

Yes, I was talking about large bombs compared to this focused weapon

Any technology capable of making this ultra-focused pulse weapon could probably make a bomb with far larger yield than the weapon. Are you assuming that this super-focus comes at zero engineering trade-off cost? What a convenient assumption that must be.

[Ariphaos]

Yes, I was talking about large bombs compared to this focused weapon

Here's the problem. Let's say we have a magic gun that does exactly as you said, and you fire it at me. IE ignoring Wong's point entirely here.

Me. Not with any shields, armor, or any gimmicks. Just me in my room here.

It would tear through me, my bones, etc, and out the other side, causing next to no appreciable damage, even if you hit a vital organ - the hole you are putting in me is 1% the width of my cells. The same is true of a jet, aircraft carrier, space shuttle... though causing defects in the windows might need attention.

Congratulations, you just expended 200 megatons worth of energy to punch an invisible hole in me, which I probably will not notice at all.

Afterwards, I grab it and start beating you with it. Far more effective.

[OmegaGuy]

Well I was thinking about combining it with some kind of precision targeting to disable vital components or set off a chain reaction on the enemy ship.

But you're right, it does seem to be a bit too complicated and require unnecessary handwavium.

Oh well, it was just an idea.

[Ariphaos]

...and you'd target them at the .1 um level at any appreciable distance how, exactly? I consider 'close' range for realistic vessels to be under about a light-minute, where it quickly becomes impossible to properly dodge. A ship with a 2 meter face making random accelerations at .0003 m/s^2 can't be guaranteed a hit at the range of a light-minute without FTL sensors or weaponry.

Armor-piercing and shield-flooding weapons have a place, of course (eventually you will hit the shields harder than they can dissipate energy or even transfer it to whatever heat sink they use), but this is silly.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Instead of the usual idea of simply overwhelming the opponent with more and more firepower, how about a way of getting more bang for your buck, by doing something like this:

A beam which is equivalent to, say, a 200 megaton explosion, having a diameter of only 0.1 microns, and releasing all of its energy in half a picosecond.

Theoretically this would be able to overwhelm and penetrate shielding or armor which is designed to take gigaton or teraton - level attacks, because it wouldn't be designed to deflect so much energy concentrated into such a small space over such a small time. And the attacker would have had to expend much less energy than he would need conventionally.

Assuming something like this could be built, would it be effective in the SW/ST/40K/B5/Misc. scifi-verses?

Or is this a really stupid idea and I'm missing something obvious?

For all the reasons already stated, it's a dumb idea. Sure, if you assume a shield system that needs to cycle on and off at a rate slower than 2 THz, then you'd have a weapon that penetrates shields, and then proceedes to poke a hole roughly 100 nm in diameter in the target (roughly the same size as features found on top-end consumer microprocessors of several years ago.) Given the scale and energy involved, your hypothetical weapon would likely penetrate clean through the enemy spaceship, through the shields on the other side, and go screaming off into the sunset without causing any meaningful damage whatsoever.

[fusion]

Yes, I was talking about large bombs compared to this focused weapon

Here's the problem. Let's say we have a magic gun that does exactly as you said, and you fire it at me. IE ignoring Wong's point entirely here.

Me. Not with any shields, armor, or any gimmicks. Just me in my room here.

It would tear through me, my bones, etc, and out the other side, causing next to no appreciable damage, even if you hit a vital organ - the hole you are putting in me is 1% the width of my cells. The same is true of a jet, aircraft carrier, space shuttle... though causing defects in the windows might need attention.

Congratulations, you just expended 200 megatons worth of energy to punch an invisible hole in me, which I probably will not notice at all.

Afterwards, I grab it and start beating you with it. Far more effective.

Probably a good use for this weapon would be much weaker say about a kiloton in non-shielded universe where this weapon is a continuous beam that lasts for a few seconds and is used to cut ships in half.

[SirNitram]

So... It's a laser hooked up to some obscenely good capacitors? That's it?

[SylasGaunt]

It's not so much a problem with the power of the weapon or the general idea (greater intensity = better penetration), it's that you've got it too focused. This thing'll probably just overpenetrate and while it may hole vital systems, unles they have truly enormous requirements of perfection to work it's just going to go unnoticed.

The Starfire books had a similar weapon called a primary that worked on the same idea, though the hole it poked in the enemy ship was 5 cm across and went through pretty much everything in its way.. and there were usually a number of primaries firing at once.

[Connor MacLeod]

To be honest I can't really see much point why you add the numbers, period. Is it going to add that much to the story? And it simply complicates the writing process I'd think (Having to do all shte research and analyiss to remain consistent.)

the whole "focused beam vs bomb blast" idea works withoug getting to ludicrously tiny intensities (or even durations.) All you'd really need to be aware of are the relative intensities (square meter and square cm probably suffice.)

Although now that I think about it, isnt a beam weapon MORE likely to have a longer duration of effect than a bomb? (Nukes and shit release their energy in microseconds to milliseconds. Most RL beam weapons, especially lasers, typicalyl have longer durations, though those durations can be made up of lots of individual pulses.)

[Winston Blake]

A beam which is equivalent to, say, a 200 megaton explosion, having a diameter of only 0.1 microns, and releasing all of its energy in half a picosecond.

And? I was expecting a description of a weapon - this is a list of assumptions, and a vague one at that. Is there some underlying scenario you had in mind, maybe a setting you're working on?

For those suggesting that such a beam would punch a tiny hole through an object 'in one side and out the other', think about how wank this idea is. One picosecond. One. Light itself can only travel 0.3mm in that time. Evacuating a meters-long channel of material is utterly impossible.

This 'weapon' could be easily defeated by throwing a sheet of half-millimeter thick plastic in its way, far enough away that your armour can take the 200 megaton explosion.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

As Our Sith Lord and Master points out- basically, shorn of the numbers, this isn't original.

E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series depicted ships fighting with continuous beam weapons of transluminal energy, hyperdrive missiles, and 'needle beams'- short duration, extreme intensity variations on the standard macro-beam.

They functioned in exactly that way; the shield technology was an energy absorber and radiator, generally more powerful than the ship's weapons- needing two on one odds or better to get quick results, or relying on hours of sustained fire otherwise.

Standard procedure for boarding action was to burn away with the macro-beams until the shield, almost always multilayered, was very near collapse, and then punch through it with needle beams, achieving local overload and specific component damage. Usually the shield generator. After that, it's space axe time.

Wasn't it chemical engineering 'Doc' Smith's doctorate was in? Anyway, he was scientifically competent, and once he made the decision to throw the book away, he could judge precisely how far.
I know the idea's turned up in several games- like Starfire, which was a direct take off (legit, though, licensed or common usage), although of a later development which was basically a horrendously overloaded main macro-beam. I can't think of specific examples but I'm sure there are some in book and anime.

One thing; wouldn't this need to be judged extremely carefully? 200MT equivalent power- the secondary damage, from whatever you hit vapourising and expanding like, well, a cloud of extremely hot vapour, would be significant, wouldn't it? depending on what sort of structure gets hit, you might get much more, or less, than you want.

The ideal power setting for a needle beam is, only barely enough to get the job done. Overspecifying is bad- and yes, I know that I'm stating the extremely bleedin' obvious, or at least nothing that isn't common currency around here.
The other thing about the Lensman series is that the characters sound like they know what they're talking about, even when the subject matter is complete nonsense. Let the characters fake sincerity for you, that helps suspension of disbelief (mine, anyway) no end.

[XaLEv]

This 'weapon' could be easily defeated by throwing a sheet of half-millimeter thick plastic in its way, far enough away that your armour can take the 200 megaton explosion.

Don't forget momentum. If this thing is a laser, the pressure on the little speck of that sheet of plastic it hits will be around 2e44 pascals. All it will accomplish is to add a bit of vapor to the beam.

[OmegaGuy]

Well I asked this because I'm working on a story in a space setting where defensive technology greatly outstrips offensive technology. You can mount shields that dissipate hundreds of teratons per second on a 50 - meter - long craft, but their strongest conventional weapons are 100 - teraton antimatter bombs, which are slow and unwieldy and easy to shoot down, and are usually only successful when mounted and fired in massive swarms from huge multi - kilometer length battleships.

This leads to neverending wars that are seemingly impossible to resolve, so the story has to do with one faction trying to develop a new weapon to ensure a decisive victory.

[Patrick Degan]

The logical end to this scenario is that the economies of both space powers collapse under the weight of the military budgets, leading to at least one revolution breaking out somewhere.

[Lord Relvenous]

Probably a good use for this weapon would be much weaker say about a kiloton in non-shielded universe where this weapon is a continuous beam that lasts for a few seconds and is used to cut ships in half.

Your scenario reminds of the halo books when Cortana uses Covenant plasma weapons. Instead of launching ponderous plasma projectiles, she expends all the plasma in short time periods in concentrated beams and cuts ships in two. That seems to be the most effiecent use of this guys suggested technology.

[OmegaGuy]

The logical end to this scenario is that the economies of both space powers collapse under the weight of the military budgets, leading to at least one revolution breaking out somewhere.

The wars are fueled by long - standing racial/religious hatred that makes all of the factions bloodthirsty fanatics.

[Lord Relvenous]

The logical end to this scenario is that the economies of both space powers collapse under the weight of the military budgets, leading to at least one revolution breaking out somewhere.

The wars are fueled by long - standing racial/religious hatred that makes all of the factions bloodthirsty fanatics.

Using that reasoning to discredit civil unrest when the economy is gone seems a little too convenient. Even the craziest factions will have dissenters that can be a nuisance, or a threat.