Shipboard Radar/Microwave systems as weapons in MGT

Travellingdave

Banded Mongoose
Current research indicates that AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar and High Powered Microwave systems can make effective weapons to scramble electronics and/or fry people.

My players wanted to use their scout ship's radar to mess with some TL6 electronics (and people). It seemed possible based on what little I've been able to find, but I'd be interested in your views of any specific effects that are likely. Perhaps this is covered in High Guard, but has anyone considered what a starship's fusion-powered sensor suite (particularly any radar or microwave com systems) might be capable of in this regard?
 
I would let them go for it. Probably short ranged, say CLOSE in space combat terms which means that on a planetary scale, it would be line-of-site.

Treat it like an EMP, but it creates white noise.
 
David Fulgham of Aviation Week has probably published the most in the open source world on this application of AESA technology so I'd check out some of his articles, if you have not already.

In TNE FF&S it stated on page 53 that "space based area jammers" have a typical radius of effect of 45,000kms.
 
Tom Clancy describes the probable effects of an Aegis-class cruiser's radar turned up to 11 and used as an "EMP". He's generally pretty knowledgable about his naval tech, and it doesn't seem unreasonable. The thing can throw a 4MW beam of microwaves out of its SPY radar. And that's mid-TL7 tech driven by gas turbines.
 
TL6 is that not things like valves rather than more modern electronics? Are they not generally more resistant to damage from EMP than more modern electronics? I am going from very vague memories here so apologies if I am wrong.

For commercial ships you would expect their active sensors to be as safe as possible to prevent accidents and litigation ("Dear LSP I am writing to you on behalf of my client, the world of British West Hartlepool, which lost significant electronic assets due to the careless and improper use of a space search radar system on one of your products..."). Scout ships might be different, warships definitely would be. Safely would be more based on procedure. Of course anyone looking down a LADAR emitter is not going to have a good day.
 
klingsor said:
TL6 is that not things like valves rather than more modern electronics? Are they not generally more resistant to damage from EMP than more modern electronics? I am going from very vague memories here so apologies if I am wrong.

They are to the general induced-current burnout from a nuke-style EMP which relies on the individual elements of the electronics acting as their own aerials in the wash of broad-frequency RF produced by the staging down of the original Gamma and X-rays to induce sufficient current to cause overload. But if they're connected to an aerial that's suddenly picking up far more incoming RF than it's rated for, the detector is likely to fail. Even as a directed weapon, the SPY is only going to be able to disable RF sensors pointed vaguely in its direction.

For commercial ships you would expect their active sensors to be as safe as possible to prevent accidents and litigation...

Fair point that. Some Engineering (Sensors) rolls would probably be necessary to override the safeguards built in, but to be of use as an active search sensor in space, you're going to have to be able to chuck a decent number of watts out if you want a detectable return.
 
klingsor said:
For commercial ships you would expect their active sensors to be as safe as possible to prevent accidents and litigation <snip>

Excellent point. I did allow my players to use their radar to induce some EMP-style effects (stopped a boat and truck motor, blew the electronics on some low-tech rifles, and even gave a few burns). I agree though that this would only be practical with Scout or military ships and that commercial ships would have strict limiters (that could probably be circumvented).

The cool thing about it is that it gave them a non-lethal alternative to using the ship's weapons. It almost made sense that the Scouts would have over-powered sensor systems that could be used for just this kind of thing. It allowed them to keep the peace without having to blow things (and people) up. That seemed much more in the Scout's style .... as compared to the Navy to whom blowing stuff up is just fine.

Now I'm looking at mounting a Microwave Active Denial System on their ship ....
 
The GMs job is to say no to the players. The players job is to make him say "all right, yes".

I think you have it right thought. You can make civil active EMS sensors do nasty things if you know what you are doing and don't mind answering some pointed questions if anyone finds out.

Thank goodness my players are not from science backgrounds.
 
Travellingdave said:
Current research indicates that AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar and High Powered Microwave systems can make effective weapons to scramble electronics and/or fry people.

My players wanted to use their scout ship's radar to mess with some TL6 electronics (and people). It seemed possible based on what little I've been able to find, but I'd be interested in your views of any specific effects that are likely. Perhaps this is covered in High Guard, but has anyone considered what a starship's fusion-powered sensor suite (particularly any radar or microwave com systems) might be capable of in this regard?

In a word yes. For relatively close ranges under say 100 meters or so you will get damage to personnel. the closer they are will increase the damage. Generally this will be in the form of burns internal and external, but depending on the wavelength you might get some induced radiation damage as well. Since we don't have specifics of any instrument the answer is going to remain kinda general.

As for frying lower tech sensors/electrics, yes you can induce catastrophic changes in the target systems, amp returns etc.... All gets back to what systems you have.
 
klingsor said:
The GMs job is to say no to the players. The players job is to make him say "all right, yes".

I disagree. For my money, the GM's job is to say "Yes, but..." to the players, and it's the players' jobs to overcome the obstacles implicit in the "but". Put the way you said it, it sounds like the players have to argue with the GM for/over everything.
 
According to Fire, Fusion and Steel, a TL 15 active EMS sensor system with 300,000 km range has a power input of 15 MW.
A barbette-mounted laser cannon (as found on a Gazelle-class starship) has a power input of 8.3 MW.

Compare and contrast. :)
 
What's the range on the laser, and you have to take into account the laser is a focused beam whereas the scanner will have the energy dissapated about a cone or sphere, depending on the sensor arc.

LBH
 
The sensor is in a circular/spherical arc and running continuously. The laser fires (at standard ROF) once every three minutes and is a focused beam. For FF&S the laser range will be more a factor of the focal array and use of 'gravitic focusing.' IIRC, the weapon specified has the same 300,000 km short range and uses grav focusing. It delivers 20% of input energy so ~300 MJ of output energy.
 
Deniable said:
The sensor is in a circular/spherical arc and running continuously. The laser fires (at standard ROF) once every three minutes and is a focused beam. For FF&S the laser range will be more a factor of the focal array and use of 'gravitic focusing.' IIRC, the weapon specified has the same 300,000 km short range and uses grav focusing. It delivers 20% of input energy so ~300 MJ of output energy.

If the laser fires once every three minutes, and spends the full time soaking up that 8MW into capacitors, its pulse output is going to be about 100 times the continuous output of the sensor pack... I think that's going to have good effects on its damage potential; focusing the sensor's output on one immobile spot for 3 minutes would be very tricky.
 
Shiloh said:
Deniable said:
The sensor is in a circular/spherical arc and running continuously. The laser fires (at standard ROF) once every three minutes and is a focused beam. For FF&S the laser range will be more a factor of the focal array and use of 'gravitic focusing.' IIRC, the weapon specified has the same 300,000 km short range and uses grav focusing. It delivers 20% of input energy so ~300 MJ of output energy.

If the laser fires once every three minutes, and spends the full time soaking up that 8MW into capacitors, its pulse output is going to be about 100 times the continuous output of the sensor pack... I think that's going to have good effects on its damage potential; focusing the sensor's output on one immobile spot for 3 minutes would be very tricky.

Oddly enough, it will deliver 300 MJ. [0] The sensor uses 15 MJ per second and delivers less. It's also an area sensor and cannot be focused. A better fit would have been the pinpoint LADAR sensors or the pencil beam AEMS used by MFDs. The theoretical maximum output energy for 3 minutes from a TL15 300,000 km pencil sensor [1] is 270 MJ, [2] but this will be spread over a much larger area than a laser weapon.

Anything more and we'll be pulling out copies of BL and FF&S.

[0] 8.3 * 180 * 0.2 (Input power (MW) * time (s) * efficiency)
[1] 10% consumption of equal ranged AEMS array.
[2] 15 * 0.1 * 180
 
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