For those that follow, there are a couple of articles in this weeks (May11/24) Aviation Week and Space Technology that are relevant to Traveller.
The first is a new IR sensor developed by the Swedish that allows an aircraft to isolate and detect IR signatures at long ranges, regardless of the radar cross section (i.e. stealth) of the aircraft. The article is titled 64,000 shades of grey.
The sensor utilizes a neural net application to help reduce false alarms. And a plus is that the system itself, because of it's neural net software, can learn on the fly of what is a valid target and what isn't. While the new sensor cannot provide range data, it can pass along its information to the onboard radar and cue it to probe exactly in the right spot. The Swedes say common IR spoofing techniques aren't useful against it (though that remains to be defeated by some clever guy/gal somewhere. It's always a cat and mouse game).
The second article has to do with Japan and their looking at essentially making small airliners (they are currently using their P-1 maritime surveillance aircraft as a base model) as mobile missile carriers. Essentially what they are looking at doing is putting a crapload of very long range AA missiles onto a aircraft to engage enemies far before they get in range of ground-based defenses. They expect to be overwhelmed in the air quanity-wise by the more numerous Chinese. The US had a similar aircraft idea in the 60's, the Douglas F6D. It was a 2-man convential wing aircraft that carried 6 missiles. Even though the program go cancelled the tech and it's mission (fleet defense) got integrated into the F-14 with the Phoenix missile system. There is talk of having the aircraft (called a missileer) either carry its own 360 degree radar system, or connect to an existing network of aircraft, ground and satellite systems to target it's missiles. For Traveller I suppose you could use small craft (such as the modular cutter) in the same manner. Make the module your firing system, and just drop and replace the entire module to re-arm. The rules don't cover something like that, but conceptually it could be shoe-horned in without breaking too many rules.
The first is a new IR sensor developed by the Swedish that allows an aircraft to isolate and detect IR signatures at long ranges, regardless of the radar cross section (i.e. stealth) of the aircraft. The article is titled 64,000 shades of grey.
The sensor utilizes a neural net application to help reduce false alarms. And a plus is that the system itself, because of it's neural net software, can learn on the fly of what is a valid target and what isn't. While the new sensor cannot provide range data, it can pass along its information to the onboard radar and cue it to probe exactly in the right spot. The Swedes say common IR spoofing techniques aren't useful against it (though that remains to be defeated by some clever guy/gal somewhere. It's always a cat and mouse game).The second article has to do with Japan and their looking at essentially making small airliners (they are currently using their P-1 maritime surveillance aircraft as a base model) as mobile missile carriers. Essentially what they are looking at doing is putting a crapload of very long range AA missiles onto a aircraft to engage enemies far before they get in range of ground-based defenses. They expect to be overwhelmed in the air quanity-wise by the more numerous Chinese. The US had a similar aircraft idea in the 60's, the Douglas F6D. It was a 2-man convential wing aircraft that carried 6 missiles. Even though the program go cancelled the tech and it's mission (fleet defense) got integrated into the F-14 with the Phoenix missile system. There is talk of having the aircraft (called a missileer) either carry its own 360 degree radar system, or connect to an existing network of aircraft, ground and satellite systems to target it's missiles. For Traveller I suppose you could use small craft (such as the modular cutter) in the same manner. Make the module your firing system, and just drop and replace the entire module to re-arm. The rules don't cover something like that, but conceptually it could be shoe-horned in without breaking too many rules.
