by David Weber
CORE ARMOR
When the core hull of a starship has at least one dedicated protective anti-beam or kinetic layer, it is said to have core armor. Core armor is a universal feature on anything larger than a battlecruiser but less common on smaller ships. The Star Knight’s core armor encloses all vital systems that can fit within its envelope, including the vast majority of crewed spaces, power rooms, control spaces, and virtually the entire life support complex. The composition is probably similar to the hammerhead armors. The core hull itself is of course difficult to see in most imagery so the thickness of its armor is uncertain, but it probably at least half a meter. Given the location of external fueling and venting ports, it is likely that the fusion reactors are surrounded by layers of compartmentalized hydrogen bunkerage for extra protection.
IMPELLER ROOM BELTS
While the hammerhead armor provides some protection to the impeller room from raking shots, broadside protection is also necessary. These belts are the second most common armor feature after hammerhead armor and are known galaxywide by designers and damage controlmen alike as “the fore and after belts.” They consist of thick armor just below the outer skin of the ship and extend aft/forward from the associated bow/stern hammerhead. The lack of any visible penetrations, airlocks, seams, or ports from the impeller rings forward and aft to a point about halfway along the taper of the hull probably gives a good indication of the length of these belts. There are no external seams which might give a rough estimate of the depth of the belts at these points, but they are probably thinner than the hammerhead armor given that they are protected by a sidewall and rad screens. A total depth of roughly three quarters of a meter is probably close. This belt is likely dense with absorption enhancers in the outer surfaces and possibly even face mirroring.
GENERAL ENGINEERING BELTS
Also known as “fusion belts” these are broad area armor over vital machinery in way of the fusion reactors. This armor is in the bow and stern tapers and provides protection for the fusion reactors and other nonpropulsion engineering auxiliaries such as heat exchangers, coolant transfer lines, damage control remotes, and secondary power systems. These belts are usually about the same diameter as the impeller belt. Figure 4 shows both how the belts sit some distance inside the outer hull envelope and how they are centered on two of the three fusion reactors. The space between the engineering belt and the hull leaves room for nonessential spaces such as the captain’s day cabin, whose windows are visible on the starboard side of the after hull taper in some file holos. The redundant third reactor and the placement of all reactors within the core armor probably mean that the engineering belts are thinner than the impeller belts to save mass.
GUNDECK BELTS
Frequently called simply “the gun belts,” these armor layers sit on the outer skin of the ship on the upper and lower curves of the hull and act to limit damage to the offensive and defensive armament, magazines, and sidewall generators. These belts would be rated successful if a hit by an opposing beam destroyed only the weapon directly behind the armor and not others. Extensive mount by mount compartmentalization is required behind the armor to ensure this. The gundeck belts are laid over the basic outer hull armor matrix and likely consist of additional high density boundary layer materials grown onto silicon carbide substrate. This additional material appears to thicken the belt by roughly ten centimeters.
Conclusion
This concludes our introduction to modern starship armor design. This area is still sadly misunderstood even among naval enthusiasts. It is hoped that this article provided the reader with insight into how combat starships are built so that their operations might be better understood. The available time and space meant that fundamental concepts such as compartmentalization, relativistic effects, lateral armored bulkhead placement, and control run protective features had to be omitted. The author intends to continue his research, exploring these subjects as well as finalizing armor and laser interaction codes of his own design. It is hoped that these codes, derived entirely from open source high energy density physics research, will appear in subsequent issues of this periodical and be useful tools to his fellows.
Notes
1A missile closing at high relative velocities (such as 30% light speed) crosses the ten or twenty kilometers between a target’s sidewalls in a fraction of a millisecond. The interposed sidewall blocked sensors, and, for the first time, the missile could not track the target. These factors conspired to make the timing of the nuclear detonation a matter of some delicacy for the early contact nukes.
2Indeed, some authors classify the narrow conical blast pattern from these weapons as a “sidewall penetrator” because it weakens the opposing sidewall and increases the effectiveness of the laser beams which follow. This is understandable, though still regrettable, butchery of language because the term “sidewall penetrator” is properly reserved for devices that use gravitic fields to flicker or open a hole in an opposing sidewall. Sadly, such usage is rather common in the literature.
3The reader is cautioned to always check sources carefully for actual wavelength figures. Just because a source says that a weapon emits in the gamma ray range does not mean that the beam necessarily will behave like a graser beam does.
4As already mentioned, bomb-pumped laser weapons are not particularly efficient to begin with, and beam generation tends to get less efficient as the photon wavelength gets shorter. This has historically made bomb-pumped gamma ray lasers completely impractical and physics appears intractable with our current understanding.
5The author is indebted to Dr. Luke Campbell for his patient and insightful explanation of this and other high energy beam phenomenon.
6This is a different effect than the so-called “high energy” cutting lasers familiar to many readers. Those longer wavelength devices lack the energy to fully and completely ionize their targets—producing only partially ionized plasma through heating effects. This plasma expands away from the surface of the target rapidly but keeps absorbing energy as it goes because the cloud of electrons continues to interact with the beam.
7While Mark-73 beams are generally similar to those produced by an anti-ship laser cannon, if much more powerful, the difference between these beams and a graser cannon’s deserve mention. Bomb-pumped lasers consist of X-ray photons that, as already mentioned, are nearly totally absorbed in the outer layers of whatever they hit. Gamma rays fired by shipboard graser weapons, on the other hand, are well known to pass in significant numbers clear through centimeters of even the densest materials. Grasers beams can thus deposit energy through an armor system that is not specifically designed to defeat them.
8Effective energy beam range depends very much on the ships engaged, their armaments, and their sidewalls but is typically anywhere from 100,000 to 800,000 km.
9This also serves to stop shorter wavelength weapons like grasers.
10The author is indebted to his longtime friend Dr. Nate Nuko at BuShips for sharing these lessons learned from his over-forty-year career in the employ of the Third Space Lord.
11The author here declines comment on what sort of fool would take a heavy cruiser into an engagement with a battlecruiser in the first place. This is why heavy cruisers are designed to be able to outrun battlec
Appendix: Armor Design Figures
Table of Contents
Ruthless
An Act of War
“Let’s Dance!”
An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design
Appendix: Armor Design Figures
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