Planetary Shields

[Kamen Rider Blade]

When you enter a country, you have to get your Passport stamped and be checked on why you're there by the passport agent of that country.

The UFP could have a similar deal.

Every time you hop planets, you gotta show ID or the ID card equivalent of a Passport Log.

They scan you for viruses, biological stuff that you might bring over, contraband, etc.

Then once you're all cleared, they let you in through the gate.

Oh, and if somebody tries to attack your planet, it's usually pretty quick to close all gates and activate Defense Sats.,

And if you have Many Layers of Shields, you can trap enemies into certain altitudes and they could be caught in between a rock and many hard places if they trigger something later on while making their way to the surface.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Do you have to show ID and be scanned for viruses when you travel from California to New Mexico?

If a criminal from Texas drives to New Mexico and attacks a bank there, is the TX-NM border closed?

Is there a big beautiful wall between New York and New Jersey to control people going in and out?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Do you have to show ID and be scanned for viruses when you travel from California to New Mexico?

If a criminal from Texas drives to New Mexico and attacks a bank there, is the TX-NM border closed?

Is there a big beautiful wall between New York and New Jersey to control people going in and out?

But there are Border check posts between California and Nevada and sometimes they do request to inspect your vehicle.

If you're a foreigner, they will ask for ID.

If you're a criminal and the police know where you're going. If you plan on crossing the border, they can close it down.

I'm sure some people in NY / NJ want a wall in between them =D.

 

[Paul Weaver]

But there are Border check posts between California and Nevada and sometimes they do request to inspect your vehicle.

I've only driven over states in the east, but I've never seen any borders. How does such searched work with the 4th amendment?

Sounds crazy that there's actually a border check post, we have nothing like that between Wales and England, or between Belgium and Netherlands (the latter being actual different countries)

 

[Ronald Held]

Difference from being checked at the spaceport of entry versus not letting you land on a planet wiThout checks.

 

[Tarek71]

There's something of this nature in the Battletech universe, although it's a rare and complex system. The original Star League had developed the Reagan Space Defense System, which was intended to support the Star League Defense Force (regular military) and allow a small human crew to protect an entire system. The SDS mainly consisted of a number of bases, warships, and similar components which were controlled by a sophisticated AI with a knowledge bank of SLDF tactics. Without the need for a human crew, the drone units could react much faster and carry more weapons, with the Caspar drones becoming infamously nasty during the Amaris Civil War. They were basically modified destroyer hulls that retained mobility, but whose weaponry improved to be closer to that of a battlecruiser. They could perform maneuvers that would be impossible with a living crew, and the AI wasn't afraid to use suicide attacks against SLDF if it were necessary. The knowledge bank meant it could predict and adapt to many SLDF capabilities.

Planetary shields don't exist in the BT universe, but the SDS did include some special planet-based weapon systems to support the space based components, like the Rattler. For scale, the mech standing next to the Rattler is an 80-ton Awesome assault unit. The original system was taken over by Stefan Amaris when he seized Terra, and was employed against the SLDF that it had been meant to fight alongside. The SLDF eventually developed some jamming systems that helped them finally win, but the war was brutal and Amaris succeeded in effectively collapsing the League. Many SLDF crews gave their lives fighting to take down SDS enemies.

The Clans apparently possess a more limited form of the SDS technology to guard some key planets, although its features haven't been described as well. The Word of Blake also salvaged elements of the Reagan system when they captured Terra from ComStar in 3058, and would build newer advanced drones over the next decade that were used in the Jihad. This system lacked the full autonomy in the Reagan era drones, and relied on a few modified destroyers to serve as control ships, but otherwise retained many of the advantages.

Layered defense is the way to go. For the last line of point defense, rather than a shield, the use of sensor aimed wide beam weapons would seem like a more practical idea. Real world use of tight laser cutting beams have given the impression of laser and other beam weapons being exactly that: a narrow, focused beam. But wider beams have a better chance of scoring a hit.

If anything gets past the outer layers of swarm "boats", drones, fighters, stations and larger ships, a large number of wide beam lasers to hit the survivors would seem like a more doable solution.

Especially important with the advent of hyper-velocity missiles that give defense less time to intercept them.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I've only driven over states in the east, but I've never seen any borders. How does such searched work with the 4th amendment?

Sounds crazy that there's actually a border check post, we have nothing like that between Wales and England, or between Belgium and Netherlands (the latter being actual different countries)

Dunno, I've never refused a search because I wasn't carrying "Contra-band" or anything that they would care about.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Layered defense is the way to go. For the last line of point defense, rather than a shield, the use of sensor aimed wide beam weapons would seem like a more practical idea. Real world use of tight laser cutting beams have given the impression of laser and other beam weapons being exactly that: a narrow, focused beam. But wider beams have a better chance of scoring a hit.

If anything gets past the outer layers of swarm "boats", drones, fighters, stations and larger ships, a large number of wide beam lasers to hit the survivors would seem like a more doable solution.

Especially important with the advent of hyper-velocity missiles that give defense less time to intercept them.

In the show, they have shown both Phasers as a "Narrow Cutting Beam" and as a wide area spot when coming from orbit down to the surface. I guess it depends on the "Mode setting".

But if you increase the area up in the atmosphere, it's going to lower the intensity of the output as it spreads over a larger area.

 

[Tarek71]

Yes, with increasing distance you would have that loss. Surface mounted would also lose some effectiveness by the beam traveling through the atmosphere. Taking that all into account, the placement and power source of the lasers would be guided by their effective kill range. I think you could approx a shield with networked groups of lasers with overlapping wide angle beams.

 

[Phily B]

I always thought they did have them, it's just that sometimes with the amount of civilian traffic, transporting etc etc it may not be "on" all the time. I mean why would Earth have planetary defenses constantly activated? It's slap bang in the middle of the Federation and likely has a ton of civilian traffic. Also, if the attack on Earth by the Breen is anything to go by, they had significant orbital defenses as well as shielding, a fleet of that size on a suicide attack should have glassed cities and perhaps continents, but while the damage was devastating, it wasn't beyond repair.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I always thought they did have them, it's just that sometimes with the amount of civilian traffic, transporting etc etc it may not be "on" all the time. I mean why would Earth have planetary defenses constantly activated? It's slap bang in the middle of the Federation and likely has a ton of civilian traffic. Also, if the attack on Earth by the Breen is anything to go by, they had significant orbital defenses as well as shielding, a fleet of that size on a suicide attack should have glassed cities and perhaps continents, but while the damage was devastating, it wasn't beyond repair.

Every time in the TNG era, there has been ZERO mention of Orbital Defense and the only defense was "Mars Perimeter Defense" which was a few ships that got One-Shoted by the borg on the way to Earth.

The only time that I've seen significant defense was in ST:Picard or in other franchises like Star Wars / Macross.

 

[Timo]

Then again, "BoBW" involves epic battles at basically every planet of the Sol system by default: we just don't get to see them because the VFX would be too expensive.

Jupiter is said to fight. Saturn is shown as a location the Borg choose a visit. Mars is seen fighting. Earth probably fights, too, because the Cube has a big lead on our heroes yet Riker's ship catches up nevertheless while the Borg are already on orbit but haven't started assimilating yet.

This dovetails nicely to every instance (mainly in the movies) of the defenses being there but being magically negated by a superfoe. The Borg are a bit less of a superfoe than V'Ger or Whale Probe, and have less subtlety or desire for information warfare than Nero, so they get to blast stuff to bits off screen. So TNG need not be a hiccup on an otherwise steady path from the TOS movies to PIC.

What remains debatable is the extent of non-starship-based defenses before the TOS movies. We visited precious few Federation planets in TOS, and never learned whether, say, Ardana would have been shielded or not. DSC showed or described Klingon raids against point targets, with extremely low casualty figures; we got little idea of how a major planet would defend itself. ENT failed to show defenses around Earth when the Xindi came, save for some starships that, fittingly enough for the era, were slow to respond. It would seem prudent to think Earth wasn't well defended in the 2150s, but the progress from there to eventual PIC level shielding is so far up to us to define.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

It would seem prudent to think Earth wasn't well defended in the 2150s, but the progress from there to eventual PIC level shielding is so far up to us to define.

I concur, moving towards past the 24th century and into the future, I would want every UFP (Planetoid / Star) to have some measure of (Planetary Shielding / Orbital Defense platforms) with many layers based on importance and how many people live there with obviously the higher the population count, the more shielding.

We don't need another "Terrorist/Changeling trying to detonate the Star to create a Artificial Super Nova" attack to wipe out a system AGAIN.

The DS9 crew were very lucky that they stopped it before it happened.

But future Planetary Systems would have more security around their stars and around their Planetoids.

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This is the level of Orbital Defense Platform for any planet with populations with at least a million people on it.

The ODP should be able to hold off an entire fleet for a few weeks or longer while having Planetary Shields to protect the surface.

This would buy more than enough time to round up Allied fleets of your own to come in and take out the hostile alien trash.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, the problem being, if starships can take out starships, the attacker will simply send enough to win. It's for him to decide where to strike, after all, while the defender will have to guess. But if static defenses hold, there's time for that guessing.

But shields around planets probably aren't the right way to do this, because advanced cultures encountered by our heroes don't have those. Instead, they have assorted divine hands reaching out into space and squeezing (Vaal, Apollo, the Kalandans, the Tkon).

Of course, Kirk seldom fired anything at those planets initially, meaning the introductory handshake involved just the divine hand. But Kirk later did apply full phasers on the likes of Apollo or Vaal, and all they had were point defense shields, plus more futile grappling with that divine hand. So are advanced civilizations stupid and incapable of defending themselves against lesser intruders? Is this analogous to today's warriors not carrying big shields nor donning full body armor and therefore exposing themselves to the primitive weapons of Vikings or Legionaries or whatnot?

Or was all that simply due to the civiliations being has-beens, mere ruins of their former might?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

But shields around planets probably aren't the right way to do this, because advanced cultures encountered by our heroes don't have those. Instead, they have assorted divine hands reaching out into space and squeezing (Vaal, Apollo, the Kalandans, the Tkon).

Of course, Kirk seldom fired anything at those planets initially, meaning the introductory handshake involved just the divine hand. But Kirk later did apply full phasers on the likes of Apollo or Vaal, and all they had were point defense shields, plus more futile grappling with that divine hand. So are advanced civilizations stupid and incapable of defending themselves against lesser intruders? Is this analogous to today's warriors not carrying big shields nor donning full body armor and therefore exposing themselves to the primitive weapons of Vikings or Legionaries or whatnot?

Or was all that simply due to the civiliations being has-beens, mere ruins of their former might?

From what I can tell, there isn't any member in the UFP that can manufacture "Divine Hands" to protect planets. So we're limited to technology to accomplish the same thing. If you can figure out how to make literal "Gods" that protect planets and make them work consistently, please tell us the secret, because everytime Kirk encounters them, it's a special case and only a handful of planets that have "Divine Protection".

 

[Timo]

Basically, then, having shields around a planet could be similar to having a shield on your left arm while you swing a sword with your right - it's the calling card of a primitive savage. But we still have to figure out how advanced a primitive savage you need to be to invent and apply that shield, and when exactly it becomes dead weight and is dropped from your arsenal.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[matthunter]

Rods from god near light speed are in the terrajoules/gram range. 4e16 per kg.

That's in the megatons of TNT range. Per gram.

Good luck detecting them, let alone stopping them.

We don't know what an "isoton" is, but photon torpedoes put out about 200 of them. In other eps, 54 isotons was said to be enough to blow up a small planet, although that was a gravimetric charge not a photorp. Yet shields stop these routinely.

 

[Timo]

Also, kinetic energy probably doesn't work as a weapon in Trek at all. These guys have mastered the control of inertia, after all: if a rod-from-god approaches, somebody points a handheld device (similar to the one Wesley cobbled together in "Naked Now") at it and presses a button, and then waits for the rod to arrive; extends his hand; and grabs the rod, throwing it to a pile of said.

Ramming a starship with a starship works, for whatever reason. But a comet or an asteroid flung at a planet is trivially stopped - so trivially that when Janeway in "Rise" unexpectedly fails in the task, the heroes immediately learn that strange forces are afoot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paul Weaver]

54 isotons was said to be enough to blow up a small planet

That's a pretty impressive yied. Takes around 10^30J to blow up mercury. 1 isoton would be on the order of 10^28J then. Such a torpedo, assuming it doesn't mass in the million ton range, must take energy from subspace, or some magic subspace physics would cause more problems.

But a comet or an asteroid flung at a planet is trivially stopped

Q would simply change the gravitational constant of the universe, but it was far harder for Geordi to redirect a slow moving asteroid. They had to use subspace fields to drop the inertial mass to 2.5 million tons before they could move it 4km/s within the time available.

I was thinking more about detection though - would sensors be able to detect a ballbearing heading towards Earth at near light speed?

(There's a whole issue with Starship shields too - for some reason they seem to be unable dissipate atmospheric heat from normal orbital velocities, yet manage to not have a problem with antimatter)

 

[Go-Captain]

I imagine more advanced planetary shield systems don't need the randomized entry windows and manual permission of the space nun world. Automated systems are smart enough in Trek they should be able to log all traffic, know permitted ships on sight, and workout if a new ship is safe on its own. If not, it could bounce the permission to a flight controller to make the determination. A good enough shield could also open access as needed anywhere on its surface. It wouldn't even have to drop completely, it could become semi-permeable just for ships like shuttle bay shields.

I recall something about Memory Alpha in TOS being conspicuous specifically for its complete lack of shield or any other defense, because its intended to be open to the entire universe.

The Dominion take out StarFleet Command and the Golden Gate Bridge.

For that to have gone the way it does it is almost certain Earth had to have a shield up. Otherwise a single torpedo would have completely vaporized all of San Fran going by "Skin of Evil." Going by "The Die is Cast" indicates all of North American might be taken out in one hit. Shield bleed through is a thing, so the most likely event given high end values is the Breen weapons bled through Earth's shield and did the minor damage we see afterward.

Nero gets to Earth and tries to drill it to death.

It's also an alternate timeline which takes place even before TOS even starts. Also, shields barely seem to exist in that setting for all the good they do. I would be unsurprised if we never saw a shield effect anywhere in those movies. It's also explicit Nero's missiles ignore the Kelvin's shields, so it stands to reason the whole ship might be able to do that, if it's not just a matter of destructive energy.

The founders have the Obsidian Order & Tal Shiar "TRY" to kill them via Planetary Bombardment.

That planet was also supposed to be protected only be secrecy and was bate.