Starship Phasers

[Crazy Eddie]

To develop a starship mounted phaser that has a firing rate similar to a gatling gun to prevent starships being rammed, what developments in technology has to take place?

Theoretically, they already can. If phaser arrays work as described, every single emitter should be able to fire individually if you want them too; the Enterprise-D would be able to throw up a phaser barrage that would make a Zentraedi battleship look like a runabout.

I think the Defiant and the Klingon BoP have Firing rates similar to 20mm and 40mm AA guns seen in World War II.

As did the Enterprise' phaser banks in TWOK.

Of course, this brings up the question of exactly why you think a phaser weapon would be useful in preventing another ship from ramming you. A large spread of photon torpedoes would probably work even better for this.

 

[James Wright]

I was thinking of the Jem'Hadar attack ship that took out starship Odyssey, the Odyssey was firing phasers at the ship but the pulses had no effect. Wonder what would have been the result if the Odyssey had put rapid bursts of phaser fire on the target, sorta like a CIWS?

James

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I was thinking of the Jem'Hadar attack ship that took out starship Odyssey, the Odyssey was firing phasers at the ship but the pulses had no effect. Wonder what would have been the result if the Odyssey had put rapid bursts of phaser fire on the target, sorta like a CIWS?

James

Probably even less effect considering 1) the Phalanx CIWS (which I assume you're referring to) doesn't work particularly well and 2) unless you're using Defiant-style pulse phasers, it won't do any good against a Jem'hadar battlebug.

If you want that kind of close-in defense weapon, you're looking for a small turret-like weapon that fires photon torpedoes or some type of explosive weapon, something that could do serious damage to a small shielded space craft. More likely, something similar to the torpedo turrets on the Kelvin or (if you're thinking TNG era) something similar to the little rotary torpedo launchers installed in Deep Space 9's defense grid. In other words, the only way to stop a Jem'hadar battlebug on a collision course is to smack it with a wall of photon torpedoes to either change its course or blow it to smithereens. FYI, this is precisely why most navies have stopped using gun-based or at least gun-only CIWS weapons and now use missiles or missile/gun combinations.

A good possibility would be a combined phaser/micro torpedo array. If you look at the phaser arrays on DS9's weapons sail you find that one of the phaser emitters is actually a RING of emitters with a torpedo launcher in the middle of it all. If you then turn this ring into a double-layered strip (which the phaser arrays of Voyager and Enterprise-E already are) and add a series of micro torpedo launchers in the gap, you'd have a weapons array that could launch dozens of micro torpedoes in a massed salvo at any particular target. It would probably look a little like the E-D's antimatter spread, but with alot more punch.

 

[JNG]

^ Typically, I think a tractor beam might be most useful in preventing a smaller ship like that from pulling off such a maneuver, but the writers went out of their way to specify that the defenses of the Dominion ships kept a tractor beam lock from being achieved.

As for using pulsed fire from the regular phaser arrays, the TNG TM suggests this is possible but that achieving maximum beam dwell time is more often the most effective solution. It also suggests that phasers can fire for 45 minutes at a time or something, so with that on top of the vast numbers of emitter segments, I don't think there's any Gatling envy going on.

I don't think specific close-in weapons systems are likely to be a big deal for starships; microtorpedoes are really tiny and it's hard to imagine they are viable for ship to ship combat between full-scale starships, especially if they use chemical warheads and such as suggested in DS9 TM. Moreover, "dirty" weapons like torpedoes that appear to detonate omnidirectionally are too dangerous to use close in to the ship that launched them. If a ship's phasers detonated an incoming torpedo at close range, they'd still end up absorbing most of the energy from the torpedo's explosion; according to the whole "photon shock wave" thing or whatever that was when they fired the phasers to detonate the torpedo instead of just having it detonate normally, it might even be worse. I guess this explains why we don't see them doing this. Shooting down torpedoes at extreme long ranges may be viable, but the torpedoes do, after all, move very fast...even if VFX seems to enjoy giving us the slow-motion version for added drama

Suicide runs like that are extremely unusual and our heroes were shocked by the maneuver and how unnecessary it was, as we were to be. Aside from the expected tractor beam, I wouldn't be surprised that they didn't have a whole lot in the playbook about this, or at least lacked time to implement something else. Then again, many of the powers may use something akin to the Mars Defense Perimeter flying bombs setup to defend some locations, so it may be an issue.

It does at least seem clear that over the following few years, they found ways to at least partially deal with a lot of the Jem'Hadar tricks (e.g., the shooting/beaming right through Federation shields, the tractor-proof shield configuration...).

 

[James Wright]

What is the firing rate of the Klingon BoP and the Defiant?
What are the advantages of rapid pulse phaser and disruptor fire compared to phaser beams?
If you were designing a starship from the keel up, what phaser armamenr would you put on the ship?


James

 

[JNG]

The DS9 TM suggests that the advantages of the pulsed phasers had to do with the fact that the leading edge of the beam was typically the most effective at disrupting the enemy's shields. Since it claims the way shields typically work against beamed weapons is by splitting the incoming beam cross-section and redirecting as much as possible off into space, I guess I can see why that might be. So this book suggests that the Defiant pulse phasers stored the phaser energy in an improved emitter crystal for a longer time than is usual with other phaser designs, and then released it as a multilayered pulse with some kind of onion-like structure.

We can also imagine that firing multiple rapid pulses one after the other, each with different characteristics (frequency, etc.) might be very useful at overwhelming enemy defenses; in particular, this sounds like something closely related to the ship's originally intended anti-Borg role.

It looks like the disruptors on the Klingon BOP typically fire in pulses as well, but we have seen other Klingon weapons fire sustained disruptor beams. They are probably configurable to some extent, like their Federation phaser equivalents.

If I were designing a starship, I would have to know its intended purpose and something about the resources available before I would know if it had phasers on it at all, let alone what kind they would be.

 

[Tim Thomason]

There are no phasers in the 22nd century, so the "phase" weaponry shouldn't even factor into the discussion.

I'm of the kind that believe they didn't use phasers in "The Cage" (despite what's said in "What Are Little Girls Made Of"), and that the "laser" weapons were a bridge between the phase and the phaser. Phaser is just a word for nadion-particle emitter and previous weapons operated on a different, albeit similar principle.

I don't see a necessity to "advance" the power of hand phasers or phaser pistols. I believe the "type 2" phaser in 2265 should be the exact same (if in a different case) as a "type 2" phaser in 2379. Why would you need to increase a hand-to-hand weapon that can already vaporize opponents? Especially in such a non-warlike civilization?