Re: General EMP Thoughts

On Wed, 14 February 2001, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:

> Shipboard systems with respect to EMP weapons fall into three
categories:
>     1) Systems that are trivially easy to shield in a conductively
hulled ship

If I remember my physics classes, it's pretty easy to protect against
EMP. You run a charge through the hull of the ship and it should protect
the inside from EMP. 

Of course, what happens when you lose hull integrity due to holes? An
external EMP should probably be more effective as a ship takes more
damage. 
 
> The only plausible PSB for an EMP missile is that it generates a very
large EMP
> event VERY close to the hull (probably within the hull via cascade
ionizing
> radiation). 

Why not just have the thing puncture the hull and send in a blast of EMP
from the inside? Granted you should be able to protect internally, as
well, to a certain degree.

As for the systems that can be affected, you could argue "every system",
but I like the idea of a weapon targeting non-weapon systems only.
Firecons, sensors, drives... that sort of thing. Of course, the worth of
such a weapon goes up once sensor rules are created for the FB rules. 

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
__________________________________________________________