Re: IF and needles? Re: Nathan's FB3 comments,

> Islamic Fed will use needles
> ***
>
> Just out of curiosity, where is this established? I always considered
this
> a 'high tech' weapon available only to the major powers, if at all.
>
> The_Beast

Given that they had to be improved from FT2 to FB1 and even so are
rarely
seen, I hadn't made that same assumption.  I've been assuming they're X
ray
lasers, and we're closer to that than we are to, say, grav drive.

(Oerjan, if you can conveniently sort by weapons--how many of those
1000+
ships in your database have needles?)

That's the "why"--the "where established" is "by me", simply because I
seem
to be the noisiest (only?) advocate of the IF and no one has argued with
my
vision for them.  Kind of odd because I'm Presbyterian & speak no Arabic
(I
know a couple of people who have Arabic as a third language, that's as
close
as I come)--if there are Muslims or Arabic speakers on the list, this
would
be a good time for them to speak up.