Most common lasers operate in a similar fashion: excite atoms or molecules—electrically, thermally, or chemically—and they radiate photons of a given energy. Recall that “energy” and “color” are synonymous—the “color” of the photons is determined by the substance being excited. Now generate that light within a cavity that has a 100 percent silvered mirror on one end, and a 99 percent silvered mirror at the other, called a resonator chamber. The light that is reflecting back and forth, into the already excited atoms, generates even more photons of the same energy. This is called stimulated emission. The 1 percent of energy that “leaks” through the 99 percent silvered mirror is your projected laser beam.
In comparing directed energy weapons to KEWs, let’s use the 20mm high-explosive round fired from an M61A1 cannon—the type mounted on most U.S. fighter aircraft—for our baseline example of a KEW. The shells fired from an M61A1 have a muzzle velocity of 1,050 meters per second (or about 2,350 miles per hour). At roughly 180 grams, or 0.18 kg, each round has a kinetic energy of nearly 100,000 joules. To transfer that much energy in a one-second burst, a laser would have to be in the 0.1-megawatt, or 100-kilowatt, range. The U.S. Navy is currently considering installing 100-kilowatt lasers aboard the next-generation destroyer, the DDG-1000 or Zumwalt class, to destroy inbound anti-ship missiles. A laser in the 100-kilowatt range is considered the minimum power to be considered a “weapons-grade” laser.
Modern fighter aircraft, and anti-ship KEWs, can fire six thousand rounds per minute, or one hundred rounds per second. This is dramatically higher than the rate of fire that Vipers have displayed onscreen. To equal the firepower of an M61 cannon at a hundred rounds per second, a capability that U.S. military fighter aircraft have had since the late 1950s, would require a laser in the 11-megawatt range.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has developed and tested a 1-megawatt laser, part of a system designed to destroy inbound ballistic missiles, but these lasers are mounted within a specially designed 747 and are far too bulky to mount aboard a craft the size of a Viper. Additionally, the power levels within the resonators of lasers like these are so high that their mirrors are always in danger of self-destructing. The slightest flaw in the mirror’s surface—the slightest blemish or even a dust particle—can cause the mirror to absorb the laser energy rather than reflect it, and melt.
Further, recall that Vipers are supposed to be able to operate both in space and within an atmosphere. That inflicts even more design constraints on our directed energy weapons. If the laser is powerful enough, then one must worry about a phenomena called blooming, where the beam ionizes the air through which it travels and creates an opaque plasma that actually dissipates the beam. The higher the energy, the greater the blooming and the more energy dissipated. For a laser to be effective within an atmosphere, it would have to be “tuned” to the particular wavelength for which the atmosphere is most transparent.
Even assuming the Colonies have an advantage over the U.S. military in the realm of technological sophistication, it would take significant engineering and scientific advances to create a laser that has the destructive power that current air-to-air kinetic weapons have had since before the Vietnam War. Perhaps the decision of the Battlestar Galactica producers to portray KEWs on their Vipers and battlestars was not a poor choice after all.
DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS
Directed energy weapons, such as lasers, are seldom directed well on TV and movies. Either they’re Star Trek-like phasers, which shoot long, straight beams of energy that are visible in daylight, or they’re Star Wars-type blasters, which shoot short tracerlike bolts of energy that are also visible in daylight. Battlestar Galactica (the new version) got them right by not using them at all.
When we speak of directed energy weapons, the energy being directed is electromagnetic radiation, which travels at the speed of light. Therefore, when a directed energy weapon like a laser is fired in a close-range battle, like within a room or corridor, the energy beam would appear to “connect” from weapon to target as soon as the shooter pulled the trigger, then instantly disconnect when turned off. This is exactly what you see with a laser pointer: as soon as the button is pressed, the laser light appears on the wall, the viewscreen, the ceiling, or the family cat. What you would not see is the traditional “bolt” of energy—appearing much like a solid tracer round—like we saw from all the spacecraft in the original Battlestar Galactica (and Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, and Farscape, all of which fall short on this point).
Then again, all of this presupposes that you could see the beam at all! In order for you to see anything, light from that object has to interact with a sensor (that is, your eye). The beam of a directed energy weapon cannot be visible unless some part of the beam makes it into your eye. The only way that is going to happen is if you’re shot in the eye, or if there is a medium that will scatter the beam, like dust or smoke particles and/or water droplets in air. Rock bands have laser light shows at concerts because they know full well that the hall will be filled with tobacco (or other plant matter) smoke to scatter the beam and make it visible. If you’ve attended a laser light show—the kind often held in planetaria or other venues that ostensibly do not allow smoking—the beam is nearly impossible to see, except where it reflects off the ceiling.
In fact, perhaps one of the best examples of a realistic portrayal of directed energy weapons was the hand weapons and rifles used by both the Colonial Warriors and Cylons in the original Battlestar Galactica. Captain Apollo draws his weapon, aims, pulls the trigger, and instantaneously we see the exploding plasma cloud on the Cylon Centurion at whom he had aimed his weapon. Cylon weapons were depicted in the same way. So that “cheesy” 1970s show is actually a good example of science fiction tech done right, at least in the way it was shown to act onscreen.
Raptors
They have been used for close air support, personnel shuttles, troop transport, commando insertion, reconnaissance, and search and rescue (SAR). Raptors are formidable attack craft—in “Exodus, Part II” and “Daybreak,” they carried impressive amounts of armaments ranging from their internal cannon to bombs, rocket launchers, even nuclear weapons. All those varied missions notwithstanding, the primary role of the Raptor is as a command, control, and communications (C3), electronic warfare (EW), and electronic countermeasures (ECM) platform. In his online blog, Ron Moore wrote: “I never really thought of the Raptor as a transport, I usually thought of it as analogous to the Navy’s EA-6 Prowler (a variant of the A-6 Intruder popularized in ‘Flight of the Intruder’).”
Once again the Raptors get the hard work.
Lt. Karl “Helo” Agathon, “Daybreak”
A Raptor.
Similar to the navy’s Prowler, which has a pilot and three electronic countermeasure officers (ECOs), the Raptor has a pilot and a lone ECO. As an EW and ECM platform, Raptors are equipped with a full suite of integrated electronic countermeasure and threat-monitoring instruments, as well as communications drones, decoys, chaff launchers, and flares.
Boomer: Captain, I have two communications pods left, sir, but that’s it. No jiggers, no drones, no markers, nothing.
Lee: Well, at least you’ve still got your electronics suite . . .
In a moment that the writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle intentionally meant to invoke images and memories of the catastrophic fire aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal on July 29, 1967, it was a Raptor communications drone, not a missile, that shot across the hangar bay and killed thirteen pilots in the episode “Act of Contrition.”
Just like the navy’s EA-6B Prowler (or its successor, the EA-18G Growler), Raptors normally accompany a flight of fighters on missions, or sorties, to provide EW and ECM support. The many and various aspects of EW are detailed in chapter 26, “Toasters and Jam: The Complexities of Electronic Warfare,” and this was, in fact, the first role in which we saw a Raptor acting in the miniseries. We see them in numerous roles later; they are the workhorses of the Rag Tag Fleet.
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CHAPTER 26
Toasters and Jam: The Complexities of Electronic Warfare
Electronic warfare (EW) is the ultimate military cat-and-mouse game. It wins battles, sometimes wars, before they begin, and its importance has been largely overlooked—certainly underestimated—in both television and film. This is, perhaps, because “military action involving the use of electromagnetic and directed energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum or to attack the enemy” doesn’t initially sound like compelling drama. But it can be. Many TV series that allude to EW at all use it as little more than a MacGuffin (for example, “Drat! Our feared and hated enemy is jamming our distress call.”).
The complexities of EW can take entire books to describe thoroughly, but it boils down to one thing: in armed conflict, the combatant who can gain advantage in their ability to utilize the EM spectrum, and who can gather more information about their adversary, has an overwhelming advantage—irrespective of who has the biggest guns.
Samuel Anders.
Starbuck and Athena in “Unfinished Business.”
Electronic Detection
DRADIS (Direction, RAnge, And DIStance) is similar to modern-day radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) in that an antenna sends out a pulse of EM radiation in the radio portion of the spectrum. (From this point on, we’ll use DRADIS and radar synonymously.) Many types of matter, particularly the kind of metals used to make ships and planes and spacecraft, reflect that radiation, and a portion of that reflection travels directly back to the source. The reflected pulse is detected by the source antenna, and the round-trip travel time of the pulse is measured. From this, and the position of the signal, the distance and direction to the reflecting object can be calculated. Sonar (SONic detection And Ranging) works in a similar way, but instead of broadcasting electromagnetic energy, sonar works by generating acoustic pulses, or pings, and “listening” for reflections from submerged—or partially submerged—objects. Natural sonar is used by bats and most cetaceans, and is perhaps the original form of “electronic warfare.”
Adama and the DRADIS.
DRADIS, like radar and sonar, is depicted on Battlestar Galactica as an active form of electronic warfare in that the ship or missile using its sensor to locate the enemy has to transmit energy into its environment. Radar comes in two basic types: search and fire control. Search radar is used to detect the presence of, and provide bearing, range, and velocity information on, other vessels both friend and foe; fire-control radar is used by a weapon system to acquire and/or home in on a target.
An advantage to a system like DRADIS is that once the system senses a pulse of energy reflected from an enemy ship, its existence has been revealed, as has information on its range and direction. One drawback, however, is that an enemy can “listen” passively for a DRADIS pulse. As a pulse of EM radiation propagates away from its emitter, its power dissipates. When that pulse reflects off an enemy vessel, the process is never 100 percent efficient; only a fraction of the incident pulse is reflected, and it is attenuated even more. Then the reflected pulse dissipates still further during the return trip back to the receiving antenna—which is usually, though not always, synonymous with the emitting antenna. An adversary, therefore, can more easily sense the radiation from your DRADIS than your own system can. For example, a ship on the ocean can see a lighthouse beacon long before the lighthouse beacon can illuminate the ship. Radar and DRADIS work the same way: we can spot a radar signal many miles (or dozens of miles) before the radar signal can spot us. In short, while active DRADIS has its uses, it is also a beacon to the enemy saying, Here I am, come shoot me! To exploit this type of vulnerability in battle the U.S. military has had in its operational arsenal since 1985 the HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile)—which has been superseded by the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM). The HARM was designed to detect an enemy radar emission, then home in on and destroy the emitting antenna. These are typically used in the first wave of an attack to destroy enemy anti-aircraft batteries, but can also target radar jammers or even communications installations. In summary, although Vipers, Raptors, and even the Big G herself are portrayed as always using active DRADIS, in reality the choice to go active would be a complex one and would vary dramatically depending upon the tactical situation.
Some types of missiles have radar emitters onboard and can also use active homing to find their intended target. We saw in the Battlestar Galactica miniseries that some of the Cylon missiles use active homing—when missiles locked onto both Sharon’s Raptor and Colonial One. There are actually three basic methods that missiles of today employ to home in on their targets: active homing, semi-active homing, and passive homing. Many of today’s missiles are “smart” enough to switch between different modes of homing, using the method most appropriate for the moment. That did not seem to be the case with Cylon missiles over the run of Battlestar Galactica. Did the Cylons lack the technical know-how? Unlikely. It was more likely the case that the Cylons simply didn’t think to do this.
A weapon that employs semi-active homing tracks a reflected radar signal broadcast by a separate emitter—often that of the air/spacecraft that fired it. There was an excellent example of this in the second-season episode “Fragged.” The Cylon DRADIS on Kobol that Chief Tyrol wanted to destroy was obviously used to both acquire and guide missiles to a target. The landing party destroyed the Cylon DRADIS just as the Cylons fired missiles at Galactica’s search-and-rescue Raptors flying overhead. As soon as the DRADIS was destroyed, the missiles lost their lock on the Raptors, allowing us to infer that the Cylon missiles employed semi-active homing. The existence of missiles like the HARM can make the decision to fire weapons with semi-active homing a dangerous prospect—since a HARM missile homes in on the source of the radar—because in the case of semi-active radar, that source may be the targeting aircraft. This simply underscores the risks that exist on the battlefield when switching on any kind of emitter.
In the case of passive homing, a missile tracks the EM radiation emitted by the enemy. Any hot object emits radiation, even human beings. Heat-seeking missiles home in on the infrared radiation from the adversary’s hot tailpipe and are usually fired while in a tail chase. Human beings, while not as hot as a spacecraft tailpipe, also emit infrared radiation. This is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which night-vision scopes are sensitive.
Another form of active electronic warfare used in Battlestar Galactica is IFF, an abbreviation for “Identification Friend or Foe.” IFF is a system first developed in World War I, used by military to identify friendly forces and determine their bearing and range. Real-world IFF systems use an encrypted “question-and-answer” protocol between two craft. If the “questioned” craft responds correctly, it is identified as friendly. A craft not replying correctly can be classified as suspicious, but not instantly be designated as a foe, since there may be many reasons for an incorrect response—like battle damage, for instance. IFF hardware can also be integrated into fire-control and missile systems to reduce the likelihood of friendly fire accidents. In “Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part I” Lieutenant Gaeta was able to determine that the Cylon transponders found within the Fleet, including one attached to the DRADIS display, emitted an IFF pulse when they got within range of one another. This fact was later used to fool the Cylon armada at Kobol into believing that Boomer’s Raptor was “friendly.”
Electronic Countermeasures
It may have started with the Trojan horse, or even earlier, but deception and warfare have always gone hand-in-hand. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines deception as “those measures designed to mislead the enemy by manipulation, distortion, or falsification of evidence to induce the enemy to react in a manner prejudicial to the enemy’s interests.” Just like the Trojan warriors evaded detection over three thousand years ago, modern-day radar and other detection systems can also be fooled. The subset of electronic warfare that employs means by which these systems are defeated or deceived—to deny an adve
rsary targeting information—falls under the category of electronic countermeasures, or ECM. There are active methods of ECM, as in the case of radar jamming, and passive methods, such as stealth technology.
Early in the miniseries, when the Raptor crewed by Boomer and Helo detected two incoming Cylon missiles, we heard:
Boomer: Jam the warheads.
Helo: I’m trying.... I can’t find the frequency, drop a swallow.
Electronic jamming is one method of ECM in which a transmitter—the jammer—broadcasts EM radiation to interfere with enemy radar or C3 (command, control, communications) signals. You can’t shoot what you can’t see. Jamming can fall into two categories: denial jamming and deception jamming. The intent of denial jamming is to overload an adversary’s radar receiver, denying them the use of that device and masking the very signal that the radar was employed to detect. A jammer emits radiation at the same frequency as adversarial radar, but often at a higher power. The radar can’t detect its own reflected pulses because the jammer is creating too much “noise”—as if someone stood right next to a giant searchlight and shined it into your face.
Denial jamming can be performed in several different ways—yet another element to the cat-and-mouse game of EW. Spot jamming is when a jammer broadcasts all its power to block a single frequency only. This would work if the enemy is using a transmitter of a fixed, known frequency. Rarely are radar or communications equipment tuned to a single frequency, so to counter this, some jammers spread their transmitting power over a range of frequencies simultaneously. This is called barrage jamming. The drawback to barrage jamming is that the jammer dedicates less power to individual frequencies, and can be less effective. A hybrid between spot jamming and barrage jamming, sweep jamming is a jamming technique where the full power of a jammer rapidly scans or “sweeps” over multiple frequencies. Since sweep jamming does not jam all frequencies simultaneously, its effect can be limited, or its effect can be countered. In “Exodus, Parts I and II,” the resistance on New Caprica were desperate to get the “Cylon jamming frequencies.” This implied that the Cylons were using either barrage or sweep jamming.
The Science of Battlestar Galactica Page 22
