I believe Polarized Hull Plating is related to Structural Integrity Fields. So the tech actually continues to exist in later eras. Weapons simply grew so potent, that SIF was not really a combat defense.
In the old TNG era book Federation Captain Picard strengthen the outside hull of Enterprise D during a power failure when the defecting Romulans extended their cloaking device around to protect the Enterprise D The cloaking device destabling the Enterprise's warp core and which who couldn't generating a warp bubble Picard's order to transfer ALL power into the SIF And then he told the conning officer to ready a collision course at the other attacking Romulan starship And the tilt was brief and to the point And Hey Presto! one destroyed Romulan starship
@@jonathanstrong4812 I forget that part of the book, but that book did Zefram Cochrane far better justice than Insurrection. Insurrection did him dirty.
If anything i’d actually argue that “Polarized Hull Plating”/SIFs were demoted to being a more passive defense. Especially in contrast to increasingly more powerful shield technology throughout the 23rd century. In Wrath of Khan when Kirk orders Yellow Alert there’s a quick remark by Saavik about “energizing defense fields…”; I’ve always taken it to mean that the Enterprise had polarized her outer hull by the time the Reliant fired. Likewise, the presence of a reinforced hull in such a manner would explain why/how the Enterprise was able to take such damage even with her shields down. SIFs are still a combat defense (even well into the 24th century), just not an active/primary one in the same manner that shields are.
I heard that the reason the bridge is in the center of the saucer is because it is the most protected area of the ship. So despite the appearance of being vulnerable, the center of the saucer actually has the most "overlapping" shielding emitters. So you will have several shield layers protecting the bridge.
Even with that in mind, I think it's still prudent to have the bridge recessed or sunken below the hull with a layer or two of armor above protecting it.
@@_Omega_Weaponand you see more sunken shields on combat focused federation ships the cruisers especially flagships are command ships and most fights most ships when they close in expose their underbelly in most attacks since that is normally the safe tactic in general. Now the Klingons and somewhat the romunlans have bridges more exposed than federation ships, the bigger the ship gets the small a target the bridge naturally is and honestly becomes risked because it’s behind the best armor and shields.
@@SuperGamefreak18 Yet many starfleet ships have the antimatter storage tanks near the hull on the bottom of the engineering section. Hitting those could be worse than destroying the bride.
Mounting the Antimatter there may be design doctrine meeting combat doctrine. Starfleet is supposed to meet threats head on with the saucer hull above the threat and the engineering section on the same level or below. That puts most the ship between enemy fire and the Antimatter.
Eh, now we need windows ;) even so, we were always limited by budgets and WW2 metaphors. Real world bridges - for navigation - are on the top of the ship and even British Battleships had notorious officers not using their conning towers. A CIC on the other hand shouldn't be the same as a navigation bridge. To some extent we saw that in TOS with the secondary bridge and in TNG with the battle bridge
Even with the continued advances in shield tech in Trek, there are still plenty of potential advantages in having more layered defenses. Overall though, a delightful video to watch in analyzing the development of starship defenses.
On the topic of redundant shields, that's actually got very good logic. Imagine you have a ship with shields that can survive for 5 minutes under heavy fire from a small group of enemy ships. They'll go down, and then you'll die, but they keep you alive for 5 minutes, so that's pretty good. And if you can survive, the shields will only take about another 5 minutes to recharge and be ready to engage again. Also great... not likely useful if you're still under fire because you won't last 5 minutes without shields, but still useful if you're moving into another risky situation soon after a battle. But your ship has room - and reactor power - to support some improvements. Here's your options: 1. Add a second shield system, equal in power to the first. 2. Upgrade the current shield system. Or, to put it another way: 1. Give yourself a shield that will last *FOREVER* against that same threat that takes your shields down in 5 minutes, because when your shields go down, you activate the secondary shield, and that lasts the full 5 minutes needed to restore your primary shield, and you switch back as the secondary shield goes down. 2. GIve yourself a shield that will last for 10 minutes before leaving you vulnerable for 5 minutes. I know which one I'd pick.
Hello VG Like most fans, I decried the short ranges used on the show. 10,000 kilometers? In space warfare, 10,000 Km is not just short range, it would be like being inside your opponent's vest pocket! THAT close to them. Now, I can 'see' why the writers used such ranges. Most people don't understand just how Vast space is. Also, they don't really understand how 'slow' the speed of Light is in relation to that vastness. Now, we all know that one Light Second is around 300,000 Km, or roughly 186,000 Miles. Light travels this distance in One second, every second, forever. Without using FTL targeting systems, that can detect things at long ranges instantaneously, you are limited to the speed of light for combat. This being so, half a light second is about as far as you can deal with for most weapons, since the 'round trip' is one second. In other words, if you fire a beam weapon, it will take half a second to reach its target, and another half second for the returning light to appraise you of the 'hit'. Torpedoes are slightly different. Although far slower than a beam weapon, they have long durations and can be fired with auto-corrective hardware (guidance systems) to give the weapon a better chance to hit its target. Back to distances... to the uneducated, 10,000 Km (6,214 Mi) seems like a fair distance. Sort of like someone who's only ever thrown rocks with their arms trying to envision the distances of a wet navy battle, where ship are firing miles and miles apart. But, 10,000 Km is 'only' 1/30th (one thirtieth) of a single light second. This might be good for registering a hit and immediately enabling you to correct for errors, but the same is true for your opponent. Light speed is light speed. Neither side has any advantage just due to the sped of light. A more 'realistic' distance would be half of a light second, or roughly 150,000 Km (93,000 Mi). Far enough to be a 'good' distance away from your target's return fire, yet close enough to register a hit in a single second. This is also far enough to give you a chance to maneuver to avoid being hit by 'dumb' projectiles, like Gauss cannon rounds. Torpedoes, though, would still have predictive algorithms to enable them to, mostly, adapt to a target's movement to gain a 'hit' upon it. So, early space battles (like the Romulan War) were fought at distances between one, and no more than 20 or so light seconds (torpedoes being exclusively used at anything over one or two light seconds distance). The longer the distance, the more likely that your target has moved in some manner to avoid being hit, and you are not being able to see that happen from your perspective due to the 'light speed lag'. Although you CAN hit a target at longer ranges, you have to accurately predict where it will be to make that 'hit' happen, because due to the speed of light, you won't see your beam hit for several seconds (remember, your light speed weapon's time to cover the distance, and the same amount of time for the return reflection to be seen by your ship). Due to the above, most battles would be fought at distances of half a light second or less. The closer you get to your target, the more accurate you can be with weapons fire. But this is also true for your opponent as well. Back to the 10,000 kilometer range. This is Transporter range. And only a 'combat' range if you are willing to get that close to an 'enemy' ship. Usually via some sort of stealth, or other means, to apply a devastating hit or hits to the foe before you 'hightail' it to more reasonable ranges. So, the gist of this long comment is that ranges as seen in the movies are not really 'realistic', and should be taken with 'a grain of salt' and mentally should be increased by a factor of 15 to 30 times stated distances to make any kind of sense at all to someone with a modicum of knowledge about actual distances and the speed of light.
This is why i like Elite Dangerous and Terra Invicta games. They put this in those games just like this. In Elite Dangerous, unless you have big heavy hitting kinetic weapons, you will need laser and plasma to take the shields out. But the armour can get outfitted to either energy, or Kinetic and Explosive. But i use the armour that does both, yes it hurts my ship. But it will take longer for all weapon types to get through.
I'm almost certainly wrong but my inference for polarized hull plating was quite different. I thought about what happens when a kinetic impact (missile/torpedo/gun) occurs. When this happens, it's usually not a perfect puncture; there is tearing/ripping/shattering involved. What if polarizing the hull is not about damage avoidance but damage triage? Yes, the damage still occurs but the area of damage/depressurization is reduced. It's an idea that, in my mind, goes right along with sealable watertight/airtight bulkheads. Neither of those prevent damage, they minimize it. This might be accomplished by introducing a strong magnetic field across the hull, actually pulling the metallic particles tightly together via magnetism. Think about something like putting tape on glass before you try to drill through it... That was my thought anyway.
After watching this I am even more convinced that a layered defensive strategy on ships, Space or water, will always be preferable to any 'one size fits all' defensive strategy. Interceptor Missiles, for long range defense against missiles, torpedoes, and strike craft, Lasers, for intermediate defense from the same, some form of flak/CIWS for close in defense against the same, then shields and finally armor both to defend from the above mentioned and from enemy fire that your other defenses can't do anything about. ECM to confuse missiles, torpedoes and other weapons locks would be somewhere in there, probably ahead of the interceptor missiles but I feel like ECM would be used throughout the entire defense envelope.
From a meta-angle, shields getting battered don't require one to adjust the models you're filming (due to damage), just changing the number the actors read. Plus, when ships DO take (persistent) damage, it makes a bigger impact, (see Trek II & III, as well as the 3rd season of Enterprise)
I think secondary shields function like the older CIWS; it's intended to supplement active shields and make upgrading the primary more viable. Ships that live longer provide more information, allowing you to learn what caused the main shields to fail. It's similar to the Survivor Bias; What killed planes? Look at the planes that came back. You don't add armor to where there are holes, you add it where there are none. Because planes that died had been hit in those places, planes that survived Didn't get hit in those places.
I'll add my own thoughts to that comment. I think that a secondary shield is not intended as a replacement for the primary shield (at least in theory, some captains will still use it that way). It is more intended to help a ship in breaking away from a losing engagement and preventing it from being destroyed should the shields fail due to a random lucky phaser or disrupter hit. To put it in a table top gaming terms, instead of having to roll 5 or higher (on a standard 6 die) to survive, you now only have to roll 2 or higer. In addition, I also think that one of the reasons for secondary shielding existing in the 24th century but not before, is because there is a diminishing return on installing extra shield generators or emitters. This creates a practical 'cap' on shield strength for a ship of a certain size and power output. While this 'cap' of course varies per tech level, I think that by the time secondary shields come about is a notable constraint on how capable a shield can be. The reason why you don't see them earlier is quite simple, hitting the diminishing return threshhold is hard enough on earlier tech bases that it's just not practical to add a secondary shield ask compared to just beefing up the primary shield. It takes up sufficient amounts of extra power generation capacity and space that the trade-offs just aren't worth it yet. That is not to say you can't do it, but look at a ship like the TOS enterprise. She can only take about 3 maybe 4 proton torpedo's on her standard shield, a secondary shield is just not going to be powerful enough to stop a single torpedo. Installing one anyway will take so much power generation and space that you will need a bigger ship, which means you need more power generation, which needs a larger warp core, which needs a bigger hull, etc. etc. It just spirals away too quickly. Compare that to say the enterprise F, were adding a couple of extra modular pallets with shield generators just means giving up a lab or 2 and putting some crew in shared quarters, while also providing a strong enough shield to still stop stray weapons fire. All you need to do is hook those shielding pallets into the power systems and have them automatically switch on the moment the primary shields go down, which means installing them is only a 2 hour field job for the engineering crew. It's simply a much more relevant technology at that point, especially when compared when combined with a likely increase in other defensive systems such as CIWS and E-war equipment.
When you said something about Star Trek VI that the Enterprise's shields collapsed after a couple of torpedoes, made me remember a interview on the 25th Anniversary Special I think... Andrew Probert explains that the shields are up during the battle. We see that the damage doesn't penetrate the hull until the shields have collapsed totally that the last torp fired from Chang's ship. When we go to the interior we see the shockwave damage.
I would to see future Janeway's deployable armor be worked into Trek. Like a really tough Neutronium version made up of pre-programmed matter that ensheaths the hull upon being released from tanks, or another type of containment system within a ship.
I believe ( perhaps after the dominion war ) the federation acquired the knowledge of making neutronium Hull plating . ( uss shepherd) the 22nd century gargarin class refit. . The dominion used it on a ground base . And apparently, they were capable of absorbing quantum torpedoes. ( o brien , to the death) . Dominion headquarters on cardassia as well
@kamenriderblade2099 it sounds like starfleet spends 20 years getting it too much, and it's not pure nuetrouim. , it's an alloy mixed with nuetrouim. . They have them in, but haven't I haven't seen them in combat. . But star fleet technology has moved past the point that the older powers are a treat. In the books , it and transwarp ( quantum slipstream) causes an alliance of romulan, breen , thoian, and tzcenketi. To unite against the federation, as a last chance before the new technology becomes fleet wide . Makes future war impossible.
@@kamenriderblade2099 I would probably make it an alloy. Not 100% pure, and would require a new power system. Something like a vacuum energy generator, in addition to the warp core/EPS systems. To help power it and other primary systems. One could always make up exceptions for when it doesn't work, like against certain types of weapons, in certain anomalies/areas of space, and auto retracting after taking critical damage etc.
The deflectors were a type of shield - deflecting particles from the ship as it traveled forward. Deflectors were used a couple of time in the various franchises as a weapon.
In Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, when Kirk says to go to Yellow Alert, Saavik reports "Energizing defense fields" and the status graphics shows some form of protective field being deployed around the bridge and immediate surrounding areas. It's worth noting that this is distinctly different that the "shields" graphics, as seen on the Reliant. As i recall, Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise actually has a 1-sentence comment on it, describing it as a magnetic field that reinforces the hull (although it's been a few years since I read it, I might be slightly off). This sounds similar to your description of Polarized Hull Plating. Another interesting note - the original published materials for Star Trek TMP describe the Enterprise as having an experimental new shield system that included a layer of matter that was constantly replenished by a transporter-type system, making it much more potent than previous shields. And the TMP Enterprise *survives* a hit from the V'Ger digitizer with some shields remaining, which seems much more impressive than any other shielding seen before or after. I've head-cannoned that there turned out to be a serious flaw with this tech, and Star Fleet returned to "conventional" shield systems.
This had to be an early version of the TNG style structural integrity fields, but only able to protect key areas. By the time of TNG the fields ran throughout the entire hull.
Shield emitters can and do burn out regardless of how strong they are. Secondary shields can be used when the main shields go down or burnout giving them some extra protection.
Electromagnetic shields have been around since the late 80's. The British had the first system used in combat in 1991. Today the most popular system is the Israeli Trophy system. The coolest thing is it attenuates shockwaves preventing TBI.
The best way to run lasers is a lot of them at VERY low power and then when one of them hits something (i..e how laser range finders work) then that beam is fed more energy and destroys the target reducing the chance of a miss. The slight downside being you make your ship look like a laser spitting hedgehog in this mode.
I believe we are on our way to see shields in our children's children lifetime. We already have a sort of "primative shields" in the 21st century today. Im talking about Active Protection Systems (APS). APS is a system mounted on the most modern main battle tanks that consists of a doppler or millimeter band rader and projectile launchers strategically placed on the Tanks turret. Once the radar detects an incoming object that is large and fast enough to threaten the vehicle it commands one of the launchers to automatically fire its own volley of munitions and destroys the misslie before it makes contact with the Tank.
The lack of CIWS has always bothered me in Trek. A 24th century vessel should have no problem incorporating a rail gun type CIWS to shoot down incoming torpedo's which would allow the shields to deal with energy based weapons fire.
That targeting is done by touchpad on LCARS makes me want to scream-I have trouble messing with touchscreens in a panic let alone if something is coming at me at a significant portion of light speed
The idea of using plasma weapons as a kind of WW2 style AA guns of naval vessels makes a lot of sense before shield tech was what it was in even TOS. 👍
I always thought it was interesting, especially concerning the Federation and Starfleet as a whole, being more of a defensive postured fleet, that they hadnt figured out a way for ship shielding to absorb the energy from incoming energy weapons and use it to immediately bolster their shielding or their Phaser arrays. Effectively recycling the incoming energy into large battery banks inside of the ship and using that to bolster their ships shield output, and its own phaser array. Granted that tech would have its downsides, O'Brien would never be done replacing EPS relays and conduits due to overloads, and this tech woudl have no appreciable bonuses over regular shields to defending against missles or torpedoes. As always embrace the CIWS.
Great video as always. As for secondary/emergency shielding, I could see it being useful to allow time for the primary shields to recharge or to last just long enough to make an escape. Assuming the ship has the space available for the other system.
The reason you want Multi-Layered Shields is that in most space battles, once you take the Shields down past 0, if you do enough extra damage on the final hit there seems to be some blow back that damages the Deflector Shields & requires time to repair it and bring it back online. Also having Multi-Layered Shields makes it harder for any Bleed-Through Damage to get to your Hull Armor. And Remember, the Nova-class had a fast "1-minute" recharge if you took it off-line. Imagine having Multiple layers or Emitters for Shields that you can swap to bring online to full Shield Strength. It would make conventional battle "Very Difficult" and turn Space Battles into a long Pro Wrestling Fight in Space with StarShips. My Multiple Defense Layers: 1a) Normal Hull Armor Plating 1b) Ablative Armor 1c) Ablative Hull Generated Armor 2a) Skin Shields that hug your ships Hull for that inner Shield protection layer 2b) Shield Orb (Some form of Internal Orb that projects a Shield through sub-space and out into real-space locally that lies between the outter and inner shields 2c) Deflector Shields emitted from your Deflector Dish (Multiple Large Deflector Dishes would allow multiple Deflector Shields to swap Up/Time in battle instantaneously) 2d) Shield Drones = Autonomous AI driven Floating Auto-Defense Drones that have "Dual Shield Emitters" that can block outside of your Shield Bubble. The Shield Drones can follow your Ship and be tied to your ships navigation The Enemy would have limited options: 1) To either "War of Attrition" you and make you run out of fuel to power your reactors to recharge your shields. Hope you didn't get the call out for back-up or nobody friendly comes by and interrupts the battle. 2) Blitz through as much damage in as small of a time as possible to burn through multiple Shield Layers and start damaging the hull. Hard, but not impossible, you'd have to be specced out for that type of combat or be severely over-powered to do it 3) Find tricks to bypass multiple layers of shields, those tricks exist, but they usually are hard to pull off when you have a competent protagonist Ship & Crew. 4) Chuck Giant Objects at your StarShip that would do massive damage like what Riker did with chucking a Asteroid at the Shrike or the Shrike chucking a Small StarShip at your bigger Starship Physical Damage works great when you have enough raw mass to throw at close range. This Scenario won't always be available, a cheaper method would be Anti-Matter Bullets with some form of Machine Gun to "Rapid-Fire" at close range to drain shields But having Multiple Layers of Shields doesn't pre-clude defeat, it just makes it challenging and requires a thinking mans writer that knows the in-universe lore to defeat it. But good offense like CIWS or any form of Energy Projectiles to blast down incoming Physical Projectile or Energy Blast at range would be just as valid for Point Defense.
I always thought defenses work better when they match the weapon type, energy on energy and matter on matter. Armor would be better against shells, shields against beams, interceptors against missiles.
There's also the issue where a laser has to be focused on its target for a full light-second, which is difficult to maintain if the target is in motion and not taking the laser strike full on.
Very Cool Video. I remember your short about the Kelvin Universe anti-missile defense weapons (that look like intelligent lights for shows on stage). I can see why it's not as big a deal in T.V. with Star Trek with those kind of defenses - but in real combat situations - anti-missile technology is key to a fleet (in sea or space).
I recall. The flack. ( ciws) in Star Trek 09 . First. 23rd century version was effective on borg anti matter missile..( late 24th / 25th ) Second. The commentary on the movie said . The idea was ciws. But also, at close range, they were an anti shield weapon. . I think certifiably ingame. His nebula class video.he said around the Dominion War period or the build-up, they were testing a new ciws system on a nebula.
My polarized hull plating head cannon was similar in function but slightly different in execution. In my head cannon beams and toroeados carry an overall positive or negative charge based on the faction. So when polarising the hull you apply a positive or negative charge to the hull to match the charge of the incoming attack. The overall effect is the same though if the hull plating charge is strong enough you can effectively hold the incoming beam or torpedo at arms length until the hull charge is drained or the incoming attack burns out/detonates. Typically beams would drain the charge on the hull while a torpeados would prematurely detonate, causing splash damage by sheer brute force. Similarly, if the incoming attacks had a stronger charge or enough momentum they could brute force their way through and impact the hull plating.
I actually see a good reason for having a back-up shield. I know you made the argument that why have two when you can have one better one but, as we see in the media as shields start to be depleted keeping them engaged puts a strain on the system causing power spikes and blown circuits. So with this in mind I see it as being in a similar concept to giving a nuclear sub a back up diesel generator. If your primary shield generator or circuitry blows or burns out in the heat of combat its good to have something to fall back on while you try to effect repairs especially if it is in a running battle. Also if you have regenerative shields you could cycle between the two allowing one to recover while the other fends off the incoming attack.
There was also a transitional weapon system in the 2260s. In TOS: "Balance of Terror," we see Phasers used with a proximity mode, which creates large explosions that were capable of hazarding the Bird of Prey. It stands to reason that such explosive blasts would also be useful in clearing out long-range torpedo fire. This would make other CIWS systems obsolete, and could explain why they fall completely out of use. (The penchant for ships to fight at Warp speeds during TOS likely also outmoded point-defense fire.)
they could also introduce a feature i've toyed with in my own writings, layered absorption shielding. essentially you have three to four shields layered together, each shield recharges itself by absorbing the energy of enemy weapons and channeling that back into the shield matrix powering the shield with the enemies own weapons, by layering the shields and allowing some bleed through you can disperse that energy over multiple shield grid preventing them from overloading as easily from enemy weapons energy exceeding the capacity to power them.
Hello Venom Geek. One aspect not mentioned was a part of, albeit a tiny part of, the old Star Fleet Battles rules... Dirigible Shields. Shields able to be 'steered' to a vector of incoming attack. Although this does leave parts of the hull unprotected when the shield is maneuvered away from its 'normal' protective arc, the system does have the benefit of enabling one to 'double' shields to a particular vector of attack. In effect, the four shields (port, starboard, ventral, and dorsal) each contribute to cover a portion of the bow shield's arc of protection and distribute the incoming fire amongst themselves. Thus, making the covered shield arc far more difficult to penetrate, since it has to overcome a total of five shield generation systems, even though four of them can only absorb a fraction (a relatively significant fraction) of what they 'normally' could absorb and redirect. The specifics of this system would be a long and drawn out matter of tech-babble, but suffice it to say that the ventral and dorsal, or the port and starboard shields could be maneuvered to partially cover the bow. The aft shield would have to extend its coverage to cover more area of the hull and would become less effective overall, but the bow would thus have additional coverage and protection from attack. And, be able to withstand far more devastating hits. This 'system' would, of course, extend to be available to 'double' any protected shield arc. A further development of this technology would be to have 'fixed' shields, as per the Trek Universal standard, and then a complete secondary set of 'dirigible' shields as additional coverage. As for armor... 'Tritanium' seems to be the 'industry standard' for ship hull protection. Tritanium would seem to be an alloy of Titanium, where three atoms of Titanium are tightly bonded into a molecule. This would yield a tough material, for the most part, but not something that could not be bettered with the available tech in the trek universe. Such better armors are not seen, and I blame both the writers and technical advisors for this lack. A 'for instance' would be a type of armor that a friend and I dreamed up decades ago for our own 'trek' writing group. Before explaining the specifics of the armor, let me say that the available 'trek' technology should be able to produce the new armor, since it can, in some way, bond three atoms of titanium into a tough molecule to act as the armor's main material component. So, doing so, means you have the ability to manipulate atoms to create molecules to order. Now, having said that, the new material was named TaC-TiC, or Tactic Armor. It was named thusly due to the name TiC-TaC being seen is 'silly' for some reason (humans, go figure). Tactic armor is basically a bonding of Tantalum, Titanium, and Carbon atoms to create a multi-layered material at the atomic scale. To imagine this, think of a tennis ball court, without a net. Now layer the entire surface with beach balls. Positioned to where every ball touches four others. Now, lay down a layer of basketballs, so that each basketball rests in the little 'hollow' where four beach balls touch each other. Oh, yes, one should color the beach balls in two colors. For this thought experiment, we'll say blue and red. Rinse and repeat by adding a new layer of beach balls, and then a new layer of basketballs, etc. The beach balls are laid down in an 'alternating' pattern, so that seen from above, they would make diagonal lines of blue and red. Thus, where each four such balls touch each other, a single red ball would be touching four blue ones around it, and the same is true for the blue balls. Now, consider that the blue balls are Titanium atoms, The red ones are Tantalum atoms, and the basketballs are Carbon. Atomic bonds are Titanium and Carbon, and Tantalum and Carbon. So, Tantalum Carbide, and Titanium Carbide. And thus: TaC-TiC. Now before you go and start pounding your keyboard and telling me 'That's just not possible!', it is... possible. The covalences of the atoms DOES work, and the resulting pair of molecules should be able to be 'stacked' in the manner suggested. In fact, the Tantalum and Titanium atoms would 'share' electrons with the Carbon atoms freely, although tightly enough to make very secure and 'tough' molecular bonds. The projected strength of this alloy is upwards of 32 to 40 times that of high carbon steel alloys, and its weight would be less than one quarter of the same volume of steel alloy. Thus making a very tough, and relatively 'light weight' armor material. There are some properties of the alloy that are desirable, and some that are not. Titanium would make for a very tough alloy, but, Titanium is known as the nymphomaniac metal, in that you get it hot enough, it will bond with anything. Tantalum would be far 'weaker' than the Titanium, but far more flexible. The results of the two are a combined metal alloy that is both tough, and flexible. Enough so that the chance of 'shattering' would be significantly reduced. To mitigate the bonding issues with Titanium, one could alternate layers of TaC-TiC with layers of a Boron-Carbon-Silicon alloy. This would give the Titanium something else to bond with should it be 'energized' sufficiently to break its 'normal' bond with the friendly, nearby, carbon atom. So, the overall weight of the armor decreases, since the atomic 'weight' of the Boro-Carbon-Silicate (BCS) layer is less than the TaC-TiC layer's materials. And now you can see how the total weight of armor is 'reduced' to such a fraction of something like steel, even though Titanium and Tantalum are heavier than iron atoms, as to 'atomic weight'. The fact we cannot produce such a material currently, has no bearing up on the discussion, since we are talking about a technology base sufficiently advanced enough to allow one to create a molecule containing three Titanium atoms. In fact, the industrial process needed to make Tritanium alloy should be easily cranked around and used to create both the TaC-TiC and BCS layers with ease. Since the resulting alloy is lighter than Tritanium, one should be able to put far thicker layers of the new armor upon the same ship's hull, for the same 'mass' or 'weight' of armoring, and thus make the hull far, far more resistant to damage. Between the installation of 'dirigible' shields, and the new armor, one has a ship that is many times more resistant to damage from ANY kind of 'trek' style weaponry used to date. And we are talking about orders of magnitude here, not just a 'percentage' increase in protection. Just some considered thought... like it, or not, your decision.
Warp Delta aka Ganges was basically upgraded Emmette class. It was rather designed to move with Warp 2, though could be upgraded probably to Warp 3. Freedom was designed for Warp 5 engine, though die to NX disaster, it was downsized to Warp 4. It is probably the reason why we not see Dedalus, until stability problem was resolved.
@@arcticshark1808 That my friend is the Phobos, it's a tiny human corvette, basically starfleet's version of the klingon raider/romulan sparrow/vulcan d'vahl
I thought the redundant shield was the idea for an outer bubble shield and an inner skin shield. When the outer one was damaged you pulled it in to recharge while expanding the inner one into a bubble.
Star Trek shielding and weapons systems are so very underestimated… ST keeps showing how the older (TOS era) phasers are casually multi-continental weapons and can be charged to planetary weapons… and TNG era shields just tank these phasers endlessly
8:43 Does this become the defensive fields we see on the Enterprise in TWoK when the Reliant first approaches (before Kirk actually orders shields up)?
Good video. I loved it. only one issue. its super minor but its CIWS, not CWIS due to it being an acronym. yeah thats my 2 cents that bugged me. OCD really made me type this
so for the redundant shields, couldn't one be a bubble and one be a skin shield? maybe the bubble is adaptive and the skin shield is regenerative for best of all worlds defense?
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and executed and very well informatively explained in every detail way shape and form provided on this format and subject matter indeed, On explaining everything on and about hull plating and various sheilds strengths and how they actually work in defense on protecting the ships from acquiring major hull damage and so forth indeed!.
Worth pointing out that Star Fleet Battles have all of them! :D The old-gen Romulan ships like warbird have armor. Everybody have shields. And some power have ADDs, which is basically CIWS to counter the missiles (drones in SFB).
a strong offense is the best defense. because you cannot just sit there and take shots all day. so i say a fleet with starships loaded with great speed, great shielding and great firepower and can field them in numbers should win out in small to medium conflicts more. great video
Something I wish was presented more accurately is the detonation yield and absorption when photon torpedoes are hitting shields. The kinetic energy of the torpedo impact itself, an object weighing hundreds or even thousands of pounds, and traveling at some percentage of lightspeed would be enough to destroy a sizable asteroid..Add to that A 1.5kg anti-matter warhead will yield 50 megatons of energy. They are always shown mostly as small explosives. The energy required to absorb that much kinetic and explosive yield would be mind boggling
3:03 Um... I'm not a Star Trek expert, but I do know a few things... And I can tell you right now that this explanation *_does not_* fit with the NX-01. There's no "repulsor field" being involved. _"In Star Trek Monthly issue 87, according to André Bormanis: 'To minimize potential damage from weapons fire and other space hazards, NX-01 incorporates a polarization matrix in its_ _armored hull plating. Through the application of electromagnetic power, the metal hull of the ship can be made several orders of magnitude harder than it is in its non-polarized state.'"_ From my understanding, this is actually based on a real-world concept where ceramics can become stronger in tensile strength through an electrical field being applied to them because the grain boundaries in the ceramic are aligned in a uniform nature. It could theoretically drastically improve the durability of the ceramic (in this case armor/hull) depending on the specific ceramic composite and the electrical field being used. You can even adapt these into piezoelectric ceramics where the very fact that they are put under pressure (from, say, a torpedo hit) generates even more power and further strengthens the hull plating.
First time I had a video recommended from your channel was the Rockwell Class video. Then I find this and you bring up the Rockwell class and suggest that nobody likes you talking about it. It's literally the reason I know you exist xD
What about amor and prevent transporters? Hull polarized plating if I recall correctly stopped some transporters not all. Can you do a video about that?
Deflector Shields are one piece of Star Trek technology that is actually feasible to build in our lifetime unlike warp drive and artificial gravity. Beam weapons and other types of Star Trek weapons are also feasible.
Depending on the multi-shield systems if its multilayered, alternating or something in-between you'd be able to extend the secondary grid to cover another ship without the drawback of stretching your primary shields too thin
Would have been nice at some point to see the Federation reverse-engineer the Borg's adaptive shielding tech. Two or three shots, and that weapon(at least at a certain frequency) becomes utterly ineffective. I know, plot, but still.
Energy shields strike me as one of the more plausible pieces of Trek technology...extremely intense electric fields...ions marshalled by those electric fields into dense layers...I can sort of get a feel for how they *_might_* work. It's the things like transporter beams and holodecks that come across as the more scientifically "wacky" ideas.
"Energy" weapons are very visible, maybe it's matter, and light, photons, don't have electric charge, no effect from a EM repulsion. The antimatter warhead is a terrible idea. Too dangerous. But in space, that would generate only lots of gamma radiation, no explosion. Energy is just a relation between physical magnitudes, it's not a "thing". A ballistic missile means lots of energy too.
I dont know, multi-layeres shields could be useful if they are different types. Say for instance, your primary is regenerative while your secondary is reactive. So if your primary goes down, it has a chance to recharge while your secondary will do a good job at holding off attacks. Just look at the beating the Scimitar took from 3 warships, including a salvo of successive hits from quantum and photon torpedos, on top of thr multiple disruptor and phaser hits. Her shields were still up.
That's kinda how the US and Israel handle missile defense now, layer upon layer for different purposes. THAAD for one range of altitude and type of missile, Patriot for another, etc. US has like 6 layers of missile defense systems I believe, and Israel a couple more. edit: so far I've found THADD, Aegis, Patriot, M-SHORAD, and various land based CIWS.
I don't know how do shields "regenerate" because it's always like "shields at 15%".🤔 I presume they recharge in a certain period of time, but what is it or how they work?
Star trek nemesis had primary and secondary shields on the scimitar, the enterprise E threw everything and barely scratched it. So that means it had 200% shields???? Or super powerful 100% shields??? They had to ram it to scratch damage it.
Thank you! You just solved one of my TOS Mysteries, ie when Sulu always said "Captain, Shields just snapped on!" Like, wouldn't he have to push a button?! But naw, its auto reactive shields. Question: What did you think of the idea in Mem Alpha that Enterprise A's shields in ST6 was actually an invisible layer of metal spread by replicators over the hull, hence the visible scorch marks from Chang's torpedoes? Brilliant as usual. Your videos are the highlights of my drives
Nice work as always! One thing I am curious about is the extent to which armor schemes and subdivision are incorporated into ships in Trek, and if they have structures similar to citadels and armored conning towers. This may also explain another reason why Starfleet is so fond of the saucer as it is geometrically an easy shape to section off.
btw do you realise that in the image with the two daedalus class ships launching missiles you used Roskosmos Soyuz space launch systems which are designed for both crewed and uncrewed orbital launches and not ICBMs ?
Wouldn't the phaser array be a cwis? I remember the Enterprise D shooting down a bunch of fighters so I imagine the 360 array could shoot at torpedoes?
what is somewhat interesting in star trek is the fire rate and for the most part the lack of "spam". While a full broadside of a galaxy class, looks spectacular it is not a macross missile massacre. For my two cents, some developments must have led to a necessity for rather heavy high yield and high energy weapons (looking how even tiny hand phaser f*Inf vaporize whole people, this works out, a shipboard vaporizes buildings for breakfast and ships mostly have some dents and scratches from it) It is plausible that hull technology/materiel science (Armor) arrived at a point where large numbers of small explosives (nukes) would be considered nothing but fireworks
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think the best way is to use Nukes is as nukepump laser or Casaba-Howitzer. So basically they would work similar to HEAT charges. Nuclear weapon lost lot of potential in space. But it still would be stronger then conventional explosion. Sinking target in radiation.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 My guess is that polarized plating probably use magnetism to disperse low level radiation like plasma or laser weapon. And well. Actual radiation. I think the main reason why shows do not mention countermeasures is because those concepts were not so well known back then. Even if especially the books have them as writers have more time to explain what those things are. For example TOS did have drone ships. But people lot of people actually realized that only when concept become well known in 90's.
@venomgeekmedia9886 Regard shields in real life. Think is that as far we know it is impossible to manipulate what we may call "kinetic field". It is completely made up concept. Yes. There is magnetism, but magnetism has severe limitations. Two most realistic types of shields are "plasma shielding" what use plasma keep in magnetic field to disperse radiation, plasma and direct energy weapons. Additional bonus is that it is used also as radiator. Though it would not stop kinetic weapons. Though hot plasma and magnets may protect from small debris. The more valid way to make shield is actually to use miniature drones to redirect kinetic impostor and move block of armour on way of the ammunition (Borg sort of did that?). My guess is that Shield used in Trek is actually based on gravity manipulation. Basically using properties of warp engines. You could in theory redirect munitions or extend relative way between you and target to simply go out of range of the enemy. In such case only small portions of dispersed enemy would hit the ship. What would explain exploding panels, but not the ship. Gravity manipulation is though as far as we known not a thing... yet at least. But FTL civilization probably would have this tech.
Secondary shield may be valid solution against specific weapons, what can make shield short circuit and drop entirely. If such weapons become a thing in the 25'th century. Then it could make sense. Otherwise not.
I had come up with a head-canon early version of polarized haul plating for pre-WW3 Earth jet planes. As like a replacement for modern stealth tech, bouncing and absorbing radar signings as well as dissipating vehicle heat signatures. Also, later 21st century lasers... at least to stop pilots from getting dazzled while in flight. I should get a patient so that Lockheed Martin doesn't steal this idea 🤣
I believe Polarized Hull Plating is related to Structural Integrity Fields. So the tech actually continues to exist in later eras. Weapons simply grew so potent, that SIF was not really a combat defense.
In the old TNG era book Federation Captain Picard strengthen the outside hull of Enterprise D during a power failure when the defecting Romulans extended their cloaking device around to protect the Enterprise D The cloaking device destabling the Enterprise's warp core and which who couldn't generating a warp bubble Picard's order to transfer ALL power into the SIF And then he told the conning officer to ready a collision course at the other attacking Romulan starship And the tilt was brief and to the point And Hey Presto! one destroyed Romulan starship
@@jonathanstrong4812 I forget that part of the book, but that book did Zefram Cochrane far better justice than Insurrection. Insurrection did him dirty.
That's a really good point
If anything i’d actually argue that “Polarized Hull Plating”/SIFs were demoted to being a more passive defense. Especially in contrast to increasingly more powerful shield technology throughout the 23rd century. In Wrath of Khan when Kirk orders Yellow Alert there’s a quick remark by Saavik about “energizing defense fields…”; I’ve always taken it to mean that the Enterprise had polarized her outer hull by the time the Reliant fired. Likewise, the presence of a reinforced hull in such a manner would explain why/how the Enterprise was able to take such damage even with her shields down.
SIFs are still a combat defense (even well into the 24th century), just not an active/primary one in the same manner that shields are.
Structural integrity is still an important part of defense. Even into the 24th century the hull is able to take a few hits before breaching.
300 years in the future, armour and firepower are still fighting the same battle. Truly war never changes
I heard that the reason the bridge is in the center of the saucer is because it is the most protected area of the ship. So despite the appearance of being vulnerable, the center of the saucer actually has the most "overlapping" shielding emitters. So you will have several shield layers protecting the bridge.
Even with that in mind, I think it's still prudent to have the bridge recessed or sunken below the hull with a layer or two of armor above protecting it.
@@_Omega_Weaponand you see more sunken shields on combat focused federation ships the cruisers especially flagships are command ships and most fights most ships when they close in expose their underbelly in most attacks since that is normally the safe tactic in general. Now the Klingons and somewhat the romunlans have bridges more exposed than federation ships, the bigger the ship gets the small a target the bridge naturally is and honestly becomes risked because it’s behind the best armor and shields.
@@SuperGamefreak18 Yet many starfleet ships have the antimatter storage tanks near the hull on the bottom of the engineering section. Hitting those could be worse than destroying the bride.
Mounting the Antimatter there may be design doctrine meeting combat doctrine. Starfleet is supposed to meet threats head on with the saucer hull above the threat and the engineering section on the same level or below. That puts most the ship between enemy fire and the Antimatter.
Eh, now we need windows ;)
even so, we were always limited by budgets and WW2 metaphors. Real world bridges - for navigation - are on the top of the ship and even British Battleships had notorious officers not using their conning towers. A CIC on the other hand shouldn't be the same as a navigation bridge. To some extent we saw that in TOS with the secondary bridge and in TNG with the battle bridge
If the Rockwell class was flipped upside down, I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. But a ship's a ship, and I love them all.
Even with the continued advances in shield tech in Trek, there are still plenty of potential advantages in having more layered defenses.
Overall though, a delightful video to watch in analyzing the development of starship defenses.
I appreciate the shout out. And I really appreciate the evaluation of Polarize hall armor I really had no idea how that worked.😊
On the topic of redundant shields, that's actually got very good logic.
Imagine you have a ship with shields that can survive for 5 minutes under heavy fire from a small group of enemy ships. They'll go down, and then you'll die, but they keep you alive for 5 minutes, so that's pretty good. And if you can survive, the shields will only take about another 5 minutes to recharge and be ready to engage again. Also great... not likely useful if you're still under fire because you won't last 5 minutes without shields, but still useful if you're moving into another risky situation soon after a battle.
But your ship has room - and reactor power - to support some improvements. Here's your options:
1. Add a second shield system, equal in power to the first.
2. Upgrade the current shield system.
Or, to put it another way:
1. Give yourself a shield that will last *FOREVER* against that same threat that takes your shields down in 5 minutes, because when your shields go down, you activate the secondary shield, and that lasts the full 5 minutes needed to restore your primary shield, and you switch back as the secondary shield goes down.
2. GIve yourself a shield that will last for 10 minutes before leaving you vulnerable for 5 minutes.
I know which one I'd pick.
The Plasma Turret idea is basically "Holy Wall of Hot Flak GO!" and i love it
Hello VG
Like most fans, I decried the short ranges used on the show. 10,000 kilometers? In space warfare, 10,000 Km is not just short range, it would be like being inside your opponent's vest pocket! THAT close to them.
Now, I can 'see' why the writers used such ranges. Most people don't understand just how Vast space is. Also, they don't really understand how 'slow' the speed of Light is in relation to that vastness.
Now, we all know that one Light Second is around 300,000 Km, or roughly 186,000 Miles. Light travels this distance in One second, every second, forever.
Without using FTL targeting systems, that can detect things at long ranges instantaneously, you are limited to the speed of light for combat.
This being so, half a light second is about as far as you can deal with for most weapons, since the 'round trip' is one second. In other words, if you fire a beam weapon, it will take half a second to reach its target, and another half second for the returning light to appraise you of the 'hit'.
Torpedoes are slightly different. Although far slower than a beam weapon, they have long durations and can be fired with auto-corrective hardware (guidance systems) to give the weapon a better chance to hit its target.
Back to distances... to the uneducated, 10,000 Km (6,214 Mi) seems like a fair distance. Sort of like someone who's only ever thrown rocks with their arms trying to envision the distances of a wet navy battle, where ship are firing miles and miles apart.
But, 10,000 Km is 'only' 1/30th (one thirtieth) of a single light second. This might be good for registering a hit and immediately enabling you to correct for errors, but the same is true for your opponent. Light speed is light speed. Neither side has any advantage just due to the sped of light.
A more 'realistic' distance would be half of a light second, or roughly 150,000 Km (93,000 Mi). Far enough to be a 'good' distance away from your target's return fire, yet close enough to register a hit in a single second. This is also far enough to give you a chance to maneuver to avoid being hit by 'dumb' projectiles, like Gauss cannon rounds. Torpedoes, though, would still have predictive algorithms to enable them to, mostly, adapt to a target's movement to gain a 'hit' upon it.
So, early space battles (like the Romulan War) were fought at distances between one, and no more than 20 or so light seconds (torpedoes being exclusively used at anything over one or two light seconds distance).
The longer the distance, the more likely that your target has moved in some manner to avoid being hit, and you are not being able to see that happen from your perspective due to the 'light speed lag'. Although you CAN hit a target at longer ranges, you have to accurately predict where it will be to make that 'hit' happen, because due to the speed of light, you won't see your beam hit for several seconds (remember, your light speed weapon's time to cover the distance, and the same amount of time for the return reflection to be seen by your ship).
Due to the above, most battles would be fought at distances of half a light second or less. The closer you get to your target, the more accurate you can be with weapons fire. But this is also true for your opponent as well.
Back to the 10,000 kilometer range. This is Transporter range. And only a 'combat' range if you are willing to get that close to an 'enemy' ship. Usually via some sort of stealth, or other means, to apply a devastating hit or hits to the foe before you 'hightail' it to more reasonable ranges.
So, the gist of this long comment is that ranges as seen in the movies are not really 'realistic', and should be taken with 'a grain of salt' and mentally should be increased by a factor of 15 to 30 times stated distances to make any kind of sense at all to someone with a modicum of knowledge about actual distances and the speed of light.
This is why i like Elite Dangerous and Terra Invicta games. They put this in those games just like this.
In Elite Dangerous, unless you have big heavy hitting kinetic weapons, you will need laser and plasma to take the shields out.
But the armour can get outfitted to either energy, or Kinetic and Explosive. But i use the armour that does both, yes it hurts my ship. But it will take longer for all weapon types to get through.
I'm almost certainly wrong but my inference for polarized hull plating was quite different. I thought about what happens when a kinetic impact (missile/torpedo/gun) occurs. When this happens, it's usually not a perfect puncture; there is tearing/ripping/shattering involved. What if polarizing the hull is not about damage avoidance but damage triage? Yes, the damage still occurs but the area of damage/depressurization is reduced. It's an idea that, in my mind, goes right along with sealable watertight/airtight bulkheads. Neither of those prevent damage, they minimize it. This might be accomplished by introducing a strong magnetic field across the hull, actually pulling the metallic particles tightly together via magnetism. Think about something like putting tape on glass before you try to drill through it...
That was my thought anyway.
After watching this I am even more convinced that a layered defensive strategy on ships, Space or water, will always be preferable to any 'one size fits all' defensive strategy. Interceptor Missiles, for long range defense against missiles, torpedoes, and strike craft, Lasers, for intermediate defense from the same, some form of flak/CIWS for close in defense against the same, then shields and finally armor both to defend from the above mentioned and from enemy fire that your other defenses can't do anything about. ECM to confuse missiles, torpedoes and other weapons locks would be somewhere in there, probably ahead of the interceptor missiles but I feel like ECM would be used throughout the entire defense envelope.
From a meta-angle, shields getting battered don't require one to adjust the models you're filming (due to damage), just changing the number the actors read. Plus, when ships DO take (persistent) damage, it makes a bigger impact, (see Trek II & III, as well as the 3rd season of Enterprise)
I think secondary shields function like the older CIWS; it's intended to supplement active shields and make upgrading the primary more viable. Ships that live longer provide more information, allowing you to learn what caused the main shields to fail.
It's similar to the Survivor Bias; What killed planes? Look at the planes that came back. You don't add armor to where there are holes, you add it where there are none. Because planes that died had been hit in those places, planes that survived Didn't get hit in those places.
I'll add my own thoughts to that comment. I think that a secondary shield is not intended as a replacement for the primary shield (at least in theory, some captains will still use it that way). It is more intended to help a ship in breaking away from a losing engagement and preventing it from being destroyed should the shields fail due to a random lucky phaser or disrupter hit.
To put it in a table top gaming terms, instead of having to roll 5 or higher (on a standard 6 die) to survive, you now only have to roll 2 or higer.
In addition, I also think that one of the reasons for secondary shielding existing in the 24th century but not before, is because there is a diminishing return on installing extra shield generators or emitters. This creates a practical 'cap' on shield strength for a ship of a certain size and power output. While this 'cap' of course varies per tech level, I think that by the time secondary shields come about is a notable constraint on how capable a shield can be.
The reason why you don't see them earlier is quite simple, hitting the diminishing return threshhold is hard enough on earlier tech bases that it's just not practical to add a secondary shield ask compared to just beefing up the primary shield. It takes up sufficient amounts of extra power generation capacity and space that the trade-offs just aren't worth it yet.
That is not to say you can't do it, but look at a ship like the TOS enterprise. She can only take about 3 maybe 4 proton torpedo's on her standard shield, a secondary shield is just not going to be powerful enough to stop a single torpedo. Installing one anyway will take so much power generation and space that you will need a bigger ship, which means you need more power generation, which needs a larger warp core, which needs a bigger hull, etc. etc. It just spirals away too quickly.
Compare that to say the enterprise F, were adding a couple of extra modular pallets with shield generators just means giving up a lab or 2 and putting some crew in shared quarters, while also providing a strong enough shield to still stop stray weapons fire. All you need to do is hook those shielding pallets into the power systems and have them automatically switch on the moment the primary shields go down, which means installing them is only a 2 hour field job for the engineering crew. It's simply a much more relevant technology at that point, especially when compared when combined with a likely increase in other defensive systems such as CIWS and E-war equipment.
When you said something about Star Trek VI that the Enterprise's shields collapsed after a couple of torpedoes, made me remember a interview on the 25th Anniversary Special I think... Andrew Probert explains that the shields are up during the battle. We see that the damage doesn't penetrate the hull until the shields have collapsed totally that the last torp fired from Chang's ship. When we go to the interior we see the shockwave damage.
I would to see future Janeway's deployable armor be worked into Trek. Like a really tough Neutronium version made up of pre-programmed matter that ensheaths the hull upon being released from tanks, or another type of containment system within a ship.
I believe ( perhaps after the dominion war ) the federation acquired the knowledge of making neutronium Hull plating . ( uss shepherd) the 22nd century gargarin class refit. . The dominion used it on a ground base . And apparently, they were capable of absorbing quantum torpedoes. ( o brien , to the death) . Dominion headquarters on cardassia as well
Neutronium Armor would be "Story Line" breaking, it's too good and powerful of a defense.
@kamenriderblade2099 it sounds like starfleet spends 20 years getting it too much, and it's not pure nuetrouim. , it's an alloy mixed with nuetrouim. .
They have them in, but haven't I haven't seen them in combat. . But star fleet technology has moved past the point that the older powers are a treat.
In the books , it and transwarp ( quantum slipstream) causes an alliance of romulan, breen , thoian, and tzcenketi. To unite against the federation, as a last chance before the new technology becomes fleet wide . Makes future war impossible.
@@kamenriderblade2099 I would probably make it an alloy. Not 100% pure, and would require a new power system. Something like a vacuum energy generator, in addition to the warp core/EPS systems. To help power it and other primary systems. One could always make up exceptions for when it doesn't work, like against certain types of weapons, in certain anomalies/areas of space, and auto retracting after taking critical damage etc.
I'd love to see a video here on this subject.
"she's packing quite a wallop shields weakening"-Scotty
The deflectors were a type of shield - deflecting particles from the ship as it traveled forward. Deflectors were used a couple of time in the various franchises as a weapon.
In Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, when Kirk says to go to Yellow Alert, Saavik reports "Energizing defense fields" and the status graphics shows some form of protective field being deployed around the bridge and immediate surrounding areas. It's worth noting that this is distinctly different that the "shields" graphics, as seen on the Reliant.
As i recall, Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise actually has a 1-sentence comment on it, describing it as a magnetic field that reinforces the hull (although it's been a few years since I read it, I might be slightly off). This sounds similar to your description of Polarized Hull Plating.
Another interesting note - the original published materials for Star Trek TMP describe the Enterprise as having an experimental new shield system that included a layer of matter that was constantly replenished by a transporter-type system, making it much more potent than previous shields. And the TMP Enterprise *survives* a hit from the V'Ger digitizer with some shields remaining, which seems much more impressive than any other shielding seen before or after. I've head-cannoned that there turned out to be a serious flaw with this tech, and Star Fleet returned to "conventional" shield systems.
This had to be an early version of the TNG style structural integrity fields, but only able to protect key areas. By the time of TNG the fields ran throughout the entire hull.
Shield emitters can and do burn out regardless of how strong they are.
Secondary shields can be used when the main shields go down or burnout giving them some extra protection.
starfleet should have a 3 layer defense system
1.) point defense phasers
2.) shields (primary/secondary)
3.) armor plating.
Electromagnetic shields have been around since the late 80's. The British had the first system used in combat in 1991. Today the most popular system is the Israeli Trophy system. The coolest thing is it attenuates shockwaves preventing TBI.
The best way to run lasers is a lot of them at VERY low power and then when one of them hits something (i..e how laser range finders work) then that beam is fed more energy and destroys the target reducing the chance of a miss.
The slight downside being you make your ship look like a laser spitting hedgehog in this mode.
I believe we are on our way to see shields in our children's children lifetime. We already have a sort of "primative shields" in the 21st century today. Im talking about Active Protection Systems (APS).
APS is a system mounted on the most modern main battle tanks that consists of a doppler or millimeter band rader and projectile launchers strategically placed on the Tanks turret. Once the radar detects an incoming object that is large and fast enough to threaten the vehicle it commands one of the launchers to automatically fire its own volley of munitions and destroys the misslie before it makes contact with the Tank.
The lack of CIWS has always bothered me in Trek. A 24th century vessel should have no problem incorporating a rail gun type CIWS to shoot down incoming torpedo's which would allow the shields to deal with energy based weapons fire.
That targeting is done by touchpad on LCARS makes me want to scream-I have trouble messing with touchscreens in a panic let alone if something is coming at me at a significant portion of light speed
The idea of using plasma weapons as a kind of WW2 style AA guns of naval vessels makes a lot of sense before shield tech was what it was in even TOS. 👍
Love the thought you put into this. Wish they had someone like you in the actual writers' room to clean up the mess they've made.
I always thought it was interesting, especially concerning the Federation and Starfleet as a whole, being more of a defensive postured fleet, that they hadnt figured out a way for ship shielding to absorb the energy from incoming energy weapons and use it to immediately bolster their shielding or their Phaser arrays.
Effectively recycling the incoming energy into large battery banks inside of the ship and using that to bolster their ships shield output, and its own phaser array. Granted that tech would have its downsides, O'Brien would never be done replacing EPS relays and conduits due to overloads, and this tech woudl have no appreciable bonuses over regular shields to defending against missles or torpedoes.
As always embrace the CIWS.
Great video as always.
As for secondary/emergency shielding, I could see it being useful to allow time for the primary shields to recharge or to last just long enough to make an escape. Assuming the ship has the space available for the other system.
The reason you want Multi-Layered Shields is that in most space battles, once you take the Shields down past 0, if you do enough extra damage on the final hit there seems to be some blow back that damages the Deflector Shields & requires time to repair it and bring it back online.
Also having Multi-Layered Shields makes it harder for any Bleed-Through Damage to get to your Hull Armor.
And Remember, the Nova-class had a fast "1-minute" recharge if you took it off-line.
Imagine having Multiple layers or Emitters for Shields that you can swap to bring online to full Shield Strength.
It would make conventional battle "Very Difficult" and turn Space Battles into a long Pro Wrestling Fight in Space with StarShips.
My Multiple Defense Layers:
1a) Normal Hull Armor Plating
1b) Ablative Armor
1c) Ablative Hull Generated Armor
2a) Skin Shields that hug your ships Hull for that inner Shield protection layer
2b) Shield Orb (Some form of Internal Orb that projects a Shield through sub-space and out into real-space locally that lies between the outter and inner shields
2c) Deflector Shields emitted from your Deflector Dish
(Multiple Large Deflector Dishes would allow multiple Deflector Shields to swap Up/Time in battle instantaneously)
2d) Shield Drones = Autonomous AI driven Floating Auto-Defense Drones that have "Dual Shield Emitters" that can block outside of your Shield Bubble.
The Shield Drones can follow your Ship and be tied to your ships navigation
The Enemy would have limited options:
1) To either "War of Attrition" you and make you run out of fuel to power your reactors to recharge your shields.
Hope you didn't get the call out for back-up or nobody friendly comes by and interrupts the battle.
2) Blitz through as much damage in as small of a time as possible to burn through multiple Shield Layers and start damaging the hull.
Hard, but not impossible, you'd have to be specced out for that type of combat or be severely over-powered to do it
3) Find tricks to bypass multiple layers of shields, those tricks exist, but they usually are hard to pull off when you have a competent protagonist Ship & Crew.
4) Chuck Giant Objects at your StarShip that would do massive damage like what Riker did with chucking a Asteroid at the Shrike or the Shrike chucking a Small StarShip at your bigger Starship
Physical Damage works great when you have enough raw mass to throw at close range.
This Scenario won't always be available, a cheaper method would be Anti-Matter Bullets with some form of Machine Gun to "Rapid-Fire" at close range to drain shields
But having Multiple Layers of Shields doesn't pre-clude defeat, it just makes it challenging and requires a thinking mans writer that knows the in-universe lore to defeat it.
But good offense like CIWS or any form of Energy Projectiles to blast down incoming Physical Projectile or Energy Blast at range would be just as valid for Point Defense.
Lasers in Trek are kind of a joke actually. Nobody past the 22nd century feels even remotely threatened by them.
I always thought defenses work better when they match the weapon type, energy on energy and matter on matter. Armor would be better against shells, shields against beams, interceptors against missiles.
There's also the issue where a laser has to be focused on its target for a full light-second, which is difficult to maintain if the target is in motion and not taking the laser strike full on.
Wonderful and fast night video fascinating
Very Cool Video. I remember your short about the Kelvin Universe anti-missile defense weapons (that look like intelligent lights for shows on stage).
I can see why it's not as big a deal in T.V. with Star Trek with those kind of defenses - but in real combat situations - anti-missile technology is key to a fleet (in sea or space).
I recall. The flack. ( ciws) in Star Trek 09 .
First. 23rd century version was effective on borg anti matter missile..( late 24th / 25th )
Second. The commentary on the movie said . The idea was ciws. But also, at close range, they were an anti shield weapon. .
I think certifiably ingame. His nebula class video.he said around the Dominion War period or the build-up, they were testing a new ciws system on a nebula.
My polarized hull plating head cannon was similar in function but slightly different in execution. In my head cannon beams and toroeados carry an overall positive or negative charge based on the faction. So when polarising the hull you apply a positive or negative charge to the hull to match the charge of the incoming attack. The overall effect is the same though if the hull plating charge is strong enough you can effectively hold the incoming beam or torpedo at arms length until the hull charge is drained or the incoming attack burns out/detonates. Typically beams would drain the charge on the hull while a torpeados would prematurely detonate, causing splash damage by sheer brute force. Similarly, if the incoming attacks had a stronger charge or enough momentum they could brute force their way through and impact the hull plating.
I actually see a good reason for having a back-up shield. I know you made the argument that why have two when you can have one better one but, as we see in the media as shields start to be depleted keeping them engaged puts a strain on the system causing power spikes and blown circuits. So with this in mind I see it as being in a similar concept to giving a nuclear sub a back up diesel generator. If your primary shield generator or circuitry blows or burns out in the heat of combat its good to have something to fall back on while you try to effect repairs especially if it is in a running battle. Also if you have regenerative shields you could cycle between the two allowing one to recover while the other fends off the incoming attack.
There was also a transitional weapon system in the 2260s. In TOS: "Balance of Terror," we see Phasers used with a proximity mode, which creates large explosions that were capable of hazarding the Bird of Prey. It stands to reason that such explosive blasts would also be useful in clearing out long-range torpedo fire. This would make other CIWS systems obsolete, and could explain why they fall completely out of use. (The penchant for ships to fight at Warp speeds during TOS likely also outmoded point-defense fire.)
Proximity phasers in that episode is mostly because the writers hadn't come up with the idea of photons yet.
they could also introduce a feature i've toyed with in my own writings, layered absorption shielding. essentially you have three to four shields layered together, each shield recharges itself by absorbing the energy of enemy weapons and channeling that back into the shield matrix powering the shield with the enemies own weapons, by layering the shields and allowing some bleed through you can disperse that energy over multiple shield grid preventing them from overloading as easily from enemy weapons energy exceeding the capacity to power them.
That sounds a lot like the "Tholian Web", which would make for great Space Chain Link fencing IMO.
Can you do a video on the top 5 classes of ships that drove victory in the Dominion war.
Hello Venom Geek.
One aspect not mentioned was a part of, albeit a tiny part of, the old Star Fleet Battles rules... Dirigible Shields. Shields able to be 'steered' to a vector of incoming attack. Although this does leave parts of the hull unprotected when the shield is maneuvered away from its 'normal' protective arc, the system does have the benefit of enabling one to 'double' shields to a particular vector of attack. In effect, the four shields (port, starboard, ventral, and dorsal) each contribute to cover a portion of the bow shield's arc of protection and distribute the incoming fire amongst themselves. Thus, making the covered shield arc far more difficult to penetrate, since it has to overcome a total of five shield generation systems, even though four of them can only absorb a fraction (a relatively significant fraction) of what they 'normally' could absorb and redirect.
The specifics of this system would be a long and drawn out matter of tech-babble, but suffice it to say that the ventral and dorsal, or the port and starboard shields could be maneuvered to partially cover the bow. The aft shield would have to extend its coverage to cover more area of the hull and would become less effective overall, but the bow would thus have additional coverage and protection from attack. And, be able to withstand far more devastating hits. This 'system' would, of course, extend to be available to 'double' any protected shield arc.
A further development of this technology would be to have 'fixed' shields, as per the Trek Universal standard, and then a complete secondary set of 'dirigible' shields as additional coverage.
As for armor... 'Tritanium' seems to be the 'industry standard' for ship hull protection. Tritanium would seem to be an alloy of Titanium, where three atoms of Titanium are tightly bonded into a molecule. This would yield a tough material, for the most part, but not something that could not be bettered with the available tech in the trek universe. Such better armors are not seen, and I blame both the writers and technical advisors for this lack.
A 'for instance' would be a type of armor that a friend and I dreamed up decades ago for our own 'trek' writing group. Before explaining the specifics of the armor, let me say that the available 'trek' technology should be able to produce the new armor, since it can, in some way, bond three atoms of titanium into a tough molecule to act as the armor's main material component. So, doing so, means you have the ability to manipulate atoms to create molecules to order.
Now, having said that, the new material was named TaC-TiC, or Tactic Armor. It was named thusly due to the name TiC-TaC being seen is 'silly' for some reason (humans, go figure). Tactic armor is basically a bonding of Tantalum, Titanium, and Carbon atoms to create a multi-layered material at the atomic scale.
To imagine this, think of a tennis ball court, without a net. Now layer the entire surface with beach balls. Positioned to where every ball touches four others. Now, lay down a layer of basketballs, so that each basketball rests in the little 'hollow' where four beach balls touch each other. Oh, yes, one should color the beach balls in two colors. For this thought experiment, we'll say blue and red. Rinse and repeat by adding a new layer of beach balls, and then a new layer of basketballs, etc.
The beach balls are laid down in an 'alternating' pattern, so that seen from above, they would make diagonal lines of blue and red. Thus, where each four such balls touch each other, a single red ball would be touching four blue ones around it, and the same is true for the blue balls.
Now, consider that the blue balls are Titanium atoms, The red ones are Tantalum atoms, and the basketballs are Carbon. Atomic bonds are Titanium and Carbon, and Tantalum and Carbon. So, Tantalum Carbide, and Titanium Carbide. And thus: TaC-TiC.
Now before you go and start pounding your keyboard and telling me 'That's just not possible!', it is... possible. The covalences of the atoms DOES work, and the resulting pair of molecules should be able to be 'stacked' in the manner suggested. In fact, the Tantalum and Titanium atoms would 'share' electrons with the Carbon atoms freely, although tightly enough to make very secure and 'tough' molecular bonds.
The projected strength of this alloy is upwards of 32 to 40 times that of high carbon steel alloys, and its weight would be less than one quarter of the same volume of steel alloy. Thus making a very tough, and relatively 'light weight' armor material.
There are some properties of the alloy that are desirable, and some that are not. Titanium would make for a very tough alloy, but, Titanium is known as the nymphomaniac metal, in that you get it hot enough, it will bond with anything. Tantalum would be far 'weaker' than the Titanium, but far more flexible. The results of the two are a combined metal alloy that is both tough, and flexible. Enough so that the chance of 'shattering' would be significantly reduced.
To mitigate the bonding issues with Titanium, one could alternate layers of TaC-TiC with layers of a Boron-Carbon-Silicon alloy. This would give the Titanium something else to bond with should it be 'energized' sufficiently to break its 'normal' bond with the friendly, nearby, carbon atom.
So, the overall weight of the armor decreases, since the atomic 'weight' of the Boro-Carbon-Silicate (BCS) layer is less than the TaC-TiC layer's materials. And now you can see how the total weight of armor is 'reduced' to such a fraction of something like steel, even though Titanium and Tantalum are heavier than iron atoms, as to 'atomic weight'.
The fact we cannot produce such a material currently, has no bearing up on the discussion, since we are talking about a technology base sufficiently advanced enough to allow one to create a molecule containing three Titanium atoms. In fact, the industrial process needed to make Tritanium alloy should be easily cranked around and used to create both the TaC-TiC and BCS layers with ease.
Since the resulting alloy is lighter than Tritanium, one should be able to put far thicker layers of the new armor upon the same ship's hull, for the same 'mass' or 'weight' of armoring, and thus make the hull far, far more resistant to damage.
Between the installation of 'dirigible' shields, and the new armor, one has a ship that is many times more resistant to damage from ANY kind of 'trek' style weaponry used to date. And we are talking about orders of magnitude here, not just a 'percentage' increase in protection.
Just some considered thought... like it, or not, your decision.
Another brilliant episode!👍 Thanks man!
7:12 What's the ship between the warp delta and freedom class?
The freedom is newer faster. Better
Warp Delta aka Ganges was basically upgraded Emmette class. It was rather designed to move with Warp 2, though could be upgraded probably to Warp 3. Freedom was designed for Warp 5 engine, though die to NX disaster, it was downsized to Warp 4. It is probably the reason why we not see Dedalus, until stability problem was resolved.
@TheRezro I was referring to the very small ship in between the freedom and delta as shown in the image
@@arcticshark1808 Ok. I also would like to know? It is to small for Emmette/Neptune?
@@arcticshark1808 That my friend is the Phobos, it's a tiny human corvette, basically starfleet's version of the klingon raider/romulan sparrow/vulcan d'vahl
I thought the redundant shield was the idea for an outer bubble shield and an inner skin shield. When the outer one was damaged you pulled it in to recharge while expanding the inner one into a bubble.
Maybe also add in defense fields for critical areas as we see in TWOK as part of the multi layer defensive system.
Star Trek shielding and weapons systems are so very underestimated… ST keeps showing how the older (TOS era) phasers are casually multi-continental weapons and can be charged to planetary weapons… and TNG era shields just tank these phasers endlessly
8:43 Does this become the defensive fields we see on the Enterprise in TWoK when the Reliant first approaches (before Kirk actually orders shields up)?
Good video. I loved it. only one issue. its super minor but its CIWS, not CWIS due to it being an acronym. yeah thats my 2 cents that bugged me. OCD really made me type this
so for the redundant shields, couldn't one be a bubble and one be a skin shield? maybe the bubble is adaptive and the skin shield is regenerative for best of all worlds defense?
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and executed and very well informatively explained in every detail way shape and form provided on this format and subject matter indeed, On explaining everything on and about hull plating and various sheilds strengths and how they actually work in defense on protecting the ships from acquiring major hull damage and so forth indeed!.
I think it should be the other way around. 6:33 Energy shields stop energy hits and physical armor stops physical hits.
Worth pointing out that Star Fleet Battles have all of them! :D The old-gen Romulan ships like warbird have armor. Everybody have shields. And some power have ADDs, which is basically CIWS to counter the missiles (drones in SFB).
11:37 what shipclass is the lower ship
a strong offense is the best defense. because you cannot just sit there and take shots all day. so i say a fleet with starships loaded with great speed, great shielding and great firepower and can field them in numbers should win out in small to medium conflicts more.
great video
Something I wish was presented more accurately is the detonation yield and absorption when photon torpedoes are hitting shields. The kinetic energy of the torpedo impact itself, an object weighing hundreds or even thousands of pounds, and traveling at some percentage of lightspeed would be enough to destroy a sizable asteroid..Add to that A 1.5kg anti-matter warhead will yield 50 megatons of energy. They are always shown mostly as small explosives. The energy required to absorb that much kinetic and explosive yield would be mind boggling
You have given me an idea of the first chief engineer to strap 10 em-33 carbines onto a magnetic maintenance pod and give it a go.
3:03
Um... I'm not a Star Trek expert, but I do know a few things... And I can tell you right now that this explanation *_does not_* fit with the NX-01. There's no "repulsor field" being involved.
_"In Star Trek Monthly issue 87, according to André Bormanis: 'To minimize potential damage from weapons fire and other space hazards, NX-01 incorporates a polarization matrix in its_
_armored hull plating. Through the application of electromagnetic power, the metal hull of the ship can be made several orders of magnitude harder than it is in its non-polarized state.'"_
From my understanding, this is actually based on a real-world concept where ceramics can become stronger in tensile strength through an electrical field being applied to them because the grain boundaries in the ceramic are aligned in a uniform nature. It could theoretically drastically improve the durability of the ceramic (in this case armor/hull) depending on the specific ceramic composite and the electrical field being used. You can even adapt these into piezoelectric ceramics where the very fact that they are put under pressure (from, say, a torpedo hit) generates even more power and further strengthens the hull plating.
Would love to see a collaboration with lore-reloaded and Ric
Quick question, what is the difference between force fields like those on the Cardassian orbital weapons platforms and starship shields?
Not too sure although the ones on the weapons platformd are significantly more resilient
Thank,s for presentation much to mull over Peace happy summer
Sheilds holding Captain! That's all I need to hear, don't need to know how they work!
First time I had a video recommended from your channel was the Rockwell Class video.
Then I find this and you bring up the Rockwell class and suggest that nobody likes you talking about it.
It's literally the reason I know you exist xD
Venom thank you for this! I didn’t realize there are so many types of defenses even though I was familiar with the terminology!
What about amor and prevent transporters? Hull polarized plating if I recall correctly stopped some transporters not all. Can you do a video about that?
Shouldn't do. We see plenty of aliens beam through Hull plating although it might make it a little harder.
Deflector Shields are one piece of Star Trek technology that is actually feasible to build in our lifetime unlike warp drive and artificial gravity. Beam weapons and other types of Star Trek weapons are also feasible.
Cheers.
Have u see the chart for protection
Depending on the multi-shield systems if its multilayered, alternating or something in-between you'd be able to extend the secondary grid to cover another ship without the drawback of stretching your primary shields too thin
Shields can hold off energy attacks that can burn whole cities from orbit. That’s amazing.
Would have been nice at some point to see the Federation reverse-engineer the Borg's adaptive shielding tech. Two or three shots, and that weapon(at least at a certain frequency) becomes utterly ineffective. I know, plot, but still.
I’m schtill at the end here… *passes out from alcohol poisoning*
Energy shields strike me as one of the more plausible pieces of Trek technology...extremely intense electric fields...ions marshalled by those electric fields into dense layers...I can sort of get a feel for how they *_might_* work.
It's the things like transporter beams and holodecks that come across as the more scientifically "wacky" ideas.
every time you talk about starship weight i wonder if you forget you're discussing spacecraft
"Energy" weapons are very visible, maybe it's matter, and light, photons, don't have electric charge, no effect from a EM repulsion.
The antimatter warhead is a terrible idea. Too dangerous. But in space, that would generate only lots of gamma radiation, no explosion.
Energy is just a relation between physical magnitudes, it's not a "thing".
A ballistic missile means lots of energy too.
I think by the dominion war standard phasers and fire control are capable of being used as a cwis without the need for a dedicated system
I always laugh when I see star trek throwing photon torpedoes like candy. When each one is an antimatter bomb that makes the Tsar Bomba look tiny.
I dont know, multi-layeres shields could be useful if they are different types. Say for instance, your primary is regenerative while your secondary is reactive. So if your primary goes down, it has a chance to recharge while your secondary will do a good job at holding off attacks. Just look at the beating the Scimitar took from 3 warships, including a salvo of successive hits from quantum and photon torpedos, on top of thr multiple disruptor and phaser hits. Her shields were still up.
That's kinda how the US and Israel handle missile defense now, layer upon layer for different purposes. THAAD for one range of altitude and type of missile, Patriot for another, etc. US has like 6 layers of missile defense systems I believe, and Israel a couple more.
edit: so far I've found THADD, Aegis, Patriot, M-SHORAD, and various land based CIWS.
Its too bad we never saw a gattling phaser cannon, something we would recognize as a CIWS.
I don't know how do shields "regenerate" because it's always like "shields at 15%".🤔 I presume they recharge in a certain period of time, but what is it or how they work?
Star trek nemesis had primary and secondary shields on the scimitar, the enterprise E threw everything and barely scratched it. So that means it had 200% shields???? Or super powerful 100% shields??? They had to ram it to scratch damage it.
It has 2x Very Powerful Shields that can cover for each other.
That's why it took a 3 VS 1 & Ramming when the Shields were down to win.
I love the Rockwell class
Thank you! You just solved one of my TOS Mysteries, ie when Sulu always said "Captain, Shields just snapped on!" Like, wouldn't he have to push a button?! But naw, its auto reactive shields.
Question: What did you think of the idea in Mem Alpha that Enterprise A's shields in ST6 was actually an invisible layer of metal spread by replicators over the hull, hence the visible scorch marks from Chang's torpedoes?
Brilliant as usual. Your videos are the highlights of my drives
No that's thermal bleed through
Nice work as always! One thing I am curious about is the extent to which armor schemes and subdivision are incorporated into ships in Trek, and if they have structures similar to citadels and armored conning towers. This may also explain another reason why Starfleet is so fond of the saucer as it is geometrically an easy shape to section off.
btw do you realise that in the image with the two daedalus class ships launching missiles you used Roskosmos Soyuz space launch systems which are designed for both crewed and uncrewed orbital launches and not ICBMs ?
Wouldn't the phaser array be a cwis? I remember the Enterprise D shooting down a bunch of fighters so I imagine the 360 array could shoot at torpedoes?
So technology 9 times. Tech once. If correct I’ll sign up
2:13 - What is that abomination? Do the nacelles even have line of sight?
That my friend is a rockwell and yes the nacelles do have line of sight.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I just realized that Rockwell is basically a early version of Bonaventure class.
what is somewhat interesting in star trek is the fire rate and for the most part the lack of "spam". While a full broadside of a galaxy class, looks spectacular it is not a macross missile massacre. For my two cents, some developments must have led to a necessity for rather heavy high yield and high energy weapons (looking how even tiny hand phaser f*Inf vaporize whole people, this works out, a shipboard vaporizes buildings for breakfast and ships mostly have some dents and scratches from it)
It is plausible that hull technology/materiel science (Armor) arrived at a point where large numbers of small explosives (nukes) would be considered nothing but fireworks
Yeah well Nukes in vacuum basically need direct contact with the target.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 thanks for the answer - great vids!
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I think the best way is to use Nukes is as nukepump laser or Casaba-Howitzer. So basically they would work similar to HEAT charges. Nuclear weapon lost lot of potential in space. But it still would be stronger then conventional explosion. Sinking target in radiation.
Seeing the close in weapon systems on star fleet ships compared to battle star galactica make me shake my head in embarrassment
USAF: you're interesting .
All hand level one battlestations, arm the CWIS, arm the Tristans and Isolde, arm all launchers with with neidharts.
Oh wait
Wrong sci fi!
So why is strange new worlds using skin shields for the enterprise?
I always thought the NX-01 should have had countermeasures instead of "hull polarization."
I think In the romulan war they probably hastily added countermeasures
@@venomgeekmedia9886 My guess is that polarized plating probably use magnetism to disperse low level radiation like plasma or laser weapon. And well. Actual radiation.
I think the main reason why shows do not mention countermeasures is because those concepts were not so well known back then. Even if especially the books have them as writers have more time to explain what those things are. For example TOS did have drone ships. But people lot of people actually realized that only when concept become well known in 90's.
first + thank you for the vid!
B5 earthforce had excellent ciws
@venomgeekmedia9886
Regard shields in real life. Think is that as far we know it is impossible to manipulate what we may call "kinetic field". It is completely made up concept. Yes. There is magnetism, but magnetism has severe limitations. Two most realistic types of shields are "plasma shielding" what use plasma keep in magnetic field to disperse radiation, plasma and direct energy weapons. Additional bonus is that it is used also as radiator. Though it would not stop kinetic weapons. Though hot plasma and magnets may protect from small debris. The more valid way to make shield is actually to use miniature drones to redirect kinetic impostor and move block of armour on way of the ammunition (Borg sort of did that?). My guess is that Shield used in Trek is actually based on gravity manipulation. Basically using properties of warp engines. You could in theory redirect munitions or extend relative way between you and target to simply go out of range of the enemy. In such case only small portions of dispersed enemy would hit the ship. What would explain exploding panels, but not the ship. Gravity manipulation is though as far as we known not a thing... yet at least. But FTL civilization probably would have this tech.
Secondary shield may be valid solution against specific weapons, what can make shield short circuit and drop entirely. If such weapons become a thing in the 25'th century. Then it could make sense. Otherwise not.
could a tractor beam stop a photon torp?
I wonder if the systems of Space Battleship Yamato 2199 are similar to how Starfleet Starships function?
I had come up with a head-canon early version of polarized haul plating for pre-WW3 Earth jet planes. As like a replacement for modern stealth tech, bouncing and absorbing radar signings as well as dissipating vehicle heat signatures. Also, later 21st century lasers... at least to stop pilots from getting dazzled while in flight.
I should get a patient so that Lockheed Martin doesn't steal this idea 🤣