No, that would be firing an anti-radiation missile back at them, which is an escalation to lethal violence. What our friend here did was more akin to ripping the gun out of their hands with a bullwhip and breaking it over her knee, then throwing the pieces in the ocean. Not even potentially lethal, it just took the opponents means to fight away. And about as unexpected, given how difficult either of those feats would be IRL.
Don't blame physics for your vague description Not that there is anything wrong with a vague description, while "the square of the signal strength" could mean anywhere from the same signal strength (or even lower power) to dozens of orders of magnitude stronger, depending on what units you used to measure it(1Watt squared=1Watt, 30dBm squared=900dBm aka 1e87 Watts), I thought it was obviously intended as a reference to "much stronger" without giving actual numbers. It also is the sort of line I could see someone saying/thinking so it worked in context.
Regular tracking means that the radar is scanning you every time it rotates to face in your direction, which for most radars is anywhere from once every thirty seconds to once every couple of minutes depending on how fast the radar antenna is rotating. Generally the faster the update speed the shorter range the radar in those cases.
That isn't even true for mechanically scanning radar, much less electronically scanning ones (which most modern radars are.
First there are three basic functions/types of radar:
Search radar - "Look all over and see if there's something in the area", a mechanically scanning radar would act like you described, an electronically scanning one however would be able to move the beam nearly arbitrarily allowing the operator to bias the search pattern in favor of likely approach paths, with less likely approaches getting fewer pings, or have some of the beam time used for tracking objects the search spotted.
Tracking radar - "I think there's something there and I want to be sure/see where it goes" rather than scanning as widely as possible the radar would be scanning around where a you spotted something, this would produce a large number of hits on the target and let you get a fairly exact plot of where they are and where they're going (with a good guess about where they came from). Old mechanically scanning radars could only track a small number of objects and only if they had little angular separation between them, so you'd generally have several tracking radars slaved to a single search radar, however with electronic scanning there's no limit on angular separation within the view angle of the radar, the radar can track many more objects effectively simultaneously.
Targeting radar - unlike the other two military use only "I know there's something there, I want to know it's location with enough accuracy to put a bullet in it". It was often the same hardware as the tracking radar, just shifting from frequent pulses at the area around the previous contact to near constant pings at the target to keep it illuminated, unfortunately this also tells the target you have a target lock on it. With electronically scanning doppler radars this sort of radar has much less use - you don't have to keep a constant beam on the target to know exactly where it is.
Additionally, since most modern radars use encoded pulses and/or frequency hopping to allow them to maintain a high scan rate and still get a long range (if all the pulses you transmit are the same, you can only look at things that return an echo in the time between two pulses, everything beyond that you have to ignore because it will look like it came from a different direction than it actually did, if you can identify which pulse the echo is from you're not limited like that) and to reduce noise clutter and (for military applications) help eliminate the effects of ECM the target has the problem of sequential pulses not being the same signal which makes it more difficult to tell if you're being hit by enough radar beam to count as a target lock.
Not familiar with the specifics of SM2, but PATRIOT missiles don't act like that. PATRIOT uses TVM, or Track via Missile which has the missile act as an additional RECIEVER for the ground radar, it never transmits towards the target, and the radar system was very carefully designed to make it nearly impossible to tell when the radar is guiding a missile on an intercept to you vs. when it's simply looking at you.
You do have the option of pulsing a fake "missile lock" at any target you wish to designate - something that helps relive annoyance at Jordanian planes who are flying EXACTLY along the border, or flew directly towards you...and broke off just before crossing the border, although I'm pretty sure it's too short ranged to have actually scared them.
My experience is kind of out of date, as it's twenty years old (I worked on radars in the Swedish Air Force in the late 1990s) and the only reinforcement I've gotten for it is from the flight simming community.
Basically, as far as I remember of radar warning receivers, the situation is indeed as I described. A radar warning receiver will indicate every time a radar sends energy in your direction. It is immediately detectable because the kind of signal strength you need to get an actual readable return is rather large at the half-way point due to the inverse square law - i.e. the energy pulse that hits the target is much more powerful than what the antenna receives as a return.
A ground- or ship-based general air search radar with a rotating antenna will make your RWR indicate once per rotation - every time it faces in your direction, or if you're really close and you can get the back lobe of the radar, twice per rotation.
An airborne radar like on a fighter will give you an indication every time it scans in your direction as well - this is usually considerably more often since such a radar typically scans from side to side. (this is where the age of my experience probably trips me up, because I've never flown a sim with an "accurate" depiction of an AESA radar).
The more accurate the radar tries to be, the more often it will scan, and the more noise an RWR will make. If something is scanning you several times per second, chances are you're being tracked by a fire control radar of some sort, and if it starts looking at *you* exclusively then it's locked on.
The ease by which radar signals are detected is one of the reasons why EMCON is a thing, and fighter aircraft tend to keep their radars off until directed otherwise by off-board sensor platforms like AWACS.
A radar warning receiver will indicate every time a radar sends energy in your direction. It is immediately detectable because the kind of signal strength you need to get an actual readable return is rather large at the half-way point due to the inverse square law - i.e. the energy pulse that hits the target is much more powerful than what the antenna receives as a return.
That much is (I believe) mostly still true. However it just tells you a radar is looking at you. Unless someone fires an active seeker at you you can't tell the difference between "You're being tracked by a radar" (which is something you'd expect a traffic control radar to do, especially if you were near a no fly zone) and "you are being targetted".
The only case I know of where it wouldn't be true is if someone used a spread spectrum radar where the energy of the beam is spread over a wide spectrum and if you don't know which frequencies are the radar signal it might very well be below the noise threshhold, much less the alarm threshhold. Not actually familiar with any system that works like that but it is possible.
The ease by which radar signals are detected is one of the reasons why EMCON is a thing, and fighter aircraft tend to keep their radars off until directed otherwise by off-board sensor platforms like AWACS.
That's still mostly true, but the difference between tracking and fire control is a lot blurrier - a civilian tracking radar with little computer support, and a military fire control radar with a lot of computing support might look similar to a simple radar warning receiver.
That much is (I believe) mostly still true. However it just tells you a radar is looking at you. Unless someone fires an active seeker at you you can't tell the difference between "You're being tracked by a radar" (which is something you'd expect a traffic control radar to do, especially if you were near a no fly zone) and "you are being targetted".
It's a matter of update rate. No fire control radar of any sort would be looking once or twice a minute only - that's way too slow to give the weapon system an idea of where the target is and where it's going. The solution is to update more often to get a better view, which means painting the target more often, which means their RWR goes off more often.
The RWR goes from "blip........blip.......blip......blip" to "bilop-bilop-bilop-bilop" to "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep" as the radar goes from pure search to track-while-scan to single-target-track... except it makes way more different noises than that depending on the type of radar, with pilots being trained to recognize different radars by the noise the RWR makes.
The thing is though that the "bilop-bilop-bilop" noise doesn't tell the target that it's tracking him in particular, just that it's looking very intently in his general direction. It could be targeting anyone in the vicinity, but generally it's always bad news when something scanning rapidly over you like that and it's not a known friendly.
It's a matter of update rate. No fire control radar of any sort would be looking once or twice a minute only - that's way too slow to give the weapon system an idea of where the target is and where it's going. The solution is to update more often to get a better view, which means painting the target more often, which means their RWR goes off more often.
I know. The point is with a electronically scanning radar:
1)You get a pulse on target every few seconds, even if you're just tracking where it is.
2)You don't need more than a pulse every few seconds to target a weapon.
I see this, consider that we're talking about a self-aware transforming fighter jet and think "She's totally going to end up building Starscream, isn't she?"
So, funny story. When I first spotted the "lexiocide" typo, I didn't think it was a typo. I thought it was something I'd never heard of, but was entirely willing to believe the ABB were known for. So, I Googled it, and found out that Google didn't know what I was talking about - in fact, the one result that Google could find for "what is lexiocide" was page 1 of this thread. The only interesting result I could find with any relevant search was completely unrelated - there's apparently a "Lexicide" blog lecturing people about grammar and bemoaning the death of the English language out there, so, I guess that's a thing.
I don't know what you were aiming for here, so let's just say, I rather hope that you do.
You say "angels" instead of "angles" several times in 1.3 - the nemesis of 85% of all fanfiction.net writers has struck once more. Your autocorrupt is impressive, you should watch out for Sith Lords looking to add it to their training regimen.
Aside from all that, this is a nice story you have here, and, colloquially speaking, I can't wait to read more.
So, funny story. When I first spotted the "lexiocide" typo, I didn't think it was a typo. I thought it was something I'd never heard of, but was entirely willing to believe the ABB were known for. So, I Googled it, and found out that Google didn't know what I was talking about - in fact, the one result that Google could find for "what is lexiocide" was page 1 of this thread. The only interesting result I could find with any relevant search was completely unrelated - there's apparently a "Lexicide" blog lecturing people about grammar and bemoaning the death of the English language out there, so, I guess that's a thing.
I don't know what you were aiming for here, so let's just say, I rather hope that you do.
"synonym" is not how I'd describe it. "angels" is the radio call for altitude (measured in ~1000 ft steps) so an aircraft announcing it is at "angels 20", is talking about flight level 200 or 20,000 ft. I'm not familiar with anyone using it outside air operations.
We know. However the people who have been using the terminology professionally for over 60 years are going to keep using it regardless of what the popular mythology is.
Yes, and? I'm pretty certain they didn't remove Angels from the bible after Ziz showed up, nor has Cupid been removed from Valentines day, nor any other multitude of instances of angels in media or common language.
We know. However the people who have been using the terminology professionally for over 60 years are going to keep using it regardless of what the popular mythology is.
The VF-31 Siegfried has a disappointing lack of MMM capability compared to, say, the -25 Messiah from Frontier. Because they trade out half of their internal missile capacity for the multifunction drone plates, and carry a fold speaker in place of the -30 Chronos' missile array. A VF-31E like Sky carries a total of 36 high-maneuverability micromissiles, 18 in each leg with 3 launching ports per leg.
Sky has more missiles in her FASTpacks that she can reload from; but until she gets a missile fabricator set up, her total supply of 'woosh-bang' is sadly limited.
There are very few villains in the BB area that can counter the threat Skydancer represents even if they catch her in the ground. Grue is a very soft counter in which his darkness may be able to degrade radar enough to get under cover (ideally a place filled with people to discourage a bomb in the center of the black spot), the Merchants and/or Leet might be able to improvise either an AA vehicle or even a jet if they get the time and materials (bet you $5 it falls into pieces even before Sky starts dogfighting), a few other blasters and portable SAMs in the hand of experts. But the only two person with something approaching a chance to deal with him are Purity and Bakuda, with the former being a mover with enough firepower to actually force Sky to evade the lasers and the later a bomb tinker who is probably capable of creating a tinkerteck missile capable of tracking and hunting an hyperadvanced Space rated fighter bomber.
Indeed, keep in mind that while poor Squealer was perfectly able to build a flyable aircraft in Canon, it was also taken down by a man hitting it with a small knife. Now Jack had been slightly augmented by Bonesaw and was undoubtedly a bit stronger than an average person, and keeping in mind that with Wildbow consistency and logic were just things that happen to other people, even then there's no way Jack hit her plane harder than a flying bird impact would have been, but it completely wrecked and totalled the plane.
So chalk that up to crappy engineering or equally poor writing, either way the Merchants can certainly take to the air if needed for the story but it's anyone's guess as to how long they'll stay up there.
So it goes from "unimpressive" to "the units don't work". Voltage squared per meter squared isn't a sane measure.
Even ignoring that particular issue you have the issue where the answer depends on the unit you're using. You can get literally any (rational & strictly-positive) result by picking your unit.
Even ignoring that particular issue you have the issue where the answer depends on the unit you're using. You can get literally any (rational & strictly-positive) result by picking your unit.
Yup. However as I said, it's something I can see someone (especially someone non-technical) saying/thinking so the line works in character, even thought it doesn't actually make sense.
The rest of that first night stayed pretty much true to the format the first hour had established. I kept my drones cycling to maintain charge, letting Aerial randomize their patrol sweeps. Even I couldn't cover the entire city with only sixteen drone plates though. Aerial; could we build something bigger; about the size of my main space boosters, that contained an engine, a drone plate dock, and enough AI not to crash into a building?
Aerial said:
Blueprints available. Based on specifications, the MRQ-3000E Recon Ghost would be the best match. Atmospheric speed mach 5.0 at 80,000 feet. Carries 6 drone plates, 24 high-maneuverability micro-missiles, and a forward beam cannon. You are capable of mounting four of them as strap-on boosters. Estimated production time per unit, given current resources and equipment: 3.7 years.
Right, so that's a down-the-road project. Suggestions for a more immediate goal?
Aerial said:
I suggest you construct a desktop fabber. Commercial off-the-shelf parts could assemble a rudimentary unit within one month; which could be used to build the parts for finished model.
I examined the blueprints she was providing me. Can we make it bigger? I don't necessarily mean a larger working volume; just make it too bulky to be easily stolen.
Aerial said:
... Sure! Deliberately making something sub-optimal will be fun! I bet if Armsmaster ever sees it his eye'll start to twitch!
I immediately cut my engines and tipped my nose up; falling backwards and throwing my arms up to take the hit on my pinpoint barriers. A brick slammed into my forcefield-reinforced forearm shield hard enough to powder itself. I back-flipped into humanoid mode, relit my engines to arrest my fall, and engaged my point defenses.
Aerial said:
Aggressor unit identified, 98% match to PHO database entry for E88 parahuman 'Rune'. Lidar and FLIR lock achieved.
The two 'antennae' on the sides of my head flipped forward, revealing their true purpose as they rapidly tracked with my head movements, spitting coherent photons and shattering the next volley of bricks into gravel before they got within fifty feet of me.
"Really? Rune? I take down Hookwolf for good and I don't even rate Purity? That hurts more than these bricks aren't." And that's when she threw the car at me.
I wasn't particularly worried about getting hit; there was no way in hell Runes' objects could match my acceleration numbers. The problem, as always, was simple physics. Say it with me now 'An object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.' If the car didn't hit me; it was going to keep going and hit a building. I had no idea what was in the building, but my name isn't Victoria Dallon; so I actually cared.
I used the fraction of a second I had to put as much delta-v as I could along the car's vector, minimizing its impact force, then grabbed hold of the A and B pillars and burned hard retrograde. Keeping it from hitting the building behind me was one thing; managing not to drop it onto the other cars parked in the street? I'm an engineer, not a priest; I don't do miracles.
I had to get out of the coffin corner; low, slow, and defensive is not a winning trifecta. I flipped to fighter configuration, balancing on the thrust from my engines for a moment before shooting upwards. At three thousand feet I pitched back, looking up at the city floating above me, and reacquired my target. Zooming in, I could see her looking around, trying to figure out where I'd gone.
The issue was weapon selection. The least lethal thing in my arsenal was my combat knives. My missiles were limited, my railguns and beam cannon were both massive overkill and an overpenetration risk. Aerial, advise?
Aerial said:
Aggressor unit 'Rune' is limited to open-cycle mode.
Not now, Aerial; bit busy dogfighting teenage goth nazi telekinetic. I pitched my nose 'up' and rolled, putting myself on a descending trajectory right side up and headed away from Rune. Once into the canyons between the buildings I flipped through an Immelman and accelerated towards her. She saw me coming and the chase was on.
I'll give her this, for a squishy meatbag with no wings she moved well. The power-augmented snowboard she was riding couldn't match my flight envelope, but she could maneuver in ways that would make a helicopter jealous. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't a helicopter; but after one close call when she nearly got me to run into a building, I stayed hybrid. I had the speed, sensor, and endurance advantages. A block from the Medhall building, I finally caught her.
I flipped to humanoid mode and grabbed her from behind, kicking the board off her feet. Then, I poured power into my engines and went vertical. Slowly, since I had a passenger that I didn't want to give a terminal case of whiplash.
"Kaiser's going to gut you for this."
"Really? I'd be surprised if he could, considering I don't actually have intestines. Why'd you attack me, Rune?"
"It's a metaphor; and Kaiser's pissed at you for taking out Hookwolf."
"So you paid attention in English class, but not History, I see. Really kid, the 'I was only following orders' defense doesn't work."
"Home schooled." Her reply made a surprising amount of sense.
"I've gotta ask... why'd you hook up with the Empire?"
"'Cause someone's gotta stop the spics and nig-" I nearly dropped her right there.
"Please, I'm trying to be polite, there's no need for racial slurs." I paused for a second. "Rune, do me a favor. We're at three thousand, two hundred eighty seven feet above sea level. I'm just going to hover here for a moment, and I want you to look down." I continued letting my altitude tick up slowly.
"What?"
"I'm not going to ask twice. Look down and tell me what you see."
"A long fucking fall?"
"You have my word, in front of fifteen thousand livestream viewers, that I will not deliberately drop you. Tell me what you see."
"Uhh... Brockton Bay?"
"Very good. Now, tell me: from here, can you see white people?"
"What?"
"How about brown? Yellow? We're just over a half mile above the city, can you tell anyone's ethnicity from here? Can you tell anyones' religion? Sexual orientation?"
"...no. I can just sort of barely make out people."
"Mmhmm." I nodded, like this was some sort of grand revelation.
"What, that's it?" She sounded indignant.
"Yup. That's all I've got. By the Four Winds, you're a flyer like myself, Rune. Like Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria. Look around you. From up here there's no state borders, there's no neighborhoods, no skin color, no religion. It's just us. A civilization of s-"
"-five billion mutant monkies on tiny little blue rock circling one average star among billions."
"Yer tellin me to think like a hero 'cause I can fly?" Hypoxia and hypothermia were starting to have an effect on the unprotected teen. We weren't that high, really; but we had been ascending steadily, and it doesn't take that much to have an effect on an unadapted human.
"No, Rune; I don't want to tell you what to think. Anyone who tells you what to think really doesn't want you to think at all. I just want you to think for yourself. Now let's get you down where you can actually breathe." I throttled back into a steady descent and switched to my radio. "Spartan Zero Six on Guard; declaring an emergency. Descending immediately to Brockton General." Aerial, get me a phone link to Brockton General's emergency department; and let the PRT know they can have her after the hospital visit. One hour later: A supercomputer cluster in Vancouver.
Dragon was stretching her multitasking abilities to keep PHO from completely imploding; both in her official persona and the myriad moderator sock puppets she maintained. Her attention was diverted by a private message from Skydancer, the spanner in the works de jour.
Skydancer said:
Hi Dragon, I know you're busy so I'll keep this brief. I want to discuss licensing a design to you. I've attached the blueprints and operating manual. Essentially it's a backpack-sized atmospheric condenser and water purification unit. Power source is a solar charger with a lithium ion battery bank. It'll produce about a liter a day in survival mode if you set it out somewhere like the Atacama. Give it a more steady flow, like, say, the Thames, and it'll spit out potable water at a rate of a liter every two and a half minutes.
Dragon metaphorically blinked and ran the attachment through every virus check she knew; just in case this was another trick by Saint. Once it scanned clean, she opened it in a secure partition.
The design was... magnificent. She ran through it part by part, step by step. It was better than even Masamune could produce. There were none of the hallmarks of tinker work. No jury rigging around impossible physics, no black boxes whos process was: 1) Steal Underpants, 2)??? 3) Profit. Everything made sense, everything could be built with modern technology. It was robust enough to be rugged and simple enough that a child could figure out how to use it. If it broke, it was about as difficult to repair as a desktop computer crossed with a washing machine.
Dragon said:
That's some brilliant tinkering, Skydancer. Probably very profitable too. What's the catch?
I'm not a Tinker, Dragon; I'm an engineer. And that means I like to fix things. So, here's what I propose for the licensing fee: For every ten units you sell, one goes, gratis, to somewhere that needs it. Inner city slum, third-world hellhole, disaster zone. I'm sure you can find a million different places that could use clean, safe drinking water. I suggest, but it's not binding, that you start in Africa. The cradle of humanity has been neglected for too long.
Dragon thought for nearly a tenth of a second, then brought up a graphic program. After waiting an appropriate length of time to maintain her cover, she sent the Case 53 a concept design for a logo. It depicted a simplified galaxy rising over a curved horizon and, in a font lifted directly from Star Trek, proclaimed 'Dawn' as 'A division of Dracotech Industries'.
So, this isn't what I intended to come next; but Kaiser just refused to take Brad's defeat live on candid camera laying down. With Purity unavailable and Cricket for some reason refusing to climb into a over sized water-balloon slingshot held by the Twins, my options for Luftwaffe were pretty slim. Rune will probably be happy her fight with the cape who blew off Hooky's leg off ended with a philosophy lecture rather than gunfire. Or not; she was stupid enough to rejoin the Herren clan after her parents had made a break.
As for the second half; Sky's starting to dig into her bootstrap database and share what she knows. Her shards' influence is going to keep her from thinking of just mass-mailing the whole database to every major university, industry, and government in the world; but Sky's still trying to make a difference with what she can share. I wanted a device that would be helpful in a humanitarian sense, with no obvious way to weaponize; and would demonstrate what her technology is capable of.
But this is exactly the sort of thing that got Mannequin Ziz'd. I'm looking for insight as to what the community feels our friendly neighborhood Featherbringer will do. I'll admit that part of me is screaming to have her break the attack pattern and go hunting a certain pint-sized Variable Fighter immediately, before Sky can build dimension-eater weaponry.
I guess that's the problem when you start something as a one-off intended to clear a plotbunny clogging your muse-tube and it just refuses to die. Zombie plotbunnies are known for aimless shambling from scene to scene. I've got some ideas for future scenes; but I'm finding it difficult to get from where I am now to the President interrupting regularly scheduled programming to solemnly intone "My fellow Americans..." As always, constructive feedback will be appreciated, and frothing e-hate will be met with a sense of smug satisfaction.
Not that there is anything wrong with a vague description, while "the square of the signal strength" could mean anywhere from the same signal strength (or even lower power) to dozens of orders of magnitude stronger, depending on what units you used to measure it(1Watt squared=1Watt, 30dBm squared=900dBm aka 1e87 Watts), I thought it was obviously intended as a reference to "much stronger" without giving actual numbers. It also is the sort of line I could see someone saying/thinking so it worked in context.
