Chapter 114: Eye Of The Spaceship
Radar technology has also been a technology that Tom has attached great importance to and conducted key research on over the years.
Because radar is the "eyes" of a spaceship.
Although optical detection methods are important, their use in space battlefields is greatly restricted, and they must be combined with radar to meet the requirements of perceiving the battlefield situation.
Besides large targets, such as optically visible large spaceships and large celestial bodies, other small targets, such as missiles, cannonballs, small satellites, and spaceships that have adopted optical stealth technology, must be detected using radar technology.
In the battlefield, to improve the survival rate of warships, higher demands must be placed on radar.
In addition to being able to detect relatively large targets such as missiles and cannonballs, it must also have the ability to detect tiny targets such as electromagnetic cannon projectiles, which are only centimeters or millimeters in size and weigh only a few tenths of a gram to a few grams.
Through simulation and calculation, as well as reverse engineering of Bluetoth Civilization weapons, Tom has basically confirmed that in interstellar battlefields, electromagnetic cannon projectiles are the most widely used and most powerful weapons!
If electromagnetic cannon projectiles cannot be intercepted, a spaceship’s defense system can be said to have collapsed by more than 90%.
Relying solely on armor to withstand electromagnetic cannon projectiles?
Even if it only faces electromagnetic cannon projectiles of his own technical level, such as the previous projectile with an exit velocity of 15 kilometers per second and a mass of 5 grams, its power is equivalent to more than 19 times that of the most powerful gunpowder gun bullet. What kind of armor can withstand it?
Even the heaviest tanks in the Earth era could not withstand mere gunpowder armor-piercing bullets, let alone electromagnetic cannon projectiles with at least 19 times that power.
And for the mobility of the spaceship, Tom obviously cannot make the spaceship’s armor so thick.
In that case, the spaceship would become a turtle and a target.
Thus, there was only one solution left.
Interception!
We must find a way to stop those extremely lethal projectiles from hitting the spaceship.
The spaceship’s armor is used to withstand stray bullets and small, low-damage electromagnetic cannon projectiles, not large, high-power projectiles.
Since interception is required, the first thing to do is to detect them.
If they can’t even be detected, what’s the point of talking about interception?
But even the largest projectiles generally do not exceed ten grams in mass, are tiny in volume, and generally have a speed of more than ten kilometers per second.
How can such tiny, high-speed targets be detected in the vastness of space?
This requires the use of high-speed radar.
Unlike ordinary radar, high-speed radar has higher power and can emit electromagnetic waves with higher energy, thereby increasing the signal reflection intensity of the target.
At the same time, high-speed radar must also adopt more advanced and powerful algorithms, matched filtering, and coherent accumulation to enhance the detection capability of weak signals.
Its scanning speed must also be fast.
Because the interstellar battlefield is too vast and projectiles move at extremely high speeds, an area that may have no threat one second may have projectiles arriving the next, so it is necessary to repeatedly scan the entire celestial sphere at a very high frequency.
Such high performance requirements are now all concentrated on one device, which needs to be used to achieve them all.
Decades ago, when he began researching on the basis of the previous generation of radar, Tom also had a feeling: can I really research such an advanced radar?
It’s unreliable to think about building a radar to such a performance.
But Tom did not give up, but truly calmed down, invested more than a million clones, and also opened up material supply, breaking down hundreds of thousands of technical details, combining them with the overall technological progress, and advancing and iterating little by little.
Can a certain material achieve a 0.5% increase in sensitivity?
Use it.
Can a certain material enhance 0.1% of echo resolution?
Use it.
Can a certain configuration reduce the total mass by 1%, but this configuration is extremely difficult to process and has extremely low production capacity?
Then build larger, more precise foundries and stack production capacity with quantity.
It was in this kind of almost no-cost, bit-by-bit advancement that after decades of time, Tom finally built such a radar that initially met the performance requirements.
Of course, it cannot be equipped on a spaceship at this time because it is too large.
It relies on an entire building for construction, and various parts and equipment almost fill the entire building, with a total mass of more than a terrifying 100 tons.
At this moment, it began its first actual test.
Hundreds of meters away from the building, more than a dozen small high-speed electromagnetic cannons were brought into the air on spaceships, and then launched a fierce bombardment around the building.
Hundreds of thousands of tiny electromagnetic cannon projectiles bombarded down in one second, kicking up dust around the building.
This radar was operating at full power, doing its best to collect data on every tiny, high-speed moving object from the surrounding environment.
The one-hour bombardment ended.
During this hour, more than a dozen electromagnetic cannons fired a total of more than 2 million electromagnetic cannon projectiles.
And among these more than 2 million electromagnetic cannon projectiles, a full 1.6 million projectiles were captured by this radar with precise motion trajectories and speed information!
The farthest one was even more than a hundred kilometers away!
Looking at this data, Tom was full of emotion, feeling that the decades of hard work he had put into it had been amply rewarded.
Although it cannot yet achieve a detection rate of more than 99%, and its own volume and mass are too large, and its energy consumption is too high, it has taken a crucial step after all.
All that needs to be done next is to continue to optimize it.
The development progress of high-speed radar has reached at least 80%, and there are currently no insurmountable obstacles.
But this does not mean that he has mastered interception technology.
The reason is simple, radar is only for detection, to achieve true interception, there must be a corresponding launch system.
Tom must use some medium to influence the projectiles whose speed and trajectory have been detected, in order to change their trajectory and prevent them from hitting the warship.
And there are only two ways to achieve this influence.
First, the same electromagnetic cannon projectile.
Second, laser cannon.
The first method uses kinetic impact to directly knock them off their trajectory.
The second method uses burning to increase the internal energy of the projectile, causing the projectile to explode and then deviate from its trajectory.
In addition to these two interference methods, there must also be sufficiently powerful computing capabilities.
High-speed radar, data processing, bogie, and launching projectiles or lasers, all four combined, can truly intercept the attack.