Sketches – Anti-Drive Missile

While researchers worked on developing a proper “Capital” torpedo for the deWulf Navy, an offshoot development team looked into less conventional warheads. The one that showed the most promise was one that took advantage of the effect of two desynched drive fields colliding. Between ships, this usually resulted in substantial drive room damage to both ships. When the drive fields differed by more than a magnitude or more however, the smaller field usually suffered disproportionately unpleasant effects (small craft, upon impacting even a freighter’s online drive field would find themselves almost if not totally destroyed).

So the Anti-Drive Missile was born. Instead of a classic plasma warhead, it features an oversized secondary drive emitter as its main warhead. Shortly before impact, this emitter comes online. While only able to function for a few moments, it is enough to make the drive field as strong as a full-up starship, instead of a small craft or a missile. Of course, this results in the utter destruction of the missile, but that was always going to happen. One challenge is that the Anti-Drive Missile is very sensitive to drive fields, and is incapable of surviving a launch from conventional onboard launchers, forcing it to be carried on external racks.

This was, not surprisingly, a sketch that came out of my experiments for capital plasma torpedoes. Given the basic nature of the weapon, it was actually a pretty straightforward design.