Weapons technology in the Honorverse

In David Weber's Honor Harrington military science fiction novels, warfare is naturally ubiquitous. Two thousand years in the future, it remains true that humans will devise ever more ingenious ways of causing death and destruction.

Starship and space weapons
Small craft such as shuttles and pinnaces do not use starship weapons, but larger versions of personal weapons. They are not intended to fight starships. In The Shadow of Saganami we learn that pinnaces are equipped with an equivalent of starship point-defense lasers which can be quite deadly to unarmored merchant ships at close range.

Lasers
Lasers are the most common energy weapon. Their lenses are several meters across; they have effective ranges of about 1,000,000 kilometers (500,000 km against targets with sidewalls).

A majority of ships also mount clusters of smaller, point-defense lasers for the anti-missile duty. In the modern navies, point-defence lasers have replaced older point-defense projectile guns.

In The Shadow of Saganami, it is revealed that a ship's broadside lasers can telescope out from the ship and lock their lenses into holes in the sidewall. It is also established that the lenses are not optical but gravitic.

Grasers
Lasers operating in the gamma ray range (the name is an abbreviation of gamma ray amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Considered vastly superior in both strength and size when compared to lasers, grasers are often only seen in small numbers in smaller ships. The new Light Attack Craft (LACs) of the Royal Manticoran Navy carry a single graser considered to be the size and power of a battlecruiser's graser. The size can be put into context, when a ship weighing 20,000–30,000 tonnes can only carry one graser and two missile tubes with magazine of about one hundred counter missiles. When the graser is taken off the LAC, as seen in the Ferret-class LAC, a vastly superior magazine can be added as well as a "stern wall" generator in addition to the "bow wall". Not much is known about their technical details.

Missiles
The most common weapons are impeller drive missiles. A typical missile masses 80 tons and can accelerate at 46,000 G for 180 seconds before its drive burns out, giving a powered flight range of over six million kilometers. Naturally, in space, it is possible to reach a target beyond powered range, but it is very easy to avoid a coasting missile. Even within powered range, electronic countermeasures and evasive systems, point defense and countermissiles are effective, and a direct hit on a defended ship is basically impossible. Missiles spin while in flight, to make it difficult for point defense lasers to get a clear shot past the impeller wedge.

Centuries ago, in the time of Edward Saganami, missiles used fusion warheads in the megaton range. Such weapons had to get very close to the target to do damage, and point defense was improving. The nuclear warhead was superseded as a ship-killer by the laser head. This weapon used the high energy electromagnetic radiation produced during a nuclear explosion to pump about twenty-five X-ray lasers. As the initial radiation entered the gain medium, the X-rays were amplified and fired, after which the gain medium would have been destroyed by the explosions aftereffects, resulting in a brief flare of multiple high-energy X-ray laser beams. Unlike a pure fusion warhead, meaningful damage could be dealt to anything within 25,000 kilometers of the detonation. It was more effective at penetrating sidewalls than a pure fusion explosive. (In the real world, this exact weapon–but with poorer performance–was designed by Edward Teller; he called it "Project Excalibur".) Nowadays, starships carry mostly laser heads, some nuclear warheads, and some electronic warfare missiles.

Advances in warship technology during the series include the development of the MDM (multi-drive missile). First built by Manticore's researchers, these missiles use the ancient concept of staging. They have ranges approaching thirty million kilometers. They cannot be carried by smaller starships, but this is a minor limitation. When they were first introduced, they made the Royal Manticoran Navy nearly invincible and contributed greatly to their victory in the First Havenite War. During the five-year armistice, the Havenites copied the weapon.

Against immobile targets, no warhead is necessary. A starship can approach the target at 0.8 c and launch missiles that will accelerate to 0.99 c. At this speed, even nuclear warheads are pointless; the kinetic energy of the relativistic missiles can tear a planet apart. This form of strategic bombardment against a planetary surface, without first requesting surrender, is banned under the Eridani Edict, enforced by the Solarian League with a penalty of loss of sovereignty.

Missile tubes resemble huge pulse guns—they use antigravity to launch the missile, giving it a boost in speed. They were not always designed this way; it was developed as an improvement to counter the increasing effectiveness of point defense.

Before this development, missile pods existed: clusters of single-shot launchers designed to be towed by tractor beam. When mass-driver launch tubes were developed, they could not be fitted to pods. Pod-launched missiles were therefore slow and obsolete.

At the beginning of the First Havenite War, the Royal Manticoran Navy developed a miniaturized mass driver that could be fitted in a pod. Immediately, pods became crucial to warfare again, as a ship could tow pods containing far more tubes than its broadside. As pods could not be reloaded under combat conditions, this made the first salvos of a battle the decisive ones.

The dynamic of war changed again with the design of the "pod-layer" ships. These vessels sacrificed aft chase armament, considerable magazine space, and some structural integrity to store enormous racks of expendable missile pods. With each broadside, a new set of pods could be dropped, fired, and discarded. Now, starships could carry sufficient missile firepower to destroy considerably superior enemy vessels. (Energy firepower had always been similarly excessive.) Pod-layer designs are predominant among new-build superdreadnoughts, and the first pod battlecruisers have entered service.

Missile tubes have also improved. Now, they have much wider fields of fire. Some vessels, such as the Edward Saganami-C class, mount no fore or aft missile tubes, as the broadside launchers can cover the entire horizontal plane.

Another advance over standard pod-layers is the Apollo system, currently only deployed by Manticore and only in very limited numbers. In this system, the salvo from a single pod contains two types of missiles. Eight of the missiles are standard MDMs with a variety of warheads and ECM. The second type is a single larger missile fitted with an FTL telemetry link instead of a warhead; this missile acts as a control node for the other eight missiles in the pod and allows a Keyhole-II equipped ship to provide effectively real-time control to the missiles across their range envelope.

Countermissiles
Countermissiles are much smaller than ship-killers, and are usually fired from dedicated launchers. It is possible to fire many in one casing from a standard missile tube, similarly to a shotgun. Countermissiles have no warheads; they merely will attempt to overlap their impeller wedges with those of the attacker's missiles. This overlap is destructive to both missiles.

Energy torpedoes
Not actually torpedoes of any kind, they are self-sustaining masses of plasma that can be projected against targets at ranges of up to 300,000 km. They are very destructive and capable of rapid fire, but are completely stopped by sidewalls.

Grav lance
The grav lance is huge, short-ranged and requires almost all the firing ships' power. However, it is the only weapon designed to cause damage to sidewalls, and is quite effective against them. Admiral Sonja Hemphill promoted this weapon.

The Crippler (Gravitic Heterodyne)
Similar in effect to and longer ranged than the grav lance, the Crippler induces a current in a ship's drive systems which burns out certain key components, removing the ship's primary passive defense (the impeller wedge) and leaving it unable to move. Highly effective against merchant ships, the Crippler is ineffective against warships due to the differences between commercial-grade and military-grade impellers.

Pulsers
Pulsers are mass drivers using gravity rather than electromagnetism to drive projectiles. A typical pulser pistol has a caliber of 2 mm and a muzzle velocity of 2,000 m/s. "Darts", as the projectiles are known, are often fitted with explosive warheads. It is essentially unheard of for anyone to survive a pulser hit, with even a shot to the hand being powerful enough to rip off an entire arm.

Vehicle-based pulsers can achieve tremendous rates of fire, up to 10,000 rounds per second from one barrel. It is unclear how the weapon can be loaded at this rate, or how it can store enough ammunition. The high rate of fire could be achieved by using an electromagnetic instead of mechanical 'action'. No moving parts other than the projectile.

Flechette guns
Similar to pulsers, these weapons are the equivalent of shotguns. While less powerful, flechette guns are favored for boarding actions because they are much less likely to damage the interior of a ship.

Plasma weapons
These are less common heavy personal weapons. Often employed as heavy support weapons, tripod-mounted plasma cannons are among the most deadly weapons available, being able to destroy entire squads of enemy soldiers in a single volley. Scotty Tremaine is an expert with a plasma carbine.

Portable missiles
Similar to ATGMs, these shoulder-braced launchers fire impeller drive missiles with an acceleration of 3,000 Gs. As with ship-fired countermissiles, the wedge is the warhead.

Disruptors
These are ultrasonic weapons, considerably less destructive than pulsers but are still able to cause massive trauma (i.e.: bruising and blunt-force nerve destruction) in those hit. Honor Harrington lost her left eye and most of her subcutaneous facial nerves to a disruptor shot, requiring artificial reconstruction.

Dueling pistols
The culture of Manticore includes dueling: a person can challenge another person to a duel, and there is strong cultural pressure for the challenged party to accept. The customary weapon for duels is a 10mm semi-automatic pistol. These pistols are used instead of pulsers so that duels will be less lethal. Every starship in the Royal Manticore Navy has dueling pistols for the use of RMN sailors.

Obsolete weapons
Weapons of older design are still found in some places in the Honorverse. For example, on the planet Grayson, gunpowder firearms were state-of-the-art until shortly before the events in The Honor of the Queen.

Defense
Weapons technology in the Honorverse is hugely capable, and starships must carry similarly impressive defenses.

Starships are immune to attack from above or below due to the impeller wedge. As long as the impellers are powered, a ship can project "sidewalls", weaker versions of the wedge, as shields on either side. Sidewalls are non-ablative, gravitic stress bands, and thus weaker lasers and grasers are bent away, or refracted like light is when it passes through denser mediums. In this instance, the focused light is bent by the intense gravity in the sidewall. Sidewalls are invulnerable to non-massless/lightspeed weapons as they would be destroyed by the gravitic shear caused by the sidewall. When the series begins, it is impossible to close the bow or stern of the wedge with a wall; to do so would prevent any acceleration. The Manticoran Shrike-class LAC is fitted with a bow wall, which is only meant to be raised for short periods during its attack run. Later, the Edward Saganami-B class heavy cruisers are equipped with stern walls, which reduce but do not entirely stop acceleration. The Edward Saganami-C type also has a bow wall, of a special "two-phase" type. A smaller, inner wall can be raised independently of the main bow wall. The smaller wall does not completely seal the forward aspect of the wedge; it only protects against attacks from directly ahead. However, it does not interfere with thrust or maneuvering.

Against lasers and grasers, the sidewall is the first line of defense. Missiles can be stopped by other measures, including countermissiles, point defense lasers, and sensor jammers.

Ships are also protected by many layers of armor that alternate between ablative composites that absorb energy from energy weapons and solid anti-kinetic layers. Since the impeller wedge is impenetrable, the armor of a ship on the sides and hammerheads is considerably thicker than the back and belly armor, the side armor of a superdreadnought is over a meter thick. Inside, there are more armored bulkheads. Even with this tremendous defense, at close range, the energy weapons of any starship are more than enough to destroy a larger ship.

Though this is rarely mentioned, starship hulls are "grown" using nanotechnology, and can be repaired in similar fashion.

The ultimate in personal defensive equipment is battle armor, which resembles the powersuits in Starship Troopers. This type of powered exoskeleton is invulnerable to direct hits from chemical-explosive grenades.