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.

Lasers
The most common energy weapon. Their lenses are several meters across; they have ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

Grasers
Lasers operating in the gamma ray range; not much is known about them.

Missiles
The most common weapons are impeller drive missiles. A typical missile masses 80 tons and can accelerate at 88,000 Gs 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, evasive systems, point defense and countermissiles are effective, and a direct hit on a defended ship is basically impossible.

Centuries ago, 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 The nuclear warhead was superseded as a ship-killer by the laser head.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 a nuclear explosion to power a large number of X-ray lasers. Unlike a pure fusion warhead, this was fairly effective at penetrating sidewalls, and anything within 25,000 kilometers of the target was a hit. (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 exceeding 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 is banned under the Eridani Accords, enforced by the Solarian League with a penalty of loss of sovereignty.

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 short range. They are very destructive, 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
A more advanced form of the grav lance, the Crippler was intended to not just destroy the target's sidewalls but overload its engines. However, it actually only worked against merchant ships.

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 2000 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.

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.

Flechette guns
Similar to pulsers, these weapons are the equivalent of shotguns.

Plasma weapons
These are less common heavy personal weapons. Scotty Tremaine is an expert with a plasma carbine.

Portable missiles
Similar to bazookas, these shoulder-braced launchers fire impeller drive missiles with an acceleration of 3000 Gs. As with ship-fired countermissiles, the wedge is the warhead.

Disruptors
These are ultrasonic weapons, considerably less destructive than pulsers. Honor Harrington lost her left eye to a disruptor shot.