Slight Changes to Existing UFOpedia Files for Realism

[Crazy Tom]

I've posted a few suggestions on game mechanics but I'l admit it was the hard science that actually got me to play this game in the first place, and boy, you don't disappoint. Still, there are a few off-putting details that my inner geek cringes at, so I thought I'd post some edits for your consideration:

Plasma Pistol

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Plasma Pistol

When the aliens need a sidearm, they don't screw around.
This plasma pistol is a nasty piece of work, Commander. Its operation is extremely complex and inventive, requiring a great deal of technical skill to create. The power pack alone is hundreds of years ahead of our technology. We've cracked one open and I've got good and bad news: the good news  is that it's nothing that significantly beyond our understanding, the bad news is that the aliens are definitely far ahead of us in this field. Essentially the power pack is a torsion battery, a thick strand of carbon nanotubes woven together and twisted by an external source. When it is released, the resulting torque is powerful enough to spin a small generator with enough power to heat several charges of hydrogen to a plasmatic state inside the miniature magnetic pinch fusion chamber, which are expelled as plasma using the ionised particles' own velocity.
Unlike human firearms, the projectiles themselves are not stored in a magazine or reservoir. They are generated inside the pistol from hydrogen contained in the magazine, powered by the magazine's power-pack. Once the plasma is heated, a film of positively charged liquid plastic is created between the two 'spinnerets' located vertically opposite each other in front of the grip. The plasma particles are then rapidly fired into the film so that the plastic deforms into an orb or 'bolt'. The electrostatic repulsion between the positively charged plastic and the positively charged hydrogen plasma keeps the plasma from touching the plastic, whose surface tension is greater than this repulsion, keeping the bolt coehesive, thus containing and protecting the plasma, keeping it from dispersing until it reaches the target. By the time a bolt reaches the target, the inside of the plastic will be so eaten away by the heat radiating from the plasma packet that it will burst upon impact like a soap bubble, splashing its payload across the target. The maximum range of a pistol bolt -- the point it can reach before the plasma eats into open air and disperses -- is approximately 20 metres.
A bolt fired from the plasma pistol is so hot that even a near-miss can be lethal. While the plasma itself would be fairly harmless, dispersing quickly enough to be only a wave of heat over anything it did not directly hit, the plastic film makes it much more dangerous, acting in a similar manner to napalm, as the scorching plastic will spatter when burst. The effects on a victim are truly horrific; I will try to list them all here.
Any unarmoured human sprayed with this plasma will suffer extreme pain and injuries all across the splash zone. Adipose (fatty) tissue will melt like water. Blood and other bodily fluids boil in place. The boiling plastic will actually eat its way into a human body, causing charring in a large region around the splash zone.
Any kind of tough fabric will provide some protection against a plasma hit. High-tech armor in particular will disperse the heat as best it can, and will resist the burning plastic for a time. Hopefully this will be enough time to allow air-cooling to take place, bringing the plasma down to non-lethal temperatures.
I won't pretend to know how the aliens managed to squeeze all this stuff into a pistol, but it does look as though they've made the same tradeoffs between power and size that we have done with our handguns. It's almost certain that larger, more powerful versions of these weapons exist and will appear against us in this war. However, my team and I have figured out the control scheme of the pistols, and we've written an appropriate field manual for human use. Our soldiers will now be able to employ the plasma pistol in a combat scenario as they would any other weapon. And I'm sure they'll be ecstatic to hear that they won't have to maintain these weapons themselves, they're a bit too complex for your average grunt (no offense intended) to field strip. So until they can be trained, it'll be up to the base technicians.
--Cdr. Navarre

Eliminated some fanciful sounding bits like bone deep charring and large portions burned to a crisp, increased thickness of plastic film. The effects of plasma described were a bit overzealous, so I altered a few technical facts (the burning plastic rather than the plasma gas does most of the damage), as well as added a segment on their power pack. The last bit is just an attempt at humor.

[Crazy Tom]

Plasma Rifle

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Plasma Rifle

Commander, here's my report on our alien plasma rifle research.
At its most basic level, the plasma rifle is little more than an upscaled version of the plasma pistol. However, as any firearms fanatic will tell you, pistols are pistols and rifles are rifles. Handguns are small, personal defence weapons. Rifles are weapons of war. The disparity in power is remarkable.
Rifle plasma is over 20% hotter than pistol plasma, with a much thicker plastic globule capable of burning through even heavy armor. The plastic globes containing the rifle's plasma shots are much thicker than the pistol's, only beginning to disintegrate at distances between 80-100m. This is a short maximum range for a general-purpose assault rifle, but ideal for urban infantry engagements and other close-quarters work. The bolts however suffer from adverse wind conditions and air resistance, while more accurate than the pistol, they suffer from poor accuracy, once again, fitting in with it's use in an urban setting.
The scariest new feature of this weapon is the fact that it is capable of automatic fire. Its rate of fire on full-auto may not be very high -- approx. 180 rounds per minute -- and while  the recoil is light, the plastic globule is still susceptible to wind conditions, but the rifle more than makes up for these failings with sheer power. Two or three solid plasma rifle hits are usually all it takes to kill a human in light or medium-grade armour. An unarmoured soldier has no hope at all.
We've figured out the controls on the rifle and written up a manual for field use. Our troops should be able to make good use of it.
There can be no doubt that this weapon was designed and manufactured for war, and not in any defensive capacity. The aliens clearly know armed conflict very well. The rifle's power and lethality do not imply that they invaded us because of some mistake or misunderstanding. They came to Earth with a plan, Commander, and that really scares me.
--Cdr. Navarre

edit: You all know it's got piss-poor accuracy, don't deny it.

[Crazy Tom]

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Plasma Blaster

Commander, here's my report on our alien plasma blaster research.
This is by far the heaviest member we've observed out of the plasma weapon family, and it seems unlikely that they will get any larger. The blaster requires at least two people and a heavy-duty cart to get it in and out of secure storage. It's barely man-portable, requiring a troop with great strength to carry it into battle. It is so large that, if it were a vehicle-mounted piece, it wouldn't even fit on most of our UGVs. The magazines weigh nearly a kilogramme apiece and the plasma generated is hot enough to significantly damage conventional armored vehicles through thermal shock.
One of the notable improvements over the plasma rifle is the blaster's increased range, made possible by thicker containment plastic and higher bolt speeds. Ballistic testing has confirmed that blaster shots can reach distances of up to 400m before dispersing. The accuracy may be poor, but the blaster also has a far higher rate of fire. A heavy-duty plasma chamber and upgraded plastic spinnerets can produce up to 250 rounds per minute. Unfortunately for us, despite the containment plastic's increased thickness, the bolts will still burst and deploy their plasma properly even at extreme close range. This makes the blaster highly dangerous at all ranges at which PHALANX troops may encounter it. We recommend that any enemies found carrying one be neutralised ASAP, as they are an extreme threat to everyone and everything in the line of fire.
The aliens seem to use the blaster mostly in the role of heavy machine gun and anti-vehicle weapon. Another interesting fact is that their use is almost completely exclusive to the Ortnok species. Most Tamans -- like most humans -- would have extreme difficulty trying to lift and aim one and require mechanical assistance to do so. Cybernetic enhancements and/or the development of powered armour would certainly rectify many of the blaster's inherent weaknesses from a human point of view.
Lastly, we've mapped out the weapon's full control scheme for you, which is documented in the attached field manual. Our troops should now be able to train with and use the plasma blaster in combat as any other weapon, provided they're able to lift it.
--Cdr. Navarre

I aided the piece about thermal shock because no plastic would be hot enough to melt through vehicle armor, but if said armor was heated sufficiently, it would damage internal components and even fuse axles and moving parts together if those are hit.

[Crazy Tom]

FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Particle Beam Pistol

Commander, I've got the specs of the new alien pistol for you, and they're not good.
We've always suspected that a real alien army would field more than just plasma weapons and Kerrblades. Now they've gone and proved us right. This particle beam weaponry is extremely advanced, a quantum leap above the plasma weapons, miniaturized far beyond our ability to duplicate.
Particle-beam weaponry is designed to hit a target object with a stream of accelerated particles moving at near-light velocities, therefore carrying tremendous kinetic energy. Until now we've only seen the aliens use this technology in large UFO weapons. Now, however, they're using it on the ground in the worst way.
The pistol is a marvel of miniaturization, the table top particle accelerator has been the subject of many a particle physicist’s daydreams,  representing a shift skin to that from the large super computers of old to desktop systems. Well the aliens have gone ahead and made that laptop, if I may take the analogy that far.
The pistol uses a chamber filled with lithium plasma, a small laser is used to induce charge separation in it, causing a negative and positive regions to form and a packet of charged particles is injected on top of this “wave” of high density charge, and the laser is used to keep the plasma in a state of high charge separation until the particle packet has entered the next stage of the weapon. The focusing array is a system of small but very powerful electromagnets that are used to pinch the packet of particles into a narrow stream fit for cutting through armor.
However, we've yet to figure out the weapon's ammo supply. The energy readings we've taken from the magazines are extreme, and despite our efforts, we haven't managed to disable or disarm one in order to safely open it up. Even shooting it dry doesn't completely deactivate one of these magazines. More research will be required before we can try and understand them, much less reproduce them. Given these energy levels, I' weary of resorting to the tried and true method of simply breaking it open.
Certainly this pistol is the nastiest handgun I've ever seen in my career, with impressive armour-piercing capabilities and very good acuracy. The high-speed particle beam can kill a lightly-armoured human in one shot at ranges of up to 40 metres. Just one shot. With regards to lethality at range, it outperforms our laser pistol within the 40 metre range, however after that the beam becomes too diffuse due to atmospheric scattering, we theorize that with a longer focusing array, the beam could be better pinched, giving it the same damage potential at longer range. The good news is that the PB pistol is significantly shorter ranged than our laser weapons.
The biggest downside of these weapons however is their weight, the magnets required to focus the beam are very dense and it would be an extreme challenge for weaker troops to wield this weapon. If these pistols are deployed, we recommend they only be issued to the stronger troops on our squad.
I'll keep you posted on our progress with the magazines, Commander.
--Cdr. Navarre

Again, just tweaking details, in a PB system, while those particles are moving at close to c, there are still very few of them, kinetic energy after all goes up with the square of velocity. Given that, I replaced the parts about recoil with the pistol being really heavy instead.

[Crazy Tom]

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Plasma Blade

Commander, we've figured out the secrets of the alien weapon. I'm afraid the news is not good.
We were wrong to think of the plasma blade as a knife. In essence, it is a one-shot anti-armour weapon, like the Panzerfaust of WW2, except designed to kill armoured infantry and small vehicles rather than tanks, through in the technical details it's closer to modern self forging armor piercing munitions fielded by a variety of militaries.
It's shaped like a knife handle with no blade. In place of the blade it has a small black nozzle with a large plastic ring around it. There is no visible trigger or activation button. Instead, it's armed by twisting the handle, and subsequently fired by bringing the nozzle within several centimetres of a reasonably flat surface. Only then does the plasma blade go to work.
The plastic ring around the nozzle ejects a charge of sticky foam which hardens almost instantly to the strength of concrete. At this point the weapon is locked firmly to the target and an airtight seal is created. At this split second, the torsion battery in the handle is decoupled entirely and it's energy detonates the normally inert compound it's housed in, turning the top of the weapon into a narrow needle of very hot metal; hot shrapnel begins bouncing around inside the armour, tearing up circuits or flesh.
There is no armour that can withstand this weapon. If a proper seal is achieved, the target has no hope of survival. The plasma blade's only saving grace is that it's not very accurate, and while it can be thrown, its chances of achieving a seal when thrown are very slim. Planting one by hand has a much higher chance of success. If an alien manages to rush our troops while wielding a plasma blade, anything in the immediate area will be in danger. All available fire should be brought to bear to neutralise the target before it has the chance to hit anyone.
This weapon frightens me, Commander. Its very existence implies a lot of things. Combined with the aliens' usual pragmatism with regards to their own lives, it says to me that they may be prepared to employ kamikaze tactics, sacrificing their own lives just to kill one of us. 1 human for 1 alien is a ratio that neither PHALANX nor humanity can possibly afford. Even if it was closer to 10:1 I still wouldn't fancy our chances. After all, how many of them are there?
I wish we'd never found the damned thing. I don't like where this war is going.
--Cdr. Navarre

Creating an airtight seal in that short span of time, from such a small piece of hardware would really push the limits of engineering past the straining point IMO, and plasma is really the worst way one would go about penetrating armor, so I went with a futuristic twist on a modern technology instead.

[p0ss]

I love your work, hopefully this text gets integrated, the scientific realism is a big thing for me also, and I imagine many other players feel the same way.

[Crazy Tom]

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Particle Beam Weapon

Our report on the alien PBW (Particle Beam Weapon) is ready for your review, Commander.
The general idea of particle-beam weaponry is to hit a target object with a stream of accelerated particles moving at near-light velocities, therefore carrying tremendous kinetic energy. Such a beam has excellent cutting capabilities, being able to slice and bore through armor. The PBW is a robust and elegantly 4ngineered piece of tech Commander, and it shows how much further ahead of us the aliens are in material science.
The accelerator is little more than a high-energy synchrotron, speeding particles round and round in a circle until they've achieved sufficient velocity, albeit with room temperature superconducting magnets that cold make us a fortune on the open market. The synchotron is fed by a series of six wake-field particle accelerators, chambers filled with lithium plasma, where a small laser is used to induce charge separation in it, causing a negative and positive regions to form. A packet of charged particles is injected on top of this “wave” of high density charge, and the laser is used to keep the plasma in a state of high charge separation until the particle packet has entered the next stage of the synchotron where the particle bursts are stretched into one continuous beam and given a final burst of acceleration.  The particles are then diverted via a magnetic field into the focusing array, where they are magnetically constricted -- 'pinched' -- into a coherent beam. The level of magnetic control the aliens achieve here is far greater than anything we've managed before. The pinch system is intelligently controlled by the UFO's targeting computer, directing the beam to its target with dead-on accuracy.
When active, the weapon is powered directly from the UFO's electrical system, constantly tracking one target of choice. Once the target has been destroyed, the computer will immediately lock on to the next hostile contact in the chain, if any.
Defending against this weapon is going to be a challenge, Commander. There is very little that can be done against a particle beam traveling at near the speed of light, carrying enough energy to knock anything we can field right out of the sky, especially if the beam happens to pass over something like a fuel line or engine blade. Additional armor for our aircraft will protect against glancing blows, but in the case of a direct hit, it may as well not be there. It seems the only realistic defense against this weapon is to cause it to miss. We should recover and investigate an intact alien ECM unit as soon as we can.
It will be a similar challenge for us to fit the PBW to our own craft. We've rigged up brackets that we can mount to any medium-sized hardpoint, but we can't generate enough power to suit this weapon just from in-flight electricity. If we want to use the PBW in combat, we're going to have to run it off its own antimatter-powered electrical system. This will require more research into antimatter storage and control, and it means that ammunition will certainly be limited.
On a brighter note, we've confirmed that all the weapon's components are within our ability to replicate, and their specs have been loaded into our Workshop machinery. We should be able to begin production straight away.
--Cdr. Navarre

Mostly just added a few details here.

Thanksp0ss.

[Crazy Tom]

FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Launcher

Commander, we've finished work on the alien missile launcher. It's a fairly simple affair. Firing is computer-driven, fed directly from the UFO's targeting computer. Powerful electromagnetic rails made of specialized highly conductive alien alloys in the launch tube accelerate the missile to extreme speeds, reaching up to Mach 4 at the point where the missile leaves the tube. Only once the missile is fully free of the tube do its on-board rockets kick in. This isn't even any attempt to give the missile a boost commander, the anti-matte fueled missiles the aliens use have to be a minimum safe distance away from the craft before they fire their annihilation powered engines or the plume and radiation could damage it's mother ship.
The good news is that we've managed to successfully adapt fittings, controls and power feeds to allow the Alien Launcher to be safely mounted to our aircraft. The bad news is that we've had to drastically reduce its magazine size in order to meet weight and size restrictions on our aircraft.
Our aircraft are too small and light to be able to carry so many, and most of our craft aren't laid out with internal missile magazines. We've had to custom-build an aerodynamic external magazine mounted with the launcher, the capacity of which falls behind the stores found on UFOs.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. We believe that we can modify the launch tube to be able to fire human missiles as well as the alien type. We'd have to develop the missile ourselves, of course -- no current human missile is capable of withstanding the stress of being fired from this launcher. However, we're confident we can design a missile that will survive launch and incorporates new UFO-tracking technologies to improve homing and ECM capability.
I'll send you a design proposal as soon as I can, Commander.
--Cdr. Navarre

Just a few details added, I biggest suggestion however is that this is used as a steeping stone to Base Defense Railgun, Rail Canon and Qudrail Rifle, using alien materials to design powerful kinetic based weapons. And torsion batteries to make man portable rifles more powerful, acurate and faster to reload than the Bolter.

[Crazy Tom]

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Artifact -- Plasma Grenade

Commander, our assessment of the alien plasma grenade is complete. Like all the alien weapons, it's very nasty and very dangerous.
The device is essentially made up of five components: a casing, a trigger, a battery, a timer and an explosive charge. The casing is specially shaped to create a toroidal blast zone around the grenade, concentrating power into a smaller area. The battery is highly powerful and barely within our power to duplicate, in fact, it's a thin layer of superconducting solenoid storing it's energy by “inflating” a supercurrent driven magnetic field that causes the superconductor to come under tremendous tensile stress. A carbon nonotube backing is used to to keep the battery from exploding outward under the power of the magnetic field. The trigger is of particular interest, because it contains a tiny thumbprint scanner which verifies that the grenade is not being accidentally activated. A legitimate (i.e. non-accidental) activation starts the timer countdown. The length of the countdown is variable depending on the number of seconds that the trigger is held down, but it has a built-in safe minimum of three seconds.
Once the timer reaches zero, the explosive charge sends the grenade tumbling into the air, and once the grenade achieves vertical orientation and ideal height, simultaneously, the charge has cut through part of the nanotubes holding the solenoid from flying apart under magnetic pressure, and the strength of the magnetic field quickly breaks the rest of them. The EMF snaps the loop at a specifically weakened point and the strength of the field causes electricity to arc across the air gap, eroding the material it comes in contact with and releasing even more energy as the gap is widened. In milliseconds, the superconducting ring is turned into plasma hotter than the surface of the sun, causing the container to crack and release more cracks plasma arcs. The combined plasma and magnetic pressure drives the final explosion which is seven times as powerfull as an equivalent mass of TNT.  
The radius of the explosion is approximately half again as large as that of a standard human frag grenade, anything caught within the area of effect will be either severely injured or dead.
We've drawn up a set of blueprints that will allow our Workshops to begin immediate construction, and a manual to train our soldiers in its use. They will now be able to use the plasma grenade as any other grenade in our arsenal.
--Cdr. Navarre

The battery used to heat the hydrogen in the initial design struck me as a roundabout way of doing it, and given the alien's fondness for high energy density storage systems and expertise with magnetic fields, I felt this was more appropriate and realistic method of detonation.

edit: I thought of using anti-protons trapped in buckyballs, but it would have required a uranium coating, to absorb the x-rays and turn their energy into heat, altogether too much trouble.

[Crazy Tom]

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Propulsion

Commander, I'm happy to report the success of our alien propulsion program. We've cracked the mysteries of the alien engine set-up and we finally understand the path of the antimatter from fuel tank to reaction chamber.
Quoting from my previous report:
(UFO Theory) "The alien propulsion system is a type of rocket engine unlike any ever built on Earth. It uses direct matter-antimatter annihilation to trigger the nuclear fusion of small pellets of deuterium. The resulting energy flashes water vapor into high temperature plasma which explodes out the back of the engine, requiring heavy reaction cambers made of alien materials and powerful electromagnetic based thrust vectoring. This gives a UFO extreme power and needs no air or other external fuel, allowing it to burn in hard vacuum. There is a highly-advanced ablative cooling system continuously pumping water through the engine housing before injecting it into the reaction chamber in order to keep it cool and reduce the infrared signature. Engine heat is also used to supply the craft's electricity."
With this project we've learned a lot about how these engines are constructed, how to control them, and how we might retrofit them to our current airfleet. We should now be able to replicate these engines and use them for any applications we might come up with. I have to warn you, though; they will be extremely expensive to produce. Between the complex use of alien materials, the sensitive electromagnetics and the liquid nitrogen cooling system, this really stretches the limits of our production capacity.
Some more research may be required to figure out antimatter storage and control, but the engine upgrades are self-contained units -- basically just an alien engine with adapters on it for human tech. We should be able to start retrofitting as soon as we acquire enough fuel to keep our airfleet in the sky.
I've mentioned before, the power disparity between our liquid fuel and these antimatter catalyzed (through technically a misnomer, since the antimatter is used up in the reaction) fusion engines is nothing short of astonishing. When we start using these engines on our planes, our pilots are going to need some serious re-education about the capabilities of their craft. Let me explain.
In a regular military jet, giving her a little too much throttle around a tight corner can result in impaired judgment and unconsciousness from the force of acceleration. Pilots have died from over-acceleration.
In an antimatter jet, however, these problems are amplified hundred-fold. The engines are so powerful that over-acceleration can easily turn a human body to bloody pulp in its flight chair. Even the craft itself may have trouble coping with the acceleration, and our flight engineers will have to be extremely careful in checking for metal fatigue, hairline fractures and other wear and tear on the airframe. A tiny crack in the structure may result in one of our planes breaking up in mid-flight. Mechanical thrust limiters can only do so much -- most of the G-stresses are incurred during turns.
Still, it shouldn't become a problem as long as everyone -- pilots and mechanics alike -- is extremely careful in their assigned tasks. We've done some serious tightening-up of our safety and inspection protocol just for antimatter planes. The retraining of our pilots is the only remaining obstacle to our use of these alien engines.
The same accelerations will only make our UCAV more effective at dog-fighting with UFOs however, unrestrained by human tolerances as they are, through structural stresses will have to be carefully watched.
--Cdr. Navarre

Given the expense of producing anti-matter, direct annihilation is really unwarranted. Having spent a lot of time reading about interstellar propulsion, let me tell you that anti-matter annihilation of the pure variety is reserved only for high relativistic speeds, where high exhaust velocities are required. For atmospheric flight, antimatter catalyzed fusion is far more economical on your supplies of fuel while providing the same thrust. And using water as the main propellant makes sense due to it's availability, ease of storage, and high heat capacity. Because there was no way any cooling system that's not ablative could have dealt with the temperatures generated by such an engine, the friction on the hull from the speeds the UFOs fly at would have prevented effective heat exchange.
Also, that quote from the previous report on UFO theory should be parsed into the UFO theory text.

[Crazy Tom]

TO: Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Alien Detection

The project on alien detection is complete, Commander. We now have a full understanding of the machinery, its controls, and the modifications needed for human use.
Our initial assessment looks to have been correct. The detection suite makes use mostly of standard, reliable detection methods that humanity either uses or knows about. The equipment is more advanced than ours and will be useful, but by and large the aliens apply the same concepts and use the same physics as we do. As I mentioned in my proposal, radar, lidar and other such old reliables are all well-represented in the suite.
And then there's the mystery sensor.
It had us confounded for a long time, because now that it's here on the Earth's surface, it spits out mostly overpowering background noise. Up in the air, however, the picture is quite different. We think we've now identified the detector and have figured out how it works.
It's a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID. It seems designed to detect magnetic and to a lesser degree, gravitic anomalies by scanning for minute changes in a background magnetic and gravitational field. Everything traveling through a magnetic field disturbs the field to some degree based on its size, mass and composition. The sensor can identify these changes as natural or artificial objects based on course, speed and acceleration with 95% accuracy. If there is any doubt about a contact, the system will report it anyway. It seems to be more effective in stronger magnetic fields like the one around Earth, but we surmise that it will work to some extent anywhere.
The gravity based aspect seems far less sensitive, as small masses like those of aircraft produce almost undetectable perturbations, so we summarize that it is mainly used for navigation in space, where the ship must plot a course between massive objects like asteroids, moons and planets.
All of this detection power is linked into an advanced computer system which automatically puts all results through a series of filters, which can be adjusted at any time to suit the needs of the pilot and crew. This helps alternately sifting out targets from a mess of background noise or increasing sensitivity to search for something stealthy.
Interestingly, the detection computer seems to have a direct link to fire control, assisting in anticipating target manoeuvres and point defence control if the craft has that capability.
Parts of this technology can be adapted to our existing ground-based installations and aircraft radar. It should extend their detection range and increase resolution across the board, making it a good deal harder for UFOs to hide. However, the biggest practical gains will come from using this tech in creating new aircraft instrumentation to increase the combat survivability of our interceptors.
Of course, it's not the immediate uses that are the most important. These detectors are vital for any future PHALANX spacecraft. In space, without the support of ground radar, we're going to need the extra power very badly.
--Cdr. Navarre

Anyone who knows about gravitational interforometers and gravitational astronomy will tell you that what makes it so great is the fact that gravity waves are perturbed only a tiny amount as they move propagate through space, so accurate data based on that wasn't going to happen. I've replaced it with a SQUID that whiel still having a bit of gravitic detectiona capability, replies mainly on magnetic fields.

[Crazy Tom]

FROM: Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE: %02i %s %i
SUB: Re: Plasma And The Grenade Launcher

Commander, we've finished the testing and prototype phase of our new 25mm plasma grenades. We're ready to move it to mass-production and full field deployment.
For this project, we already had ready access to all the required technology. We've made very few changes to the general design of the grenade. The only real challenge was to shrink the complex machinery enough to fit inside a standard 25mm shell. We've had to scale back the power of the plasma grenade somewhat in order to do that – the magnetic structure battery of our new 25mm shell is a fair bit smaller, emitting less energy and thus plasma than the alien hand grenade. However, this is offset by the fact that it can be fired en masse from our HPGL Grenade Launcher over relatively long distances.
We've dubbed our creation the 25mm PB ('Plasma Burst') Grenade. We can manufacture them by the box or by the speedloader, both of which will be extremely expensive to produce. One full load of 25mm PB is essentially an entire magazine of miniature plasma grenades, miniatures which are even more difficult to create than the original.
The amount of firepower we've added to our team grenadier(s) is frightening to behold. Launch a cylinder of these grenades into a crowded street, and the only thing left will be ash. They'll become a highly valuable addition to our arsenal.
--Cdr. Navarre

Just altered to use the superconducting solenoid rather than the hydrogen core.

[Crazy Tom]

TO:    Base Commander, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
FROM:   Cdr. Paul Navarre, R&D: Engineering Division, PHALANX, Atlantic Operations Command
DATE:   %02i %s %i
SUB:   Proposal: Man-Portable Particle Beams

I got nothing for this one folks. You just can't build a synchotron that small and still have it generate relativistic beams. The magnets would have to literally break the laws of physics to be strong enough to accelerate the particles that fast. I recommend you replace these with bigger torsion batteries, or structure batteries (magnetic bottle ala the plasma grenade). I already used a different particle accelerator, which while still pushing the limits of miniaturization, is sort of plausible, in my previous posts on the particle beam pistol.

[Lafhtagn]

Microfusion could be used for engine upgrade

[TrashMan]

Since you're already enhancing the descriptions for more realism.. Why not go over other entires too?


Off hte top of my head:

1) sniper caliber is too large.

2) Assault rifle bullets are too big and the magazine holds too little for them to be caseless. There's no need for them to be caseless, since good-ol-fashioned bullets are cheap and effective.

3) The year is maybe far too advanced, given that the world looks very normal. 2080? Try 2030 or 2040. Certanly enough time for a global financial or ecologicla crysis to change the geo-political landscape.

4) Phalanx background. It shouldn't be the only initiative or only force fighting. That should be made clear.