True - but he did point you to exactly where the textev was. And the laserhead section of that 'Introduction to Modern Warship Design' essay runs for about 1/3rd of it - a little excessive to paste (and seriously pushing the bounds of allowable fair use excerting).cthia wrote:Textev is oftentimes misremembered, ill-forgotten, miscontrued or just plain missed. If it is true that you don't or didn't want to entertain any inadequacies you may perceive I might have, then why didn't you just abstain from posting?
But I can select a few of the most relevant snippets. Others will have to judge whether I've misconstrued them or applied biased secelection.
My bolding.In Fire Forged: Introduction to Modern Warship Design wrote:[1826], a small Solarian defense contractor, Aberu and Harmon, developed the unique combination of a state of the art grav lens array with a series of multiple submunitions carrying rods that emitted short wavelength X-ray laser light when exposed to the broadband X-ray pulse from a nuclear explosion
[snip]
Initially called a laser enhanced nuclear gravitically directed energy weapon (LENGDEW), the device quickly earned the handier title of “laser head.”
[snip]
The Solarian League Navy, however, was less than enthusiastic about the effect of a potentially destabilizing weapon on its unchallenged naval supremacy. Strong Aberu family influence within the SLN and the lure of being first eventually won modest funding for a short series of live tests in 1833.
The tests proved embarrassing failures. Characterized by one Solarian League Battle Fleet observer as “anemic,” the system’s submunitions proved difficult to position accurately, focus-ing was much harder than predicted, and the beam output itself was too low to make an effec-tive weapon.
[snip]
Their work took over thirty years, but it produced the first complete laser-head-armed impeller-drive anti-ship missile system in 1866.
[snip]
Astral eventually began advertising the weapon for export. The Imperial Andermani Navy was their first official buyer in early 1872
[snip]
The Star Kingdom of Manticore pursued an independent path to laser head armament
[snip]Manticoran work paid off in 1870 with the introduction of their first laser head capable missile—the Mark-19 capital ship missile.
The combination of disasterous early tests, and the SLNs disinterest in any technology that would obsolete much of their dominant naval position does seem to led them to lag badly behind systems like Mantiore or th Andermani in the adoption of laserheads.
