Tech Question

[Krayzen Dratos]

I've started to read a lot of EU tech since I like EU tech. One of the questions I have is regarding mines.

As you all most likely know, mines blow shit up. One of my questions regarding mines-space mines to be more specific is a question about how they work. Is their any Expanded Universe mine that can be programmed not to blow up a specific ship due to their heat signature?

Personally, I don't feel like my question is specific enough so lets set up a scenario: Let us say we are in some planet, and a faction can be attacked at any moment. In order to make sure that they are ready - the leaders of the faction set up mines around a planet. Since they don't want their ships to blow up, they program the mines(if that is even possible but its Star Wars so who knows!) to not blow up their own ships, but to blow up the enemy's ship.

In this scenario, we can assume that the faction that might be attacked knows the enemy faction's ship signature, so they can program it to recognize only that type of ship.

Do you guys think its possible? Also, if it is possible, can it be remote controlled?

 

[Audren Sykes]

Technically possible. Simpler to just hook the mine activation up to an IFF sensor and have the mine deactivate when a friendly is near, that way it doesn't have to know which enemies are coming, just which ones are friendly. Heat signatures are a bit trickier, since each model's heat signature would be different - heck, if an engine or laser cannon was running hot individual ships' heat signatures would be different. Remote control shouldn't be much of a problem, IFF updates can be pushed to targeting computers fairly simply in the EU. Either the vessel in question would need to run very slowly through the minefield or the mines would need to have longer-range sensors though, otherwise things could get messy.

 

[Darth Avida]

due to their heat signature?

Probably not by heat signature, but if you have a special sensor designed to pick up a code, like a safety, and have an emitter on the ship which displays this code to that sensor, that would be fine.

 

[Krayzen Dratos]

Okay- I got some other questions. Sorry about that.

Firstly, when buying land mines, how would you make sure that the people that have the IFF don't work.

Secondly, if someone with IFF tags walks over a mine, would it blow up?

Thirdly, how would you put in a lot of mines in the building, and make sure that the can't be detected via sensors, and when one mine blows up, a set of explosions occur?

 

[Audren Sykes]

• Whenever you're buying tech, there's some level of trust. In this case you'd buy it and set friendly IFF indicators yourself (or have a trusted tech do so), and hope the seller or creator haven't built in back doors. I think that answered what you were trying to ask.
• Depends on how you have it set up. If I were setting something like that up, I'd have the mine deactivate the explosive as long as the IFF transmitter was in range. If you just have the mine detect the iFF but not react, yes it will blow up.
• You'd have to come up with a stealth mine, something that couldn't be detected on sensors (or only be detected at a very close range), then either have them linked on a network or close enough that an explosion from one would set at least one other off sequentially. Theoretically.