Dr Forbidden, head of DDS ResearchI am very pleased to be able to announce Project Trapezium, the latest major project begun by DDS Research, which aims to completely revolutionize the way ships protect themselves from enemy fire.
Project Trapezium's genesis was in the technology debriefings we held during and after the ABBO War. During major incidents such as a ship being lost we would examine the available telemetry from the ship and other sources to see how the technology performed and if we could learn anything from it. It was during one of these debriefings when we examined how a ship's shields failed during an ABBO onslaught, its 360 CIWS continued to operate but eventually was overwhelmed and the ship was lost. A junior member of our party asked why couldn't the CIWS adapt to become a secondary set of shields or even the remaining shield power become a secondary CIWS. None of us could answer but all of us agreed it should happen!
So that is what Project Trapezium is, we are starting again with the idea of ship self-defence and looking how shields, CIWS and armour can work together instead of separately. EA-X 2.0 which aims to recycle absorbed enemy energy discharges for offensive or defensive purposes will also come under this project.
We have no time frame for Trapezium yet but i expect that it will begin to influence ship design in the latter part of this decade. We will look at new shield methods which can direct the bulk of defensive power where needed instead of uniformly around the ship (and hence most of the power is wasted). Maybe shields and CIWS will merge into a new technology, supported by EA-X and other armour systems. Its still early days of course but i expect Trapezium will change how the DDS defends itself quite radically in years to come.
