Professor Wayne King-Meiouf of the University of ProximaSo we know then what the new battleground between the DDS and the Clone Star Empire will be for the next decade and beyond. It will be a battle between interstellar missiles and missile defences. Its a high-stakes battle too.
A few years ago the Clones had a "Eureka" moment. They knew they were too far behind the DDS in space technology to catch any time soon and their massive land and air weapon advantage was largely irrelevant. The DDS could sweep their fleet aside and then attack Cloneworld from orbit.
The Clones therefore needed the means of fighting back, a new weapon that could give them a vital advantage and deter DDS aggression (as they see it, the DDS are unlikely to ever attack the Clones to be honest but of course decades of religious indoctrination has made the majority of Clones fear they are going to be personally sexually assaulted by Windscorpion at any time). The Clone Space Missile was that new weapon.
It was a brilliant idea, a missile that can be launched from Cloneworld, can travel through space under cloak, and then hit DDS targets with nuclear warheads. You can tell its a brilliant idea as both the DDS and DTA are working on their own equivalents.
The Clones are putting a huge effort into enhancing CSM's survivability, accuracy and flexibility. The missiles will soon use the cloaking device built into the space stage during the rocket stage. At the moment this is pretty pointless because of the large IR signature of the hot rocket exhaust but the Clone cold rocket technology, plus aerodynamic enhancements to minimise wake will make the missile very hard to detect during its boost stage, and thats really when its at its most vulnerable.
The next version of CSM will also be launchable from submarines and (we think) road mobile launchers. The Clones will make it almost impossible to stop a CSM counterattack even if the DDS have destroyed the Clone fleet and much of the military infrastructure on Cloneworld.
So now the attention is being focussed on intercepting the missiles when they are on their final attack runs to the targets. TPM-ABM is just the first of an enhanced layered space defence of key DDS positions. The fighter launched TPM-A will also have upgrades to help intercept incoming warheads and the DDS are also working on other more advanced technologies too (which are very secret right now).
Here is where the focus is though, a struggle of wits between Clone missiles and DDS defences, expect a lot of work, time and zarks spent on this over the years to come.
