The Director of Technology Dr Forbidden has been discussing the NS' version of worm drive at a conference at NS Research. He said that most of the first-line combat fleet had now been "wormed" and that by the end of the year the strategic attack force and a growing proportion of the second-line would also be. He predicted that by the end of next year all of the first and second line and a core number of strategic transports would have worm drive.
Work was now ongoing for a successor to the Electron W1A which is an NS built version of the first generation Dino worm drive. Dr Forbidden said that development was on 2 tracks, in the short term the priority was to perfect the W1A and an optimised version currently known as W1X was in testing. This has improved power management and field optimisation and could increase speeds by up to 500ec. Dr Forbidden said that he hoped field testing would begin by the end of the year.
In the longer term NS is working on their own implementation of worm drive technology which could go beyond even the Dinos' efforts. Currently known as Quark W5X, this new generation drive could potentially double speeds currently allowed by the Electron family. However the Quark is not expected before the 2120s.
The heavier duty W1AA is another development of the Electron family and is being fitted to selected Provider and Extender transports. Dr Forbidden said that the W1AA would be further developed too though in areas of efficiency and optimisation rather than flat out speed.
