“HERF”

In my December 2014 post to Quantum Corps Times, I made this statement about Quantum Corps weapons:

All Detachments carry High-Energy Radio Frequency weapons which are particularly effective against enemy swarms.  Known as HERF, these radio frequency weapons degrade, disperse and destroy enemy swarms by slamming the bot clouds with waves of rf energy.  Although it has often been said that the best defense against a swarm is another swarm, HERF can make quick work of enemy swarms by punching holes in their formations.  HERF guns come in a variety of sizes, are battery or power cell operated and thus must be re-charged.  They are operated by the DPS ratings in the Detachment (Defense and Protective Systems specialists).

 

HERF sounds like someone’s name but it’s a critical piece of mission gear for nanotroopers.  Let’s look more closely at this weapon.

Parts and Components

1. Generator/capacitor bank – HERF weapons have to generate waveforms and inject a lot of energy into these waveforms.  The output of a HERF device is radio-frequency waves, with a lot of power behind them.
2. Converter-coupler – the converter takes the raw output of the generator and changes it into proper waveforms for coupling onto target.  HERF weapons are somewhat selectable in their effects (more on this later).  Coupling onto the target means the waveform and effect selected is designed to achieve what you want to achieve…usually shattering a formation of nanobots into French fries.
3. Beam Focuser-Collimator – any pulse of EM radiation needs to be focused, so as to put maximum energy on the target.  Moreover, environmental effects can attenuate that energy.  The BFC does what its name suggests…shapes the waveform into a fist that can punch through any environment and deliver a knockout blow.
4. Sighting Scopes – HERF weapons are often used against swarms.  How do you sight on a swarm of nanobot elements…things you can’t see?  You sight for the effects such bots have on their surroundings: thermal effects, acoustic effects, electromagnetic effects, evidence of a hell of lot of atomic bond breaking.  Swarms grab atoms to maintain structure.  The Sighting System looks for these effects.  The atomgrabber with a HERF carbine can select any of these modes for sighting. 
5. Trigger assembly – this is payoff part.  The trigger assembly discharges the waveform, with maximum power behind it, properly targeted on the objective.  The beam focuser works with the trigger assembly to generate wide-area (spray) effects, narrow-field effects, and anything in between.  And like Star Trek phasers, you can set the thing on stun.
6. Power cell – the HERF power cell is a small turbine that works off infinitesimal chunks of periodic-table elements like americium…in other words, through decay of radioisotope material and the heat given off from that decay.  The generator-capacitor has thermocouples that take this heat and concentrates it for burst mode and to make sure the power cell can deliver the punch needed to generate and let fly rf waves to shatter nanobot swarms. 
7. Sensor mast – every HERF weapon has a sensor mast for detecting and homing on the bad guys and also alerting and providing caution and warning indications to the trooper about weapon status and the environment around it.  The sensor mast looks for acoustic, thermal and EM effects that show nanobotic activity is near.  It also operates as a guidance system to home the weapon to achieve maximum effect on the target, according to the effects mode selected by the trooper.
    
   Basic Operation

1. Auto beam – automatic discharge with selected effects and intensity; normal mode of operation; can be triggered by sensor indications
2. Single pulse – single discharge, again selectable
3. Multi pulse – multiple discharges, up to 20 sequential bursts in any selectable effect or intensity
4. Stun field / active denial – waveforms shaped for non-lethal discharge, selectable up to “render unconscious”.  Available in auto, single or multiple burst.
5. Heat effects / thermoblast – waveform and power selected for primarily heat or thermal coupling onto target.  Enough energy deposited to create catastrophic damage
6. Visual burst / starburst – waveform selected to damage optics, or blind human targets.  Extremely bright burst mode, selectable in intensity, up to “permanent damage to visual field,” or “optical burnout.”
    
   Limitations

1. Blooming – plasma breakdown in atmosphere can cause HERF wavefront to de-focus and disperse energy into the atmosphere.
2. Beam dispersal due to evaporated material at the target – creates an ablation cloud.  Measures to defeat include inducing a shock wave to create shock effects in the target and oscillating the wave frequency to work against the ablation cloud.
3. Absorption – atmospheric effects can attenuate beam energy and power
4. Lack of Indirect Fire – HERF is mainly line of sight, so targets not in the line of sight are difficult to hit or effect.
5. Countermeasures (coatings, active dispersal, etc) – Coatings and active dispersal techniques can blunt or attenuate wavefront effects.
6. It’s an area weapon – HERF is best used against a target that spans an area of square meters or larger, i.e., large swarms.  Not particularly useful for precision fire or effects. 
    
    
   Tactics

1. Anti-swarm measures (frontal vs envelopment vs barrage assault) – HERF tactics can be employed in a variety of assault configurations.  These include frontal (slam ‘em head-on), envelopment (a flanking maneuver coming from either or both sides) and barrage (throw everything at a swarm, cease fire, then do it again…shock frequency can make it difficult for a swarm to reconstitute).
2. Can be used like artillery to prepare the battlefield – HERF barrages can be used to ‘carpet-bomb’ a battlefield ahead of an operation, to sanitize the zone of any swarms that may be lurking or masquerading as other structures
3. Delayed burst – tactical situations sometimes require this to draw out swarms hiding or masquerading or in concealed locations.  Delay time is selectable, usually up to several days.
4. Reflection versus direct shots – HERF is a line of sight weapon but with reflecting shields, can be made to turn corners and smash targets not in LOS.  The reflectors have to be installed or emplaced ahead of time, possibly only moments ahead.
5. Diversions, feints and concealments – HERF can be used to feint an attack along one vector, to draw an enemy out, then turned to concentrate fire in another direction.  HERF can be used as part of a diversionary attack, to draw swarms away from the real axis of attack, though this is rare.
    
   These are just some of the details regarding High Energy Radio Frequency weapons. No nanotrooper squad would ever go into action without these weapons.  They are an essential piece of equipment for surviving and winning on the new battlefield of atoms and molecules and nanobotic swarms. 
    
   The next post, on June 1, will cover what it takes to build or regenerate an ANAD system.
    
   See you in June.   PB

Symborg: Could a Robot Become a Celebrity?

In this post, I look at a character called Symborg.  Symborg enters the Tales of the Quantum Corps about midway in the overall story cycle. 

Symborg is a robotic celebrity, a swarm-entity that I have given the name angel. In Tales of the Quantum Corps, angels are para-human swarm entities that achieve a new level of realism. In the case of Symborg, because of its lifelike nature and artificial personality modules, the entity eventually becomes a sort of robotic Messiah. 

This Symbiotic Organism, or Symborg, is endowed with charismatic genius and becomes the leader of a spiritual movement called Assimilationism.

Symborg takes the world by storm in the spring of 2110, a combination of Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi and Hitler.  And he makes Assimilationism a political and ultimately a military force to be reckoned with.

As a charismatic spiritual and political leader, Symborg has great influence, even though his followers are well aware that he is nothing but a lifelike swarm of nanoscale robotic elements.  Physically, his main configuration is a handsome middle-aged man of average height but muscular build, but he can assume many other configurations and forms, as needs dictate.  Symborg prefers to maintain a consistent ‘brand’ and ‘image, so he does not often present himself in public in anything other than his human-like state. 

His creators have endowed and programmed Symborg with the most effective personality elements of Hitler, Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln and a variety of historical figures, kings and emperors, celebrities and scoundrels.  Symborg can assume whatever personality characteristics are appropriate for the moment.  Each is nothing more than a module he can activate or shut off at any time.   Yet each is developed, tested and fine-tuned for maximum effect and charisma and the modules can be modified on the fly, by his creators and downloaded to Symborg over secure, encrypted quantum communication channels that Humans cannot initially detect or intercept.  This is a point of potential weakness and Quantum Corps will attempt to exploit this link by detecting, intercepting and scrambling these communications.

Symborg comes to public notice from a small African (Kenyan) village on the borderlands of east Africa.  The village is Kipwezi.  He is a man visually of darker skin, but not deeply black.  One of Symborg’s physical capabilities is the ability to manipulate his skin appearance to appear subtly lighter or darker, depending on the needs of the audience.  This is a simple matter of manipulating the melanocyte composition of the skin cells at the molecular level, something easy for Symborg to do.  He can literally be all things to all people, as any good politician would want.

Symborg comes to notice as an advocate of Assimilationism, the idea that man and his ANAD creations are destined to merge into some kind of blended symbiotic organism, part human and part machine. 

Symborg is a messianic character, literally a robotic messiah.  He is programmed with the healing and teaching abilities of Jesus, the oratorical skills of a Lincoln, a Roosevelt or a Hitler, the enlightened state of a Buddha, the ruthlessness or a Stalin or Mao, the leadership ability of Patton or Nelson or Mohammed, and the sheer intellectual genius of an Einstein.  He is or can be all things to all people.  But most of all, he is a persuasive advocate for assimilationism and for deconstruction of single-config entities such as Humans into nanobotic swarm elements and their absorption into the mother swarm.  This absorption is portrayed by Symborg as something akin to Heaven, nirvana, paradise or just a desirable end-state configuration symbiotically united with the great mother swarm of the Central Entity.  Symborg publically uses the phrases Central Entity and mother swarm interchangeably with various audiences according to his analysis of their emotional and spiritual needs.

In fact, Symborg has the programmed ability to do glutamate trace matching on large numbers of people at the same time…a covert insertion of a few nanobots to sniff out glutamate and dopamine trails in the brains of his followers and the ability to remotely manipulate these trails so as to produce desired emotional states of wonder, enlightenment, happiness, ecstasy, or terror, as the situation dictates.  Symborg is like a conductor, orchestrating the ventral tegmentum areas of the brains of his followers to achieve ecstasy or enlightenment or abject terror as his needs dictate.  One of the rituals Symborg encourages in his followers is to allow small-scale nanobots to be inserted into them…this is considered good form for those who seek Assimilation. See The Serengeti Factor, Prologue.  These inserted bots, like angels, allow Symborg to precisely control how his audiences respond to his messages. 

Symborg will gather around him a small coterie of followers and worshippers.  This cabal will be a mixture of actual Humans and swarm–angels.  They are known publically as the Sons of Assimilation. 

Does Symborg have any weaknesses that Quantum Corps can exploit?  Do they even want to stop Symborg?  Perhaps Symborg is an evolutionary development that shouldn’t be stopped…there are some who say this is the Next Step, the next Great Leap and it should be encouraged and nurtured not stopped.  This is Quantum Corps’ dilemma.  Symborg is to some an enemy of everything Human yet many Humans worship him.

That will make defeating Symborg very difficult.

The rapture that Symborg portrays as the end state of Assimilation is an early 22^nd century variant of Singularity thinking, from the late 20^th and early 21^st century. 

It seems as if Symborg can only be defeated using techniques and tactics that are known to be useful against swarm systems generally.  Any ANAD-derived nanobotic device or swarm of devices is vulnerable to HERF, mag pulses and similar weapons.  However, unless the core or the master assembler is destroyed, it will re-generate and replicate again.  And that is something that hasn’t proven possible in forty years of Quantum Corps efforts.

In my next post, for May 2016, we’ll look at more developments that flesh out the backstory of Tales of the Quantum Corps.

See you in May.

Phil B.