Armor
Modern Austral armor is almost always multifaceted, combining technologies to provide multiple forms of protection simultaneously. Some of these technologies are difficult to combine without considerable expense, and at times they may compromise each other.
SMA-FU
A shape memory alloy (SMA) is generally a cheap and light armoring solution that is effective against most ballistic weapons and shrapnel, even in its unpowered state. Atop conventional hardness in excess of most ordinary alloys Austral memory alloy will be able to regain its original shape after deformation with the application of heat, usually by internal thermoelectrics. Basic energy harvesting options with piezos in addition to a WPT station will then be able to restore the armor to its undamaged state against an indefinite number of kinetic attacks that are below a particular threshold pressure.
A commonplace armoring technology pairing is SMA-FU: shape memory alloy in combination with a fluidic underlayer. Under the alloy surface will be a sandwiched layer of non-Newtonian fluid which swiftly increases its viscosity by six orders of magnitude under high pressure; this property grants these suits flexibility to compliment the alloy’s regenerative property in addition to greater stopping power. The more advanced SMA-FU suits have their fluid locked in ‘drowned aerogel’ which can be patterned to preferentially deflect stress, preserving the ribs and other areas that are vulnerable in more basic suits; this aerogel also provides insulation to protect the wearer from higher levels of heat. While this is of some use in defense against lasers the primary purpose of this extra insulation is to permit the use of greater thermoelectric power in bringing the SMA to its undamaged state. The alloys pressure limits can be extended with alterative recipes, but these require localized temperatures in excess of what would be practical without considerable insulation to protect the wearer. Modern Austral SMAs are highly complex mixtures of five or more elements, chosen for high strength and thermal conductivity and resistance to corrosion as well as their regeneration property.
Beyond the alloy’s pressure limits damage cannot be regenerated with the local heating power. Veteran users of SMA-FU suits have been known to improvise armor repair in the field by carefully shooting themselves or each other, as a flash of laser/plasma heat will enhance the regeneration. Glancing blows are preferably used, as a direct shot could be very problematic if the insulation beneath the dent has been compromised; after several incidents, all modern fluid/gel systems are water-free to prevent disastrous blooming of the underlayer by plasma. Above an even higher pressure ceiling SMAs can be permanently deformed, and they can be penetrated by some of the more advanced guns and bullets developed by the Noir, which have amorphous-metal tips and sophisticated propellants. It has also been discovered that strong magnetic fields can cripple the regeneration and even pull the alloy layer off the suit.
Most SMA-FU suit covers are selected to be highly reflective of damaging laser frequencies. However they are inferior to dedicated anti-laser and anti-plasma armor, and the intense heat of modern toroidal plasma weaponry (TPW) will be able to vaporize the surface, compromising the armor against a second shot and probably burning the wearer. Nevertheless SMA-FU is adequate for the majority of combat with lower-tech societies; it can even preserve a wearer against direct impacts to the chest with a low-tech anti-tank weapon, though ribs may be broken and the body propelled a considerable distance. More sophisticated armors were developed to handle internal conflicts for the Unity, and became more important as Austral technology was disseminated among surrounding societies.
Mirror armor
Mirror armor is poorly named, as most of these armor solutions do not produce a mirror finish. An incident laser will be scattered and diffused rather than reflected as a single coherent beam, and to the eye most of these armors appear white. A ‘mirror-finish’ appearance is actually a sign of damage, as the specialized topology of the armor surface will become abraded and smoother due to mechanical erosion and localized melting/vaporization, producing shiny patches.
SS
This specialized topology is known to Austral military science as the speckle shield (SS). It enhances the reflectivity of any surface it is patterned upon, but must generally be personalized against a particular incoming wavelength; most SS patterns are then heavily pixelated, with a region the size of a period containing sections specialized for reflecting infrared, others for ultraviolet, others for X-rays, etc. An averaged SS is also sometimes use, giving partial enhanced reflectivity across the EM spectrum. The SS can boost the natural reflectivity of metals like aluminum, silver and gold against infrared-to-microwave beams, and alloys with additional and greater coverage, but on softer materials it will gradually be eroded; it will also be deformed and lost after sufficient heat exposure.
Attempts to combine the SS with SMA technology to produce a regenerating SS have been successful, but this is a considerably more expensive solution and in the current state of the art it is too brittle for cold environments as in space, polar or mountainous areas, to the point of being breakable by a punch. This prompted exploration of a ferrofludic speckle shield (FF-SS) recipe, with a reflective fluid surface patterned by underlying magnetic fields, encased in an immiscible transparent overlayer. This regenerating SS is functional in cold weather and is furthermore adaptable, with different field patterns establishing different SS patterns in the fluid layer for handling different wavelengths, making it the likely path for future omni-spectral armor.
The FF-SS technology is mostly kept off the field for now by the expense in creating and orientating nanoparticles of rare earth elements for precise magnetic control, and aging of the immiscible media to a blended state is a further limitation: all mainstreamed equipment in the Austral armory needs to be useable for at least 10 years in reasonable storage conditions. There is also concern that these FF-SS suits will be detectable at considerable range without additional engineering.
HD
Heat-drain (HD) technology is another approach that sees some use in developing armor against the more advanced directed-energy weapons.
While reflection of incident laser light is a straightforward defense strategy plasma weapons introduce the possibility of more extreme and penetrating heat with the laser beam accompanied by a bombardment of charged particles. This extra heating and corrosion can swiftly destroy a SS pattern to compromise the armor, often in a period of microseconds – and modern plasma weapons can be programmed to fire in two tight pulses with each pull of the trigger, one to compromise the SS and the second to penetrate the armor. TPW can defeat conventional mirror armor technology by swiftly destroying the SS and heating the armor with a vacuum-guided laser shot surrounded by a destructive bloom that reaches thousands of degrees, vaporizing a large circular region and blooming through any area with moisture. It has even been suggested that a gel-bloom weapon has been developed, able to explosively boil/ionize the fluidic component in SMA-FU armor just as normal plasma weapons explosively boil/ionize water.
Heat management strategies to counteract the localized heating caused by a powerful laser or plasma weapon were explored considerably as anti-SS firing commands were developed and improved. The need to protect simultaneously from bullets and lasers was a challenge that Austral military science struggled to satisfy, with poor initial results. The commonplace anti-xaser armor (most often called ‘gilt’, with protected objects ‘gilted’) is itself highly thermally conductive, making localized heating of minimal concern as the heat will be naturally drained away to the rest of the structure. But gilt is not fit for the suit of a soldier or the armoring of a vehicle, being mechanically fragile and easily peeled off. A gilt variant reinforced with carbon nanotubes was the favored solution for earlier plasma and laser weapons once they were in hostile hands, though it was still too soft against bullets compared with SMA-FU and could only offer specialized improvement against xaser shots.
Nanotube reinforcement can produce specialized anti-bullet armor superior to SMA-FU in this regard but it will be very vulnerable to lasers and thermal effects, being black and highly absorptive: such ‘Kuroko’ suits are generally stealthed so that they are never hit, and NT-FU (Nanotube and Fluid Underlayer) is a niche armor technology that provides maximum protection against kinetic impactors, a vital part of space armoring. A nanotube’s light-absorption property is actually exploited to produce armored photovoltaics (see below), but this space technology is both expensive and inappropriate for a suit on grounds of size. An armored photovoltaic cell (APC) able to harvest weapons fire at modern intensities must be nearly a meter thick and will still suffer thermal damage with extended exposure.
Nanotubes were revisited once strategies for achieving record-breaking thermal conductivities were established, with ‘phononic shuttle’ nanotubes being orientated to leach heat away from the surface and throughout a branching fractal network, which typically ends in harvesters. This PSNT HD technology is very effective at keeping a surface cool against most energy weapons, but its manufacture is presently limited by the fact that the full-sized nanotube tree can only be synthesized in super-pure, vibration-free and weightless conditions. Dedicated orbital factories must be created to generate these complicated NT networks.
Other armors
The previous anti-laser armors are all suitable for personnel, though economics may make some technologies considerably rare. When weight considerations can be relaxed, as in battlements and some vehicles, heavier anti-laser technology can be considered. Personnel-scale armor may simply be upscaled for cheaper and more numerous installations, such as satellites and civilian centres, though more singular and governmental and military sites often make use of specialized technology.
APC
Armored photovoltaic cells (APCs) for conversion of weapon energy into useable energy to the point of killing the beam’s penetration power is usually installed with a tri-armor framework. Tri-armor frames operate in much the same way as a trivision billboard by rotating cylinders that each bear a thin strip of the total image; in this case armored photovoltaics dedicated to a particular range of wavelengths can be exchanged to cover more of the EM spectrum than any single layer defense. The mechanical system is slow, taking on the order of a second to change configuration, but it is still useful in extended conflicts. Without such a setup only a single photovoltaic cell will face into fire, allowing for greater spectrum gaps, but it can be made thicker.
EC
A competitor to the APC is the electrochromic (EC) armor technology. EC armor has always been prohibitively thick and heavy for any personal protection role, and in response to escalating laser, graser and TPW firearms it has only gotten thicker and heavier. Its mechanism of protection is in the ability to change transmission of a wavelength through a thin film by applying an electric field, and in EC armor the local electric field is supplied by a limited form of harvesting from the weapons beam itself. The thin film will be opaque to the laser until it is at the cusp of being thermally damaged, at which point it will use the harvested power to switch to its transparent state and permit the beam through to the next layer. By installing tens of thousands to millions of these thin films together in a dense stack a beam’s killing power can be drained very quickly.
In principle, the stack can be made arbitrarily thick to kill arbitrarily powerful lasers. EC armor will need less frequent repairs and replacement than APC, making it more suitable for locations that are too distant or inaccessible to be easily serviceable; it is generally heavier and costlier, and slightly more vulnerable to kinetic impactors than APC armor. It also has poorer performance against weapons that can sustain continuous fire for a prolonged time.