Section 2: Offensive/Defensive Abilities
Two main kinds of weapons have been seen in action a directed, high intensity energy beam and an extremely fast moving torpedo which uses a partially controlled matter/anti-matter explosion.
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Phasers:
Working under the assumption that these energy beam weapons are scaled up versions of the hand held beam weapons used by their Hazard Team on Virmire and the Citadel, we have taken to calling all energy beams used by Starfleet as phasers.
Hopefully, in future we can discern if these weapons are indeed called phasers like their smaller breathen or if they go by a different name.
Range: Around 1 light-second [Postulated]
Power output: Unknown.
All we have to go on is the observed effects suffered by the Geth during the Battle of the Citadel.
Scans of the Vanguard, and her fighters, during the battle detected an incredibly short build-up time before they fired. This means that there is little to no warning to allow a targeted vessel to initiate evasive manoeuvres.
A Geth cruiser was sliced clean in half in under a second suggesting a power output that is, at least, comparable to the main cannon of a dreadnought-class starship every second.
The fact that said cruiser was engaged at nearly a full light-second away as it threatened the Destiny Ascension shows that Starfleet is capable of using their vessels as long-range weapons platforms to decimate an enemy while being safe from counter-fire.
Also of note, is the fact that the beam used by Saren's dreadnought carried out a similar tactic of severing an enemy ship in two with a sustained beam. This suggests that beam weapons are capable of crippling a target vessel by removal of key components, such as their engines or weapon arrays and that, once applied to our own ship, they will forever alter the way that any vessel engages in combat.
Three main phaser locations have been observed: One large circular system on the upper section of the saucer, and two smaller circular systems on the underside of the saucer.
These systems are remarkably advanced that allow the ship fire from each rapidly at targets on various different axis'. For further opinion I include the comments by Professor Solihinn Adinus, a retired General of the Turian Hierarchy who now teaches advanced tactics at The Turian Military Academy for Command Officers.
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"Based on the combat display put on by the Vanguard, I rate that ship as easily the most advanced warship in Citadel Space, and one that should not be engaged head on by anything less than a fully armed fleet. Even then, I place the attackers' odds at no better than 50% to succeed in destroying the Vanguard, while suffering upwards of 80% casualties.
Their weapon systems are several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything ever seen before, even the only recently seen Asari Plasma cannons, and I would class these phasers as their secondary weapons."
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I concur with the Professor about the phasers being secondary combat weapons, as they are also far more controllable than the primary weapons with greater potential usages outside of combat. However, based on the documents provided, I suspect that Starfleet prefers to use phasers as primary weapons were possible due to their more controllable nature.
I would also like to commend the Asari on hiding their plasma weaponry from the STG, as until the Battle of the Citadel it was believed that your people were still only researching the technology, not actively using it on your ships.
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Torpedoes
Range: ? Upwards of 1 light-second ?
Power Output: Estimated at up to 100Mtons
We have no real idea of the power output here. They appear to be highly variable: Please review the records from the crew of the Human cargo vessel Morning Star mentioning a yield of 10% and Councillor Valern's own statement of low-yield torpedoes being used against Saren's dreadnought.
Given to the estimated size of the torpedo, and taking half of the room for engines and tracking systems, the above figure for their destructive capacity appears reasonable, if not a little intimidating.
Again, this simply confirms the Council Ruling regarding the usage of antimatter weaponry, though nothing that is known to the STG is capable of being as small/fast/deadly as this torpedo.
For its military implications, I again turn to Professor Adinus;
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"Their most powerful, and frankly scary, weapons are those torpedoes. The display to end the Battle of the Citadel was as much a demonstration of power as it was an effective tactic.
Quite honestly, if any ship is targeted by one of those torpedoes, even the smaller ones fired by their shuttles, my only suggestion is to prepare for the afterlife. Simply put, those weapons are battle-enders and I pray I am not around to ever meet the enemy that requires the usage of such weapons!"
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While the Professor is dramatic, his statement is accurate. There is no known effective defence that we currently have that would be successful in stopping one of those torpedoes.
The STG has started work on a theoretical defence based around manipulating a gravity field in front of the torpedo to cause it to explode prematurely. However, even if this defence is successful, the resulting shockwave may still be great enough to overload or ignore the barriers of a capital ship nearby.
Based on the files of the Borg that were provided by the Council, General Adinus was wise to consider a prayer.
Those cubes would even put the vessel known as Sovereign to shame for sheer ability to invoke fear and carry out destructive attacks.
The image of it swatting aside one of the Vanguard's sister ships caused a few members of my team to visibly quake is shock and fear.
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Analysis of gun camera footage during the Battle of the Citadel, shows that the torpedoes were stopped by the Geth and Sovereign's kinetic barriers, however this collision detonated the warhead and, with the exception of the super-dreadnought, eviscerated the target and any other ship caught in the blast radius.
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It could be taken as a small consolation that kinetic barriers can stop the physical torpedo; if we can develop a way to detonate a torpedo at a safe distance from a ship, we may be able to negate the effectiveness of this weapon, but I am not hopeful of any successful research in the near future.
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Given that the main beam weapons of Sovereign were able to track and destroy photon torpedoes, we believe that a patch should be applicable to the GARDIAN and similar point-defence-laser turrets to allow them to better track target and destroy the faster Starfleet torpedoes.
However, we are unsure if a PDL would be sufficiently strong enough to pierce the torpedoes casing and damage or destroy the warhead.
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Again, this is may be a little bit of a false hope, as the limited range of current PDL's means that the vessel would still, potentially, be caught in the blast radius of the torpedo, which is I postulate would detonate prematurely if the laser is sufficient to destroy it at range.
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Barriers/Shielding
Power Output: Unknown but believed to be able to survive several successive strikes from their own torpedoes.
Shields appear to be variable in both size and shape to allow for a multitude of different uses.
Again, we have no idea of their true capabilities, but the fact they were able to extend their ships shields to cover and protect the Destiny Ascension when they had to eject an eezo core speaks to a maximum power several orders of magnitude greater than anything ever even proposed by any scientist to date.
These are clearly shields, and not just kinetic barriers, as such there is no real way to compare them directly to any ship belonging to the Citadel races.
The most interesting factoid from their protection of the Destiny Ascension, was that extending the shields resulted in a loss in detectable strength of around 70%, while the actual explosion dropped the shields a further 20% of maximum.
How well these shields would have fared against Sovereign is unknown, as they switched to their armour but I postulate that it would have fared sufficiently well to have survived at least ten direct strikes from the super-dreadnought's main cannon.
For comparison, the Destiny Ascension barely managed to survive one such strike while both Turian dreadnoughts were eliminated from the battle by a single strike each.
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Armour:
Unknown
Capable of surviving multiple, close range and direct strikes that are capable of destroying most dreadnoughts in a single attempt.
Video evidence suggests that it is far beyond the capabilities of even their own shields, thus making all Council race offensive measures obsolete without a massive, overwhelming alpha-strike.
We have no information about that, other than it is ablative in nature – similar to the retractable helmets and weaponry used by Citadel ground forces.
I postulate that it is stronger against direct attack than their shields but is a newer invention in their dimension, so they are still unsure of using it in combat.
The final moments of the confrontation between the Vanguard and Sovereign will no doubt be reviewed incessantly of the coming months, but the fact that the armour survived multiple beam strikes while Sovereign attempted to crush it, suggests that this armour is quite simply beyond our current understanding.
Like much of their technology, it may be this way for a very long time to come.
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Shuttles/Fighters/Scouts:
All smaller ships have weaker, but still lethal, versions of the listed weapons and shields and should be considered a threat to even a cruiser in a one-on-one situation. Tactical attack patterns involving cruiser elements should be developed.
Again, that is not a misprint!
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My final recommendations on their weaponry are three-fold:
1: Do not anger this ship or her crew. [Section 5]
2: If it must be engaged in combat, multiple fleets should be used for any hope of success.
3: Whatever it costs, we must gain access to phaser and shield technology without breaking recommendation 1.