Battleship Arizona and Oklahoma memorial

Stellar battleships became the primary source of enforcement to pirate and terrorist regimes that caused trouble in the frontier worlds.

Some frontier worlds could construct their own navy, but the defense of most colonized planets relied on the Earth's navy.

The earliest of these space battleships was the Oklahoma, it was equipped with the latest inertial propulsion systems and  new plasma

weaponry. The main gun turret barrels were a small magnetic containment system that would retain the fusion plasma generated in the

reactor core deep inside the ship. The plasma would be channeled from the central reactor and held inside the barrels until fired.

The barrel would "fire" by neutralizing plasma that had motion towards the barrel opening. Whatever plasma that retained a charge

would simply be reflected back into the magnetic bottle, thus it was a high volume, neutral particle cannon.

The smaller, secondary guns were rail guns that could operate effectively in space or planetary atmospheres.

The Oklahoma was the first

interstellar battleship

commissioned for enforcement of

order in the new frontier, its guns

were mainly for in-space use, but

the secondary rail guns allowed

for limited ground fire.

The Arizona-class stellar battleship was built to incorporate the latest advances in weaponry and address the issue of space-only

operation. It's cannons were of the neutral particle variety, however;  it derived it's particle source from a large ring accelerator that

circumnavigated the interior of the space battleship.

This accelerator utilized a space-time inertia phase transition device (STIP) to dramatically lower the energy requirements used to

accelerate the particles to 95% the speed of light under normal demands. If the situation called for it, the large cannon could increase

the velocity and mass of it's charge to increase it's destructive power considerably.

The weapons system used a Xenon plasma that circulated at relativistic velocities inside the central accelerator.

The  individual cannons would siphon off the Xenon particles from the  accelerator when ready to fire. As the relativistic particles

traveled through the gun barrels, electrons would be added to neutralize the Xenon ions and the neutralized particles would be re-

phased to full mass.

This was a devastating weapon, the main 700 mm canons could deliver an energy equivalent to it's target of 1.28 tons of

 TNT. The large 2.4 meter super-canon could deliver a punch of 6.29 tons of TNT with only 1/2 a Kilogram of mass in it's normal

mode of operation.

 This enabled  tens of thousands of firings with a relatively small load of Xenon.

The upper range of the giant cannon's abilities could accelerate a 5kg Xenon plasma charge to 99.999% the speed of light, this

provided the energy equivalent of 4.62 kilotons of TNT upon impact.

This mode was only used for long distances and hardened targets, such as a base buried in an asteroid since the stress on the

weapons system was considerable in it's highest-energy mode.

To address the issue of operating it's weapons in limited environments, the large cannon also incorporated a free electron laser

system into it's barrel that discharged an ionizing beam that could clear a "tunnel" for the Xenon particle canon charge to travel

through when targeting objects in an atmosphere. The laser could change frequencies to adapt to a host of different atmospheric

compositions which gave the large canon the ability to operate in a large range of planetary environments.

The smaller guns were rail guns incorporating the STIP system to reduce energy requirements for rail gun firing as well as increase the

velocity of the projectiles it fired.

The crows nest was a detachable unit with it's own onboard power supply, inertial propulsion systems, and laser weaponry for

defense. The entire crew could evacuate to it in case of emergency.

With the defensive lasers on the crows nest, large particle cannon, and it's rail guns, the Arizona could project force onto planetary

surfaces with thick atmospheres.

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