Chapter 124 - 123: All-Nitrogen Anion Salt
Li Qingsong had originally thought that upon entering a truly "modern" interstellar battlefield, weapons like cannons and missiles would have become obsolete.
Take cannons, for example. In the age of gunpowder weaponry, they indeed played an irreplaceable role.
They were immensely powerful, had a sufficiently long range, and were considered indispensable.
Missiles were even more so, possessing their own thrust to fly greater distances and even lock onto targets automatically.
But in the age of interstellar warfare, they suffered from an unsolvable flaw: they were too big and too slow.
The larger and slower a target, the easier it is to intercept.
Modern high-speed radar Interception Systems could even take down small Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles, let alone cannon shells measuring tens of centimeters or Interstellar Missiles several meters in length.
Besides, their speeds weren’t even as fast as Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles. An Interstellar Missile reaching a few kilometers per second was considered remarkable.
Cannon shells were even slower.
But Li Qingsong discovered that their "ecological niche" within his system of warfare was, in fact, indispensable.
How should one engage long-range, high-mobility, high-defense targets?
By slowly chipping away at them with Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles?
That wasn’t realistic.
And how should one engage even more distant targets?
Aside from Interstellar Missiles and cannon shells, there were almost no other suitable weapons.
Li Qingsong considered the exposure of this problem to be the greatest reward for conducting such a large-scale, live-fire combat exercise and expending so many resources.
Once the problem was exposed, the next step was to find a solution.
How could it be solved?
First, continuing to use gunpowder for propulsion in cannon shells and Interstellar Missiles was clearly not the answer.
To make them genuinely effective on a modern interstellar battlefield, they had to be accelerated.
Only by increasing their speed could the effectiveness of Interception Systems be diminished, thereby boosting the probability of a successful strike.
For cannon shells, the speed had to be at least 25 kilometers per second—faster than the muzzle velocity of even his fastest current Electromagnetic Cannon Projectile.
For Interstellar Missiles, the speed needed to exceed 40 kilometers per second to be of any real tactical significance.
How could he make them achieve such high velocities?
Li Qingsong launched a series of vast experiments and engaged in lengthy contemplation.
Ultimately, Li Qingsong settled on two clear paths forward.
For cannon shells, he could likely solve the issue using the same electromagnetic acceleration method as his Electromagnetic Cannon Projectiles.
This meant that while he previously fired projectiles weighing only a few grams, he now needed to develop an Electromagnetic Cannon capable of launching shells weighing several to tens of kilograms.
As for Interstellar Missiles...
They were too large to be launched from an Electromagnetic Cannon. In that case, he would follow his previous line of thinking: try to install a secondary pressurized Thrust Device inside the Missile, giving it its own highly efficient propulsion!
With these two approaches as his foundation, Li Qingsong immediately began his research.
Finally, after a year of uninterrupted research, a new type of Electromagnetic Cannon was born.
The barrel of this Electromagnetic Cannon was approximately 30 meters long, with a diameter of about 30 centimeters.
Its corresponding projectile was a small, rocket-style shell, approximately 50 centimeters long and 10 centimeters in diameter.
This shell’s maximum muzzle velocity could reach approximately 25 kilometers per second, precisely meeting Li Qingsong’s earlier requirement.
This was achievable because the rocket-shell itself was large enough to have a sufficient surface area for the electromagnetic forces to act upon.
After being fired, it also had its own built-in propulsion.
It used a chemical propulsion system—Li Qingsong simply couldn’t fit a secondary pressurized thrust module into such a small shell, so he had to resort to chemical propulsion. This also allowed it to make minor course corrections after launch to more accurately track its target.
A single shell had a total mass of 10 kg. This included 2 kg of chemical propellant, a 2 kg warhead payload, and the remainder being the weight of its own systems.
To match the shell’s destructive power, Li Qingsong specially developed a brand-new type of high explosive.
Using an azide as a precursor, Li Qingsong generated polynitrogen anions through a chemical reaction in a high-pressure environment tens of thousands of times greater than Earth’s atmosphere. Through a subsequent series of crystallization and extraction processes, he finally produced the powerful explosive.
Polynitrogen Anion Salt!
Because it contained numerous high-energy nitrogen-nitrogen chemical bonds, the explosive had an extremely high energy density. Its explosive yield could be more than ten times that of TNT!
Once the 2 kg of Polynitrogen Anion Salt detonated, it would release over 80,000 kilojoules of energy—more than a hundred times the yield of his most powerful Electromagnetic Cannon Projectile.
But that wasn’t the full extent of its destructive power.
In addition to its extremely powerful warhead, the shell itself possessed immense kinetic energy from its incredible speed.
Even with all its fuel expended, reducing its mass to 8 kg, its velocity of 25 kilometers per second gave it over 2.5 billion joules of kinetic energy—even more power than the explosive itself.
With that much energy, a direct hit to a Warship’s vital systems could destroy it in a single shot!
Even a non-critical hit would cause severe damage to a Warship.
Despite its immense power, firing a single one of these shells came at a huge energy cost, consuming approximately 2,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Furthermore, those 2,000 kilowatt-hours had to be discharged in just a fraction of a second.
Fortunately, Li Qingsong’s ships were now all equipped with fission reactors as their power source, enabling them to support such massive power consumption.
’The previous Electromagnetic Cannon that fired small projectiles, from a tactical niche perspective, was actually more akin to a firearm from the gunpowder age. Its name shouldn’t have been "Electromagnetic Cannon," but more like "Electromagnetic Rifle."
’But the name became common parlance back in the human era, and I was influenced by that when I named it the Electromagnetic Cannon. Now that I have a *true* cannon, I’ll have to give it a different name. I’ll just call it an Electromagnetic Artillery.’
Now that the Electromagnetic Artillery’s development was complete, Li Qingsong immediately began altering the Warship design schematics to integrate it.
Because the Electromagnetic Artillery was too large, it couldn’t be installed on a Mercury-class Warship. A Venus-class Warship was the minimum size required to accommodate it.
However, the Mercury-class Warship’s intended role was to engage smaller targets, so it had no need for such a powerful weapon anyway.
As for how to integrate the Electromagnetic Artillery onto the Venus-class Warship as perfectly as possible to give it maximum destructive power and reliability, Li Qingsong had dozens of potential designs, but he didn’t yet know which one was best.
But that didn’t matter. He would simply build some Venus-class Warships for each design and let them fight it out on a real battlefield. The best design would naturally reveal itself!
Having completed the development of the Electromagnetic Artillery, Li Qingsong turned his attention to another extremely important weapon.
The new Interstellar Missile!