The pulse laser turret is a light Covenant ship-to-ship weapon system. These laser weapons are known to have been mounted on most Covenant ships and starfighters, and are mostly used for point defense but also for ship-to-ship combat.
Design details
Specifications
The pulse laser turret is one of the Covenant's primary weapon system, often classified as a point-defense weapon and compared to the UNSC's point-defense guns. These pulse weapons are affixed to most Covenant ships, including artifact retrieval ships such as the Minor Transgression, and starfighters such as the Type-31 "Seraph"-class.
UNSC Prowlers are also mounted with pulse laser weaponry, but this version is likely an independent UNSC development rather than reverse engineering of Covenant technology. Pulsed laser technology was available to humanity as early as 1960, and at least as early as the year 2000 in weapon form.
Firing operation
- Main article: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
The pulse laser turret fires by means of laser, using hydrogen fluoride as fuel.[1] Before the weapon fires, it must first charge, during the charge a sphere of light energy forms around the charging weapon. After finishing charging, the weapon expels a cyan/purple beam of energy. The ship's shielding system must be dropped to allow the pulse weapons to fire completely.[2]
Damage
Like most Covenant weapons, the pulse laser turrets are rated in the kilowatt range. [3]
Damages dealt by the pulse laser turrets are known to be serious threats to most, if not all UNSC ships; a pulse laser salvo is capable of melting through 45 cm of Titanium-A battleplate in a single shot.[4] In one such instance, the UNSC Commonwealth, a frigate, received severe armor damage in sections three and four to a quarter the original width.[4] As such, it is believed that UNSC ships with thicker armor would have to take multiple pulse laser salvos to show the same results.
Gallery
Closeup of the Pulse Laser Turret.
Another Closeup of the turret.
Sources
- ^ Halo: Contact Harvest, page 163
- ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, page ??
- ^ Halo: Contact Harvest, page 27
- ^ a b Halo: The Fall of Reach, page ??