So in BP canon, are Karunas able to jam beams independently, as in TBI, or only with the help of an AWACS, as it seems in Aresteria and Delenda Est? And are GTVA warships able to jam beams?
This is a question that comes up a lot, and it would probably be good to encode it in the tech room. Electronic warfare is a constant feature of combat in the BP universe at nearly every level - jamming of enemy targeting sensors to prevent them from exploiting damaged armor or systems, jamming of the adaptive fire control used by primary weapons like the Prometheus, jamming of sensors to degrade effective weapons range. Jamming
beams in the sense we see in BP2 is not a magic box technology; it's a whole suite of ESM measures brought to bear on every level of the beam weapons system, from targeting systems to disruption of the magnetic bottle itself. In particular, the Jovians made enormous strides on the topic of jamming GTVA plasma beams because they already had a science team devoted to studying the Jupiter electromagnetic field and the Jupiter-Io flux tube - some of the most complicated and powerful electromagnetic phenomena in the system.
They were able to adapt these systems into a suite of jamming technologies that gave them a major edge. When the
Katana and
Altan Orde engaged their opponents at Simak Station, their on-board ECM systems were a tactical shock to their GTVA opponents, able to jam even the slash beams on the corvettes. But you'll note that even
during the course of the fight the GTVA warships were able to adapt, requiring constant attack reprofiling to maintain effect. (If there were direct-fire beams on the field they might have posed an even greater challenge to handle simultaneously.)
By the time of the BP2 campaign proper the GTVA had taken initial steps to counter this sort of jamming attack, but the Oculus AWACS still brought overwhelming EW power to bear. Whether this advantage will persist remains to be seen - you can see the GTVA deploying countermeasures of a very practical sort in Delenda Est.
Wait, so does this mean that the UEF is better at blocking beams than both the GTVA and the Shivans? Both of whom primarily use beam weapons and would be expected to know how to block beams as well as prevent their blockage better than the group who hasn't so much as looked at a beam in 50 yrs? If the GTVA thought that beam jamming was a feasable thing wouldn't they have tried that against the Sathanas? It seems more reasonable to assume that the GTVA just didn't know it was possible and that the UEF lucked into a solution that worked.
I think you're still conflating jamming and ECM as a technology with
beam jamming here, since I don't think your question follows from the post of mine you've quoted. Electronic warfare is a broad, fascinating, and often fairly classified topic even in contemporary warfare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_warfareBut with respect to your specific question - they're certainly doing a better job of it than the GTVA, in no small part due to the Jovian advantage mentioned above as well as their superior computational oomph. But it is not an invincible shield they've developed here; the GTVA has proven quite adapt at smashing through their jamming by one technology or another.
As for Shivan technology - a good look through the techroom entries on Shivan weapons may provide some very broad insight there.
