SPECIAL SYSTEMS ARCHIVE: KRAKENS Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Clusterbombs

[The Syndicate Leagues]

'Kinetic Rocket-assisted Atomic-compression Kockbomb Energetic Neutronic Submuntions NEMP Cluster Warhead

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KRAKENS

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Starboard mountable KRAKENS launcher.

System Type: Ship Mounted Weapons System
Type: Hardpoint Mounted Strategic Artillery Weapon
Role : Anti-Subsystems and Anti-Personnell WMD. Denying infrastructure resources to the enemy.
Indigenous Design: Yes. Design inspired by CWHS (Commonwealth of House Liberty) and AC (Auxesian Covenant) warheads
Active components: Antimatter initiated hyperfusion bomb and radiological armour piercing flechette package
Designed targets: Large and very large shipyards, hardened structures with limited orbital maneuvering capability
Years of development: 825 to 826 AS. Field deployment in 827 AS.

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Freeman Drive Yards user's note: High procurement and operations cost. Hyperfusion nuclear weapons represent a display of force and engineering accumen. NEMP WMDs are politically and economically costly, and have hyperspecific uses. Indiscriminate use is discouraged.

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Holistic description:

The KRAKENS device (mostly called, erroneously, “a kraken” or “the kraken” by its operators, is the most powerful munition known to be at the disposal of the Unioners, that does not require exotic materials, large deposits of antimatter, relativistic warp technologies, xenotechnology, or other unconventional technology. The bomb is a series of conventional fission bomblets wrapped around an antimatter initiated nuclear core, designed to send a directed cone of intensely fissile, high half-life shrapnel capable of neutralising all electronics and biologicals within the terminal cone, through even dense armour plate, for a duration of at least a week. The weapon is specifically designed to achieve long-term sabotage to hostile structures in areas where the Unioners do not enjoy space superiority.

The Kinetic Rocket-assisted Atomic-compression Knockbomb with Energetic Neutronic Submunitions (KRAKENS) builds on Rheinland’s long history of balancing fission engines with fusion concepts. A terrifying (but inflexible) weapon, the KRAKEN has both a higher yield and a more specific use case than the long lineage of improvised Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Bombs used by well-funded terror and piracy groups. Whilst not the first WMD-scale electromagnetic pulse bomb used by the Unioners, who have historically been extremely liberal with the deployment of the warheads due to their relatively simple design and the propensity of the Unioners for large, theatrical munitions, the KRAKENS nuclear cluster-torpedo is the first Unioner NEMP weapon designed explicitly for disabling large space stations for extended periods of time – and for no other purpose.

The KRAKENS is classed as an MIRV cluster munition – however, it does not strictly fit the acronym. Whilst KRAKEN projectiles can survive atmospheric re-entry, they are not designed, nor optimised, for airburst planetary destruction, which the punkish Unioners generally consider barbaric and out of their purview. Nor are the submunitions configured to prevent interception, as KRAKENS are designed to be deployed either as surprise strike weapons between enemy combat air patrols, or after control of the airspace has been attained. Instead, the cluster rockets act as Nuclear pulse bomblets, driving Boron Nitride tipped Technetium rods at high fractions of the speed of light into target structures – fast enough to penetrate most materials, including nearly one hundred meters of solid rock, spreading very high reactivity contaminants throughout the impact area. Designed specifically to target large, high surface area space stations that cannot be easily protected by energy shields – especially reinforced shipyards and asteroid bases – the KRAKENS flood a station with highly radioactive Technetium shrapnel with a maximal lethality half-life of around fourteen days. In addition, the pulse of the detonation itself, funnelled through a sacrificial superconducting coil, is blasted in a cone between the fragments, frying any electronics, no matter their hardening, in the shrapnel path, whilst the photon flash from the multi-gigatonne variable-yield Initiator warhead will glass any optronics or computers known to 9th century Sirius. In addition, the resulting radioactive shards will make robotic cleanup or the installation of new systems components effectively impossible temporarily.

KRAKENS have a low shelf life. Their synthetic Oganesson cores provide a drastically higher nuclear yield than plutonium munitions, allowing the Unioners to evade comparable radiological signatures to Plutonium munitions. Indeed, the extreme reactivity when stored in an appropriate container allows small quantities of Oganesson to be disguised as surgical reactants during smuggling from hideout to hideout. Oganesson is an extremely unstable rare earth due to its high reactivity, and will run through multiple half-lifes within seconds if not stored within a zero-state containment vessel, which must be constantly actively powered and supplied. This makes storing KRAKENS highly expensive, and the cores of the bombs, like antimatter, are usually only produced just-in-time for their eventual use. This limits the effectiveness of the KRACKEN as an instantaneous mass retaliation weapon, along with implicitly preventing the bomb from being turned by renegades or Volksrevolution infiltrators on the Unioners themselves – indicative of both Unioner self-awareness and a general lack of enthusiasm for Mutually Assured Destruction doctrines within the anarchic organisation.


The rationale for the KRAKEN, a weapon, at first glance, uncharacteristic for the Unioners, for it has few transferrable peacetime uses, nor does it have any immediately obvious asset piracy uses, is elegantly simple. The weapon is optimised to sabotage shipyards. Whilst Republican is known to use the Unioners’ possession of WMDs as a galvaniser for additional federal security funding, the Unioners explicitly discourage the use of the KRAKEN (which has a significant potential risk of killing non-combatants aboard any station it is fired at) from being used on Alster, Oder, or their counterparts. Instead, the KRAKEN is a weapon designed for one target only – the large modular refineries and shipyards, asteroid production hideouts and retreats, of other speculative rivals to Unioner counter-cultural industry. The Unioners, who know the weaknesses and strengths of defensible shipyards intimately, have designed the KRAKEN as a countermeasure against any unlawful organisation that may try to supersede them in underworld ship production. Drydocks of the duplicitous Volksrevolution, which effectively threaten both the Unioner way of life and constitute the primary strategic targets of the Unioners on the dark side of the law, are the design use of the KRAKENS – the perfect target for the perfect area denial warhead.

Surprisingly, the bomb is not configured to destroy its target stations – the Unioners preferring antimatter weaponry for demolition work. Instead, the bomb is designed to wound – to cause just enough damage to a shipyard and any ships within the docks to force an adversary to spend significant time and assets in repairing and replacing the dead and wounded crew, destroyed hardware, and contaminated decks, to drain resources from other projects – but not to force the enemy to write the station off entirely. The KRAKENS suits the modus operandi of the Unioners to wage economic warfare against their adversaries – to sap their ability to fight and tie-down hostile advances.

In irony, it is extremely likely that the KRAKENS root design was ripped directly from telemetry and scan data of advanced Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Bombs (NEMPS) used by both the Auxesian Covenant and the Hellfire Legion against Pacifica Base, drawing from the long tradition of the Unioners of ‘borrowing’ technological inspiration from their rivals and aggressors.

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