AEGIS

AEGIS is a type of UNSC armour, a ceramic composite material, used in a wide variety of roles for the UNSC.
==History==
The AEGIS armour was developed in 2567, to replace the older PHALANX composite materials. The material was designed and tested at the UAE Armour Research Centre in Chobham Common, Earth. It was designed to plug the gaps in the inefficiencies of its predecessor, which was designed for combating energy weapons, and the even older SCUTUM composite material, which was intended to stop chemical ordnance, such as firearms and missiles and fragmentation weapons. The AEGIS was developed to combine the best of both worlds, capable of stopping a wide variety of energy and chemical ordnance while being corrosion resistant, possess a multi-hit capacity, be cheap and easy to manufacture and be light and rigid enough to be used for any purpose.
==Materials==
The base of the AEGIS is a Boron Nitride multiwall nanotube latticework, forming a net-like shape, with the matrix formed by carefully coaxing 'nanobudding' into nanotubes, linking a single tube to parallel tubes and then linked to lower layers, forming an incredibly solid lattice. The resulting material has a molecular mass of 27.56045 g·mol−1, a relatively high density, a melting point nearing 4167 kelvin, high tensile strength (near 187 GPa), a high Young's Modulus (roughly 4.6 TPa) and a Mohs Hardness of 11.5. The armour is a miraculously strong material, capable of shattering enemy projectiles and acts as an ablative defence against energy weapons and can defeat even tandem HEAT missiles through 'multiple crack' abilities, which reverses metal jets from HEAT warheads up to five times before failing. This plate is then linked to an incredibly thin but effective layer of shock absorbing gel that captures the impacts from higher layers and dissipates them. The whole composite is attached to the vehicle's titanium endoskeleton or airframe. The armour, depending on the vehicle, is fitted with various laminates, including plates of titanium and AEGIS and heat-absorbing synthetic composites, capable of dissipating the heat of a direct plasma mortar strike over a small area, rendering one tile ineffective against future strikes, kinetic energy absorbing plates, which absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy passed on by weapons like kinetic penetrators, reducing the force passed onto the AEGIS plate. Usually applied over plates is a composite of paints and liquid-glass resin which dissipates infra-red signatures, absorbs LIDAR and RADAR, renders it UV invisible and resistant to radiation. AEGIS also doubles as ablative armour, easily dissipating directed energy attacks from plasma, LASERs, ion or particle based weapons. A few layers of the armour sheer when hit by an energy attack and break down, forming a fine dust, which interrupts plasma weapons by expending the majority of its heat on the stray nanotube sections, protecting the rest of the plate, or by interrupting the beam of LASER, particle or ion weapons by producing a dense cloud which obscures the beam, effectively acting like a smoke cloud. This ablation allows the whole plate to function for longer, even against energy weapons.
==Uses==
The AEGIS is light and rigid enough to be used for almost any purpose. It is used in infantry body armour, tank armour and even warship armour, in very large amounts. It is arranged into tiles, which are easy to replace, and each possessing multi-hit effects against multiple kinds of threats.
==UNSC Comments==
"I should have been dead. The Tungsten spike from the Captain's Spiker hit me from just over five feet away. Sure, it felt like I'd been punched, but the entire spike was shattered. I couldn't fuckin' believe it! I asked the other boys up and down the line and it turns out a lot of them using the new AEGIS armour reported the same happening with them!"
"I heard reports that boys from the four-oh-six were throwing their grenades into the trenches at point blank ranges and then just turning around and crouching down, absorbing all of the shrapnel into their backplate. I heard they were doing this as close as ten metres..."
"This is scuttlebutt I heard from a friend o' mine in the 306th, but his cousin is in a Marine Fleet Sec FAST unit and was at Chobham Common when they started developing the AEGIS. We heard from him that just about every day of development, he saw those machines, those creepy guys with the eyes. You know, the Guardians. I'm thinking, they helped develop the AEGIS armour, it makes sense why it's so much better than our old gear and better than the Covenant gear."
Category:Material