Gra Valkas Anti-Missile Jammer

The **Gra Valkas Anti-Missile Jammer** is the Gra Valkas Empire's first attempt at countering the threat ofJapanese guided missile tech.

## Overview and Description

Though the government and military of the Gra Valkas Empire initially dismissed the threat of Japanese guided missiles as a gigantic hoax, researchers such as Naguano, began gathering data about the radar and heat-seeking guidance systems of the missiles from books and documents they had procured from Mu merchants who had visited Japan. Unlike the military and the Gra Valkas government, he took the threat of guided missiles quite seriously. He would later send his findings and theories to his colleague Kandal of the Advanced Technology Laboratory.

Learning about the early history of guided missiles, the engineers at the institute determined that the best countermeasure was to fool the guidance systems with flares and chaff, thereby causing the missiles to be less accurate. However, the engineers were under the assumption that chaff and flares were 100% effective and have been in use for over 20-30 years. What they failed to consider was that missile technology had greatly advanced over the last 40 years and that flares and chaff were currently far less effective than when they were first introduced. Additionally, the researchers did not take into account how chaff and flares are supposed to be used on different platforms. How they are used on aircraft differs from how they are used on ships.

With these misconceptions in mind, the engineers built a launching system, intended to be mounted on all surface ships. The system itself is described as a series of cylinders filled with either chaff or flares, set near the center of the ship and angled upwards. The basic function is no different than firework launchers. The apparatus called the Jammer or guided misdirection device, was built to throw out a cloud of metallic foil in order to disrupt the missile's radar guidance systems, and dozens of flares in order to misdirect any infrared tracking devices. Launching the countermeasures manually would be too inefficient, so the device depended on its vacuum tube technology to launch automatically when a missile was detected by radar. The Jammer was intended to throw up these countermeasures if the ship's anti-aircraft measures failed to shoot down an incoming missile. The engineers were confident that the Jammer would work and that any ship equipped with this device would not be hit by Japan's guided missile arsenal.

## Service History

After the destruction of the 2nd Advanced Fleet, the Jammer was deployed in order to protect the 1st Advanced Fleet from a saturation missile strike. Much to the horror of the engineers and the fleet commanders, the Jammer would fail to divert any missiles, resulting in four ships being sunk or permanently disabled. The missiles were too fast to be shot down by anti-aircraft guns or fighters, and the advanced guidance systems were not fooled by the primitive countermeasures. The Gra-Valkas engineers' efforts might have worked against first generation guided missiles, but not against the latest versions of radar, inertial guidance, and infrared imaging systems. Furthermore, the ships could not take evasive maneuvers fast enough after deploying their Jammers. Kandal would go on to believe that Japan used magic in their missiles to not be fooled by chaff or flares.

The problems of the 1st Advanced Fleet would multiply as they detected a huge wave of 250 anti-ship missiles closing in on them. With the Jammer deemed as worthless, the Gra Valkas Navy had no choice but to try and shoot down as many missiles as they can. With the destruction of the 1st Advanced Fleet, the Jammer has been deemed as a failure and most likely the project was discontinued.