Reverse-Engineering

**Reverse engineering**, also called **back engineering**, is the process by which a man-made object is deconstructed to reveal its designs, architecture, or to extract knowledge from the object; similar to scientific research, the only difference being that scientific research is about a natural phenomenon.

## Overview

There are many reasons for performing reverse engineering in various fields. Reverse engineering has its origins in the analysis of hardware for commercial or military advantage. However, the reverse engineering process, as such, is not concerned with creating a copy or changing the artifact in some way; it is only an analysis in order to deduce design features from products with little or no additional knowledge about the procedures involved in their original production. In some cases, the goal of the reverse engineering process can simply be a redocumentation of legacy systems. Even when the reverse-engineered product is that of a competitor, the goal may not be to copy them, but to perform competitor analysis

### Reasons for Reverse-Engineering

* **Interfacing**. Reverse engineering can be used when a system is required to interface to another system and how both systems would negotiate is to be established. Such requirements typically exist for interoperability.
* **Military or commercial espionage**. Learning about an enemy's or competitor's latest research by stealing or capturing a prototype and dismantling it, which may result in the development of a similar product or a better countermeasure against it.
* **Obsolescence**. Integrated circuits are often designed on proprietary systems and built on production lines which become obsolete in only a few years. When systems using these parts can no longer be maintained (since the parts are no longer made), the only way to incorporate the functionality into new technology is to reverse engineer the existing chip and then redesign it using newer tools, using the understanding gained as a guide. Another obsolescence originated problem which can be solved by reverse engineering is the need to support (maintenance and supply for continuous operation) existing, legacy devices which are no longer supported by their original equipment manufacturer (OEM). This problem is particularly critical in military operations.
* **Product security analysis**. To examine how a product works by determining the specifications of its components and estimate costs, identifying potential patent infringement. Also part of product security analysis is acquiring sensitive data by disassembling and analyzing the design of a system component. Another intent may be to remove copy protection, or circumvention of access restrictions.
* **Competitive technical intelligence**. Understand what one's competitor is actually doing, versus what they say they are doing.
* **Saving money**. When one finds out what a piece of electronics is capable of, it can spare a user from the purchase of a separate product.
* **Repurposing**. When obsolete objects are reused in a different but useful manner.

## Reverse-Engineering in the New World

### Third Civilization Area and Outside the Civilization Areas

Due to the low-level of technology and understanding of scientific principles, reverse-engineering is not practiced on even a small scale, if at all. For example, less developed nations were dependent on the Parpaldia Empire's technology shares in exchange for an annual tribute of slaves, due to the fact that they were unable to reproduce the obsolete infrastructure products such as metal nails.

The Parpaldia Empire is known to have made an serious attempt to reverse the anti-aircraft gun technology smuggled from the Holy Milishial Empire. However, that anti-aircraft gun was judged to be too complex for Parpaldia's engineers, especially the magic circuits.

### Second Civilization Area and the Gra Valkas Empire

For scientific and mechanical nations like Mu, reverse-engineering is practiced, as they have been studying books and technical manuals from Japan, and have been experimenting with using automobile car parts such as the Turbocharger in their aircraft. Although they are capable of taking a device apart and learning how it generally functions, Mu engineers are still unable to reproduce the device due to a lack of knowledge, resources and industrial capability. At present, they are only able to cobble together existing technology that already works. One example is the X Shinden Kai. In addition to Mu, Magikaraich Community is known to be attempting to copy small arms from the Gra Valkas Empire, which were captured after the Capture of Barbarus Air Base.

For the Gra Valkas Empire, there has so far been only one attempt at reverse-engineering, as technicians like Naguano and Kandal tried to reverse-engineer the guided missile and come up with a way to counter it. However, they relied solely on their vacuum-tube technology and the assumption that guided missiles had not advanced in the last 70 years since they were first introduced. Their anti-missile jammer would fail horribly during the New World War.

### First Civilization Area

The entirety of the magical technology of the Holy Milishial Empire would be based on reverse-engineering the relics of the Ravernal Empire. However, the Milishial technicians' attempts at reverse-engineering would result in poor, underpowered versions of the originals. This is due to the fact that they only understand about half of the magic involved and lack the knowledge of the fundamentals of the phenomena they are trying to reproduce. For example, their Light Discharge, Air-Compression Engine may simulate the basic functions of a jet engine, but it cannot produce the same kind of performance as the Ravernal engine. The Japanese engineers have examined the Alpha-3 Fighter and consider it to be composed of both forward and backward thinking. The Milishial engineers don't seem to understand how aerodynamics work, but only that certain wing structures allow their craft to fly.

### Japan

Japanese engineers are quite capable of using scientific methods to reverse-engineer a machine, but they do run into some difficulty in terms of magic, simply because they don't have the ability to use magic nor understand it. Although they cannot reproduce a magical device, they can create a device through scientific means that does the same function.

With the loss of imports of military and civilian equipment from Earth, Japan is known to be working on a plan to fill that void with alternative products. or reverse-engineering technology from original equipment. For example, Kawasaki Heavy Industries is planning to manufacture spare parts for fleets of Japan Airlines and other Japanese airlines. Another is the successful reverse-engineering of the AEGIS System, particularly the American-made AN-SPY radar, now installed in the newly-deployed Maya-Class AEGIS Guided-Missile Destroyer (DDG).