Look Back/Shoot Back

There are two serious problems that plague most starfighters: a "blind spot" in the hind quarters of the ship, coupled with an inability to shoot anything in said spot.

Look Back

Active Starship Sensor Systems use a series of pulses from an "emitter" to detect objects, such as other spaceships. These work by emitting a pulse, bounding it off of something, and reading the returned signal. This is not much of an issue for large, slow-moving craft, but causes a serious issue with starfighters.

Often fast and highly maneuverable, these ships have a tendency to "outrun" the return-signal. This is not much of a problem for forward and lateral arrays, but namely manifests itself on the ships aft-quarters, leading to a sort of sensor blind-spot. This is, of course, is a problem for fighter starcraft, or a really great thing depending on which side of the chase you're in.

Shoot Back

The majority of this problem is directly related to Look Back - most weapon systems are either sensor-guided or fixed forward-facing. Very few vehicles small enough to quality as starfighters carry weapons with full three-sixty capacity. While guided missiles can altar trajectory to strike at targets in the rear flank, the additional time required to make the turn gives the target ample time to employ counter measures. Further complicating the matter is that a sensor blind-spot means an inability to dimension targets.

Solutions

There have been many implemented solutions to this issue, though very few fighters actually posses complete Look Back/Shoot Back capability. These are generally superiority-type fighters, designed to gain and keep superiority over a particular theater of battle.

Implemented Work-Arounds

This section covers solutions that do not require adding Look Back/Shoot Back capability to a given starcraft.

Wingman

The most common solution to the problem is the age-old "buddy system", in which fighters operate in pairs or teams, each responsible for clearing each other's baffles. An enemy fighter is usually detected before it enters the blind zone, s a pilot can easily radio his wingman to cover him. Alternatively, a standard flying practice is the "leap frog" approach, in which both spacecraft constantly very their speeds, thus allowing each other to scan one another's blind spots.

The classic "Crazy Ivan" baffle-clearing manuver involves executing a wide turn to scan the area in the blind spot before returning to course. This is not often recomended, however, as the ship is vulnerable in the turn. If an enemy is present, it can mean needing to employ counter measures, or possibly death.

Sensor Cross-Netting

In the system, all of the fighters in a squadron, or wing, share sensor data through a linked network. This is also often tie in to the carrier's grid, if operating within sensor range. This allows each ship to carry a more accurate "picture" of the combat zone, as opposed to relying souly on independant sensors.

Cross-Netting is not an ideal solution as speed-of-light time delays can cause serious problems with data interpretation, resulting in "sensor ghosts" or false detections. The Foundation famously combatted this by pushing the cross-net data hrough the Combat Scanner, hich was generally very effective at spotting the difference between a "ghost" and a solid taget. The downside, however, was that the extra processing led to short delays, some of which proved to be fatal.

Home Beaconing

Another oft-implemented solution is the use of a "home beacon". In this case, the mothership emits a single, large, very powerful sensor pulse, while the fighters use only their active recievers. This method is closely tied with cross-netting, and likewise suffers problems due to speed of light delays. The Home Beacon method is further made undesireable due to essentially "lighting up" the mothership as a target.

Functionality

This section deals with the technology used to overcome the Look Back/Shoot Back problem.

Look-Back Sensor Systems

Sensors are typically calibrated to give the greatest possible range, with long wave-length pulses and long return-times. Re-calibrating the forward and lateral-looking sensors would mean sacrificing a great deal of range. For this reason, some fighters are equipped with dedicated rear-facing sensor arrays. These typically use rapid RADAR or LADAR pulses and have much shorter range with lower clarity. However, they do still provide detection, and in most cases that is enough.

Under typically combat circumstances, and enemy will have been picked up at some point by the long-range sensors, and is already entered into the targeting computer. On Foundation fighters, data is also being fed in to the Combat Scanner to help identify the craft. Sensor Cross-Netting, highly effective at long-range, helps keep the blind spot to a minimum, at which point the dedicated look-back sensors need only the capacity to detect the presence of and track a target, no additional information required.

On the Harpy, due to the ships very high speed, the look-back sensors do not actually cover the entire blind spot, only the middle field of view. The region of poor detection is described as a sort of funnel-shape trailing behind the vehicle.