Babylon 5 Firepower Estimates

This page contains several attempts to estimate the effective firepower of warships seen in the Many participants in the "science fiction quantification" community will be familiar with a similar assessment on B5Tech.com.  B5Tech uses a different standard of evidence than BabTech, so assessments on this site are likely to differ.  This is not to say that B5Tech's assessments are wrong; they simply accept sources of information that we don't and therefore generate different conclusions.  All energy and power estimates generated using these methods are "ball park" estimates at best, since we simply don't have enough information to generate precise figures.  Likewise, all of these estimates depend on the accuracy of the assumptions used to generate them.

• Omega-class Destroyer
• Babylon 5
• Minbari Warcruiser
• Shadows

Omega-class Destroyer

These calculations are based on the Alexander's attack on the Agrippa (mistakenly called Roanoke by Capt Sheridan, but we could read the name on the ship taking the hit), which left a long glowing scar on the hull. This incident occurred in the episode "Severed Dreams".

The crippled Churchill rams the Roanoke in the episode "Severed Dreams".

Assumptions

• The hull of the Agrippa is constructed from a type of steel. This allows us to use the thermal properties of iron to determine how much energy is used to melt the hull.  We use iron because it is a good construction material; it is widely available, and its thermal properties are easy to obtain.

• The beam weapon has a circular cross-section with a diameter of 10 meters.  We determined this value by comparing the weapon port and beam to the size of EarthForce fighters.
  
• The beam melted a line of hull 250 meters long.  This is approximately one fifth of the length of the ship (estimated elsewhere).
• The beam melted the hull to a depth of 2.11 meters.  This is proportionate-by-length to the depth of the thickest armor on a 20th-century Iowa-class battleship.
• No allowance has been made for airspaces since this is a measure of energy used to melt armor.
• The result is a lower-limit estimate of the power delivered to the target by the heavy beam weapons mounted on each side of the ship's bow.

Calculations

If our assumptions are valid, then one of these beams can deliver at least 38.3 TW of power to the target (approximately 9.1 kilotons of energy per second).  This is a lower limit because various factors (like reflectivity and conduction of heat through the hull to adjacent areas) would reduce the efficiency of the work being done.

Babylon 5 Pulse Cannon

These estimates are based on pulse cannon shots from Babylon 5 that struck the Agrippa in the episode "Severed Dreams". These are the largest weapon mounts on the station; smaller weapons have also been used against fighters and warships.

One of Babylon 5's offensive pulse cannons, deployed and armed.

Assumptions

• Agrippa has a hull composed of some kind of steel.
• The pulse vaporizes a hemispherical "crater" in the ship's hull with a depth of 10 meters.
• The result is a lower limit on the amount of energy carried by one pulse from the weapon.

Calculations

If the 10m hemisphere of metal is melted, the pulse delivers at least 3.6 KT of energy.  If the 10m hemisphere of metal is vaporized, the pulse delivers at least 30 KT of energy.  If the pulse cannon fires twice per second, the weapon delivers either 7.3 KT/s or 60 KT/s.  Since the stations pulse cannons probably aren't significantly more powerful than an Omega-class destroyer's beam weapons, the actual value is probably somewhere in the lower part of that range.

Minbari Warcruiser

In "Points of Departure", one Minbari warcruiser fired on another, the rebel ship Trigati.  This shot severed the Trigati's tail fin and disabled its jump engines. 

The Trigati takes fire from another Minbari cruiser in "Points of Departure".

Assumptions

• The warcruiser's hull is composed of some kind of steel.
• The beam weapon has a circular cross-section with a diameter of 10 meters.
• The tail fin is 267 meters high (one third of an overall height of 800 meters for the ship).
• The warcruiser's hull is 1.5m thick, with air space between the starboard and port bulkheads; the beam therefore needs to cut through 3m of metal.
• The result is a lower limit on the power delivered by the Minbari beam weapon.

Calculations

Assuming the beam melted the Trigati's hull in two seconds, it delivered approximately 29 TW of power or about 7 KT/s.  Assuming the beam vaporized the hull, it delivered 243 TW or about 58 KT/s.

Shadow Cruisers

Shadow warships can easily slice a large warship of the Young Races in half in a second.  They demonstrated this capability against the Narns on multiple occasions, the most prominent being in "The Long Twilight Struggle".

A Shadow warship fires at a Narn fighter.

Shadow warships cut Narn heavy cruisers in half.

Assumptions

• Narn heavy cruisers are constructed of steel.
• Narn heavy cruisers are approximately 750m long and 50m thick from "back to belly".  90% of their volume is open internal space.
• The beam weapon has a circular cross-section with a diameter of 10 meters.

Assuming the Shadow beam weapon melted through the hull of the Narn cruiser in one second, the weapon delivers at least 272 TW of power (about 65 KT/s).  If the weapon vaporized the Narn hull, it delivers at least 2279 TW of power (about 544 KT/s).