Some particles of the ion cannon have potential practical applications, for example, as a missile defense system or defense against meteorites. However, the vast majority of the concepts of these weapons belong to the world of science fiction, where these kinds of guns are present in great abundance. They are known under numerous names: phasers, guns from discharged particles, ion guns, proton beam guns, beam guns, etc.
Concept
The partial-beam weapon concept is based on reliable scientific principles and experiments that are currently being conducted around the world. One effective process of causing damage or destroying a goal is simply to overheat it until it disappears in an instant. Nevertheless, after decades of research and development, partial-beam weapons are still at the research stage, and we still have to test in practice whether such guns can be used as an effective means of destruction. Many people dream of assembling an ion cannon with their own hands and testing its properties in practice.
Particle Accelerators
Particle accelerators are a well-developed technology used in scientific research for decades. They use electromagnetic fields to accelerate and direct charged particles along a predetermined path, and electrostatic “lenses” focus these flows on collisions. The cathode ray tube in many televisions of the 20th century and computer monitors is a very simple type of particle accelerator. More powerful versions include synchrotrons and cyclotrons used in nuclear research. Weapon with electron beam charge is a modified version of this technology. It accelerates charged particles (in most cases, electrons, positrons, protons or ionized atoms, but very advanced versions can accelerate other particles, such as mercury nuclei) almost to the speed of light, and then release them at the target. These particles have enormous kinetic energy, which they charge matter on the surface of the target, causing almost instantaneous and catastrophic overheating. This, in essence, is the basic principle of the ion gun.
Physical features
The main capabilities of the ion gun nevertheless boil down to instant and painless destruction of the target. Charged particle beams quickly diverge due to mutual repulsion, therefore, neutral particle beams are most often offered. A weapon with a neutral particle beam ionizes atoms by driving an electron away from each atom or by allowing each atom to capture an additional electron. The charged particles are then accelerated and neutralized again by the addition or removal of electrons.
Cyclotron particle accelerators, linear particle accelerators, and synchrotron particle accelerators can accelerate positively charged hydrogen ions as long as their speed does not approach the speed of light, and each individual ion has kinetic energy from 100 MeV to 1000 MeV or more. Then, the obtained high-energy protons can capture electrons from the electron of the emitter electrodes and thus are electrically neutralized. This creates an electrically neutral high energy hydrogen atomic beam that can flow in a straight line near the speed of light to smash its target and damage it.
Overcoming speed limits
A pulsating particle beam emitted by such a weapon may contain 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy or more. The speed of the beam, approaching the speed of light (299 792 458 m / s in vacuum), combined with the energy created by the weapon, denies any realistic means of protecting the target from the beam. Target hardening by shielding or selecting materials would be impractical or inefficient, especially if the beam could be maintained at full power and accurately focused on the target.
In the U.S. Army
The United States Defense Strategy Initiative has invested in the development of a neutral particle beam technology that will be used as a weapon in outer space. Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a neutral beam accelerator technology. A prototype of a neutral hydrogen beam weapon was launched aboard the White Sands Missile suborbital probe rocket in July 1989 as part of the Beam Experiments Aboard Rocket (BEAR) project. He reached a maximum altitude of 124 miles and successfully worked in space for 4 minutes before returning to Earth. In 2006, a restored experimental device was transferred from Los Alamos to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. However, the full story of the development of the ion cannon is hidden from the mass layman. Who knows what other weapons the Americans have acquired lately. The wars of the future can surprise us greatly.
In the Star Wars universe
In Star Wars, ionic air guns are a form of armament that can cause ionized particles that can destroy electronic systems to even shut down a large capital ship. During the Battle of Sikka Island, the continued fire of these cannons from the side of several ships inflicted significant damage on the hull of at least one lightweight cruiser of the Arquitens class.
In the Eta-2 class light interceptor, the same guns were used that spewed out plasma, which could cause temporary electrical failures in the mechanism upon impact.
Y-wing fighters were also equipped with these guns, primarily those used by the Alliance's Golden Squadron. Although their field of fire was somewhat limited, the ion cannons were powerful enough, and there were enough three explosions to turn off the Arquitens command cruiser, and only one to completely turn off the TIE / D Defender fighter. This was demonstrated during a shootout in the Archaeon Nebula.
At the beginning of the Clone Wars, the Confederation of Independent Systems equipped the massive Sujugator heavy cruiser with huge ion cannons. With the command of General Grievous, this cruiser attacked dozens of warships of the Republic and gave them the full sense of the destructive power of ion weapons. After the battle of Abregado, the Republic found out about them.
Rage’s ion cannons were shut off by the Republic's Shadow Squadron during the battle near the Kaliida Nebula. The giant cruiser was later destroyed when the Jedi General Anakin Skywalker captured the ship from the inside and forced it to crash into the Antara Dead Moon.
During the early rebellion against the Galactic Empire, Golden Squadron bombers were equipped with ion cannons. The MC75 cruisers used by the Rebel Alliance were armed with heavy ion mounts.
During the Galactic Civil War, the Rebel Union used a stationary cannon firing ions to disable the Star Destroyers of the Death Squadron during the evacuation of Echo Base.
Program for DDOS
Low Orbit Ion Cannon (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) is an open source network utility and denial of service attack application written in C #. LOIC was originally developed by Praetox Technologies, but was later released for free public use and is now hosted on several open source platforms.
LOIC performs a DoS attack (or, if used by several persons, a DDoS attack) on the target site, pointing the server with TCP or UDP packets in order to disrupt the service of a particular host. People used LOIC to join voluntary botnets.
The software inspired the creation of an independent version of JavaScript called JS LOIC, as well as the web version of LOIC called Low Orbit Web Cannon (Low Orbit Web Cannon). It allows you to make a DoS attack directly from a web browser.
Protection method
Security experts quoted by the BBC said that well-designed firewall settings can filter most of the traffic from DDoS attacks through LOIC, thereby preventing the full effectiveness of these attacks. In at least one case, filtering all UDP and ICMP traffic blocked a LOIC attack. Because Internet service providers provide less bandwidth for each of their customers to provide guaranteed levels of service for all their customers at the same time, these types of firewall rules are more effective if they are implemented at a point located upstream of the Internet upstream channel of the application server . In other words, it’s easy to force the provider to refuse the traffic intended for the client by sending more traffic than it is allowed to, and any filtering that occurs on the client’s side after the traffic passes this link cannot prevent the service provider from rejecting the excess traffic, intended for this user. And so the attack is made.
LOIC attacks are easily identified in the system logs, and the attack can be tracked down to the IP addresses used.
The main weapon of anonymous
LOIC was used by the Anonymous group during the Project Chanology to attack the websites of the Church of Scientology, and then successfully attacked the website of the Recording Industry Association of America in October 2010. The application was then again used by the anonymous companies during their Occupy operation in December 2010. to attack websites of companies and organizations that opposed WikiLeaks.
In response to the closure of the Megaupload file sharing service and the arrest of four employees, Anonymous members launched DDoS attacks on the websites of the Universal Music Group (the company responsible for the lawsuit against Megaupload), the United States Department of Justice, and the United States Copyright Office , The Federal Bureau of Investigation, MPAA, Warner Music Group and RIAA, as well as HADOPI, in the afternoon of January 19, 2012 - through the same "gun" that allows you to make attacks on any server.
The LOIC app is named after the ion cannon, a fictional weapon from many sci-fi works, video games, and, in particular, the Command & Conquer series of games. It is difficult to name a game in which there would be no weapon with that name. For example, in the Stellaris game, the ion cannon plays an important role, despite the fact that this game is an economic strategy, albeit with a space setting.