Guys, thanks for taking the time to give me your opinions. This was a difficult build for me as I had no template to go by.
Tim, you pointed out that the power spike would leave evidence, blown fuses, melted wiring and the like. On reading your post I got to thinking that maybe this very evidence would lead an investigation team to believe that a severe power spike from the ships own power plant caused the ship to go down, especially if they was no other evidence to the contrary, in effect they shot themselves down with poor maintenance?
Todd, I agree. Deploying in secret is the key to avoid having Coalition marines showing up at your doorstep the next day with shoot on sight and shoot to kill orders. I idea for deployment would start with jumping in system in an area of null space where no one would see me. I would load up a UCAV (I love the one in BARD) with one or two weapons and send it towards the target planet. Well outside the planetary sensor grid and away from shipping routes the UCAV would slow down to sub-G speeds and release the weapons to drift into orbit. You had a good point about a sky sweep program. I never gave that a thought. I believe that A, B and C starports and F space ports would have an active sweep programs the other ports most likely would not. Here I imagine they would if they spotted the debris would have to rely on a passing ship to close on, identity and shoot the debris down. Your right about a couple of pieces of debris showing up might get peoples attention. It still might work if left in a larger debris field like an old space battle. The intent being to mess with rescue craft and salvagers. I'm thinking that maybe if instead of human - made space junk if the satellite resembled a chunk of asteroid debris, especially if in a slowly decaying orbit that at best a warning to shipping would be sent to avoid the "rocks".
Leonard, you are right ships would need shielding from the wash of a stars radiation, but would a ships hull "skin" do this? Much like a car's body protecting it's passengers from a lighting strike? I'm thinking that a focused EMP burst would be more like a millisecond bullet rather than a continuous wave of energy. I also think the pulse could be focused much like the X-ray rods on a space nuclear missile focuses the energy of the blast down a narrow beam. In Brilliant Lances a PAW can force s system reset to a target ships computer effectively shutting down a ship for a one or two 30 minute period. I'm thinking that this might be a mild kind of EMP, a side effect of the weapon?
Please keep the ideas coming!!!
Thanks Again
Roger