Drone weapon

"Thousands of bright yellow&mdash;I don't know&mdash;They're coming from the surface! I don't know what they are! They're cutting the enemy fleet to shreds! My God, it's beautiful."

- Colonel Kirtland during the Battle of Antarctica

Drone weapon, known more colloquially as drones, are projectile weapons that serve as the primary weapons of the Ancients. Though still capable of incredible damage in small numbers, when deployed en masse they become one of the most terrifying weapon systems ever created, capable of obliterating entire fleets with little effort.

Overview
"Our shields are of no use!"

- Her'ak

Representing the primary weapons system of the Ancients, drone weapons are highly maneuverable ordnance that can be deployed individually or in a swarm, and are capable of operating in the vacuum of space, an atmosphere, or underwater. Each drone automatically acquires hostile targets through a sensor located at the tip of their outer shell, which is remarkably similar to a squid or jellyfish in appearance, and are charged with enough energy to drill through a target multiple times before exploding. Although used by both the Lanteans and Asurans to attack ground targets, their blast radius has only been seen as a few dozen meters at the most, suggesting that they are much less effective when used this way, unless the intention is to hit a precision target. Despite this, the energy generated inside the explosion exceeds that of several nuclear explosions, capable even of destroying a near-invincible Stargate.

They are capable of guided flight and can be controlled from either a control chair by someone with the ATA gene or a control console. Little is known about these weapons, but they have shown the ability to easily pierce Goa'uld shields and the hulls of Wraith hive-ships without exploding. In an alternate reality, it was stated that an Ori mothership was driven off by drone weapons stored in the Antarctic outpost; whether this means the vessel was destroyed or if the shield was just weakened is unknown. Drone weapons are extremely powerful with regard to their size: only two are required to destroy a ha'tak vessel or an Aurora-class warship when the ships are hit in key areas, which drones automatically detect and aim for, and a hive-ship lasted only a few seconds against a salvo of a few dozen drones fired from the Orion.

The mechanism utilized by drone weapons to bypass shielding technology is unknown; it is possible that sheer power output alone overwhelms the shield or causes it to destabilize and become useless. Regardless, only three races possess shields that have proven capable of resisting drone weapons: Ancient and Asgard, although they are still placed under heavy strain upon impact. The Asgard have had the ability to study the technology behind drones for thousands of years after they found an Ancient repository of knowledge and downloaded a portion of its contents to their computers, and it is likely the Travelers obtained the ability to resist drone weapons by reverse-engineering the shield system of the Aurora-class warship in their possession. Another explanation could be that the drone weapons of the Asurans are just not as powerful as those of the Ancients; it is possible that the Ancients upgraded the design of their drone weapons some time after abandoning the Asurans, and the technology was likely upgraded as the war with the Wraith progressed. Todd remarked that it would only take one drone to disable the Daedalus's hyperdrive, implying that the drone weapons of Atlantis could penetrate an Asgard-designed shield without much resistance.

The high-temperature energy field emitted by a drone weapon is capable of burning through nearly all forms of conventional matter, even allowing them to tunnel through materials so strong and dense that not even the most advanced Asgard weaponry can penetrate. Less resistant forms of matter such as organic compounds and materials with low melting points (like ice and less durable metals) are instantaneously disintegrated on contact. In many cases a drone will make one or more high-speed passes through the target with virtually no damage to itself, dealing severe damage in the process by overloading various circuits and systems and causing massive detonations from within, before finally exploding. Drones which have not been destroyed appear to recall themselves to wherever they were launched from, but it could be this only happens when the user of the control chair directs them to do so.

Drone weapons also show some moderate intelligence, knowing the difference between an enemy vessel and a friendly vessel after they have been given their targeting information, and retaining that information even if their host vessel has been destroyed; if a drone is given no targeting information when launched it will simply seek out the nearest moving high-energy heat source until the drone either destroys it, is given a new target, recalled, or simply deactivated. Drones have also proven capable of seeking, tracking, and engaging targets on their own accord, dodging weapons fire directed towards them, and dodging any obstacles in their path. It also appears that drones are automatically set to detonate on impact whenever smaller objects, such as a fighters or individuals, are designated as targets.

It appears that drone weapons are powered through an advanced form of wireless energy transfer, as they have shut down and fallen from the sky in mid-flight when the ZPMs powering the city-ship they were launched from were depleted, implying that an outside power source is required to keep the drones in flight. However the ZPMs were already near depletion in the first place and it could be that the drones possessed so little power when they were launched in order to conserve power that they shut down far quicker than they would have had they been launched using a not-so-depleted power source. This could also be explained by the fact that the drones were under direct and continuous control by control chair instead of having their targeting information directly uploaded on launch, so they shut down because they were no longer being given any flight information.

Ancient vessels and structures possess varying amounts of drones: city-ships and Ancient outposts boast tens of thousands of drones, likely hundreds at full capacity, that can swarm and destroy multiple fleets of ships, Aurora-class warships somewhere in the upper hundreds to lower thousands (more than enough to destroy several ships in one salvo), and gateships contain at least six (which, in theory, could destroy three Goa'uld motherships).

Weakness
The fatal flaw of drone technology lies in its launch time, as the user must be prepared to fire them. When the Atlantis Expedition began attacking the Aurora-class warships the Asurans were deploying throughout the Pegasus Galaxy, they were able to catch the Asuran ships off guard and defenseless by ambushing them immediately after they exited hyperspace; there was never any time for them to launch their drone stockpiles (during the entire series of ambushes not a single drone was launched). Had they been able to launch their drones in time, even while the ships were being ripped apart by the plasma beams, the drones would have retained their target information and, if enough were launched, destroyed the Tau'ri ships.

History
Drone weapons were used extensively during the Ancients' war with the Wraith; however they became increasingly rare after the Ancients left the Pegasus Galaxy for Earth. Ten thousand years later, only Ancient outposts and vessels possess them, and there is currently no way to replenish their stockpiles as no society apart from the secluded and now-destroyed Asurans (who had no desire to share their knowledge) knew how to construct them. In the Milky Way, the only encountered drone weapons are located at the Antarctic outpost, though it can be assumed that other stockpiles may exist elsewhere in the Milky Way.



The Asurans also possessed drone technology, which should come as no surprise seeing as they emulated Ancient society in every possible way barring ascension. However, due to the fact that the Asurans possessed no desire to better either themselves or their technologies, it is unlikely that they improved the design of their drone weapons in any way.

Drone weapons were also used in defense of Earth during the Battle of Antarctica, directly penetrating the shields and hulls of the Anubis' Ha'taks and easily destroying the invading fleet. After the battle, an outpost was created to study the technology in the newly-discovered outpost, and the scientists stationed there studied at least one of the thousands of drones left over from the battle. When Dr. Carson Beckett was using the Ancient control chair, he accidentally activated the drone, which chased after the incoming helicopter containing John Sheppard and Jack O'Neill. Luckily, Beckett was able to shut down the drone before it destroyed the helicopter.