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 are! They're cutting the enemy fleet to shreds! My God, it's beautiful."

- Colonel Kirtland during the Battle of Antarctica

Drone Weapons are extremely powerful projectile weapons that serve as the primary weapons system of the Ancients, and are considered by many to be the most powerful weapons ever created.

Overview
"Our shields are of no use!"

- Her'ak



Representing the primary weapons system of the Ancients, drone weapons are a highly maneuverable lethal 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 in appearance, and were charged with enough energy to drill holes straight through a target multiple times before detonating.

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 vessels was destroyed or if the shields were 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 built by the Asurans 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. Only three types of shield technology have been proven capable of resisting drone weapons: Ancient, Asgard and Traveler, although they still suffer heavy damage upon impact. The Asgard have had the ability to study the technology behind drones for thousands of years after they found a 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.



The high-temperature energy fields emitted by drone weapons are capable of disintegrating nearly all forms of conventional matter, allowing them to tunnel through even the strongest of materials, from ice to the alloys that make up the hulls of starships. In many cases drones 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, retaining that information even if their host vessel has been destroyed, and are also capable of seeking, tracking, and engaging targets on their own accord, dodge weapons fire directed towards them, and move around any obstacles in their path; if drones are given no targeting information when launched they will simply seek out the nearest moving high-energy heat source. It also appears that drones are automatically set to detonate on impact whenever a surgical strike on smaller targets, such as a starfighter or individual, is necessary.

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.

Ancient vessels and structures possess varying amounts of drones: City-ships and Ancient outposts boast tens of thousands of drones that can swarm and destroy entire 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 sixteen.

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, they were able to catch the Asuran warships off guard 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 destroyed, 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. After the Ancients abandoned Atlantis, drone weapons became increasingly rare in the Pegasus Galaxy, with only Ancient ouposts, city-ships, puddle jumpers, and Aurora-class warships possessing them apart from the secluded Asurans. Also, the only known drone weapons in the Milky Way are located at the Antarctic outpost, though it can reasonably be assumed that they are also located at other ouposts throughout the Milky Way.

The Asurans have also been seen using drone technology, which should come as no surprise seeing as they have emulated Lantean society in every way. Due to the fact that the Asurans possess no desire for reasearch or bettering of themselvs it is unlikely they improved the design, allthough upon returning to the milky way, the Ancients may have done.

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.

After the battle, an outpost was created to study the outpost in Antarctica. where scientists stationed there studied one of the thousands of Ancient drones leftover 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. Beckett was, however, able to stop the drone before it destroyed the helicopter.