0100 April 5th, 2020 CE
0630 Sun 5th, 196 AE
In the jungles
Colonel Trakkas was unhappily talking to Colonel Arewakas on the radio. Because of the precarious situation that they were in, they decided not to meet outside.
<<<“More losses! We will be decimated by the time we even arrive at the designated position. Is your 2nd Battalion still intact?”
“They are. Some losses. Nothing too significant since they retreated.”
“We are stuck here with enemies on either side. Their air support is terrifying. Any ideas of what we could do.”
“Well, you mentioned earlier that we could abandon our magipanzers and try to escape without their planes noticing.”
“You know we will be demoted and called cowards for that. We will be losing more than 500 magipanzers.”
“Any bright ideas then?”
“Should we try to attack the other side again?”
“Their air support over there will wipe us out for sure.”>>>
Another radio message interrupted their conversation.
<<<“Enemy magipanzers!”
“Huh? Where? Who is this?
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Pahice of the 3rd Battalion. Our Medium Magipanzer Company is engaging human magipanzers on our road. They have come up behind them.”>>>
A few minutes earlier
The B Company of the 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment moved down the road of the jungle in a single file line. The lush green jungle surrounded them on all sides. Sunlight barely came through the canopy. The 14 Abrams of the company came to a stop.
<<<“This is Captain Bush of B Company. We have, um, come across a fork in the road. One’s leading left while the other’s leading right.”
“B company will take the right. C company will take the left.”>>>
A few minutes after taking the right road, B Company rounded a curved road and came to an abrupt stop again.
<<<”What the…uhhh...”
“Why did we stop?”
“Elf tank in front! Elf tank in front! Engaging!”>>>
Right around the curve was an entire elf tank company in a single file line. The front Abrams had just driven right up the back of one of the elf tanks. A round from the front Abrams blasted the back of it.
A large explosion caught the attention of the rest of the Medium Magipanzer Company of the 3rd Battalion. Soon they realized that a Knight in the back of their formation had just been destroyed.
<<<”Human tanks are attacking!”
“Engage! Magipanzers at the front of the formation turn around. Magipanzers that have a line of fire, get your turrets around and fire at will!”>>>
The Knights and Guards started traversing their turrets and their tanks to face the Abrams. The Knights at the back of the formation slowly turned their turrets.
The two Abrams behind the front one went off onto the left and right side of the road to engage the elves. With a rate of fire of more than 15 rounds a minute and the fact that it took a Knight about 30 seconds to traverse its turret 180 degrees, the three Abrams were able to take out all of the elf tanks in the back. Soon, they pushed aside the destroyed elf tanks and moved forward against the surviving ones that were in the middle of turning their tanks around.
Finally turned around, a shot from a Knight tank ricocheted off of the right cheek of one of the Abrams. An Abrams returned fire and knocked it out in one shot to its front armor. The other elf tanks joined in on the firing but all their rounds glanced off.
<<<“Ridiculous! What’s with their armor!”
“The armored piercing mana is just glancing off!”
“Adjust the mana to high explosive!”>>>
A high explosive round struck and exploded on the cheek of another Abram. The Knight crew that fired the shell cheered after it struck. The large explosion seemed to convince them that they had destroyed it. Then through the clearing smoke, it continued firing as if nothing had happened.
The high explosive rounds exploded all around the other Abrams but still, it had no effect.
<<<”The company commander is dead! Our magipanzers are completely ineffective against theirs! We can’t penetrate their armo…”>>>
The voice on the other side of LTC Pahice’s magiradio cut off.
<<<”This is B company. We have just engaged and destroyed around 20 elf tanks. No casualties suffered. Our tanks seem to be impervious to their rounds.”>>>
Destroyed Knights and Guards were strewn across the road in the jungle. It was basically like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun.
0112 April 5th, 2020 CE
0936 Sun 5th, 196 AE
One of the Elven Advance Landing Grounds
Two pilots were on break in one of the hastily constructed Temporary Buildings.
“I heard the Army got orders to stop their advance.”
“Eh, no concern to us. We are the Air Force. As long as the Army isn’t pushed back, we will be fine.”
“Well, I heard it was because of some special human aircraft. That definitely will concern us. What if they come to attack our airbases?”
“Nothing to worry about. We will detect them with our MUDs"
“The Mana Usage Detectors? I thought the humans didn’t use mana to power their aircraft.”
“Oh uhhh. I meant the MWEs… the uh yeah… the Mana Wave Emitters. You know what those are right?”
“Never heard of them.”
“Well, they are kind of a new invention. They send out mana waves in many directions and at large distances. When a mana wave hits an object in the sky, it bounces back towards us which allows us to detect it.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I asked one of the people who used them. He was kinda weird but gave me a very long explanation.”
A Magusian Airbase given to the US
Six F-35As took to the skies.
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El sonar de mana es el que usa Milla con nanobots novela "I said do my abilidad average"
Even though we are dealing with mana/magic, the basic principle still applies. Energy is still energy. Radar absorbent material affects a large range of the radio range of wavelengths. So if the mana acts on the same wavelengths, then it should work. Furthermore, the angles of the F-35 should deflect most of the mana away from the receiver, giving a smaller signal or no signal at all.
Unless those "Mana Waves" are actually just Radio Waves, and not just any radio waves, but waves in the same frequency range as those used in our radars, which the F35s stealth is designed to defeat... F35s shouldn't defeat MWEs.
I don't expect they will be the same technology (using mana instead of radio waves), but operating on the same principle will probably mean that even though our stealth might not work as well against mana-based radars, it will still reflect significantly weaker waves. Possibly too weak to be picked up by early MWEs at any notable distance.
@Arkus86 One of the biggest parts of stealth aircraft is careful use of angles to avoid reflecting radio waves back in the same direction they came. So the same thing should happen to any other detector that works off reflecting anything.
@Guspaz True, but radar-absorbent paints/materials used in construction are also factors that might interact differently with mana. Although admitedly I don't know how big of a part they play.
@Arkus86 Sure, but remember that their magical radar is still supposed to be equivalent to WW2 era stuff. I don’t think it would take much to fool it.
@Guspaz Yes, we can agree on that.
@Guspaz Even if the "Ma"dar is equivalent to WW2 era Radar in its sophistication, is there really any reason whatsoever to think that modern stealth tech, which is specifically designed to defeat "Ra"dar, could somehow hide the plane from some completely different kind of "mana waves", knowing it can't even hide the plane from any other ordinary EM wavelenght based detection ?
If the radar stealth tech defeats the "magic wave emitters", it isn't really advanced technology vs magic anymore, so much as handwavium vs magi tech...
@AryaX Wasn’t it explicitly said that magic detection worked by reflection? Then, as I said, the most fundamental part of modern stealth technology, the careful control of angles to avoid reflecting back in the same direction, would still apply. Even if all the other stealth features like radar-absorbing coatings were useless, the same basic angles of reflection would still work. And the magic detection is quite primitive, so...
@Guspaz @Arkus86 Well said! I was thinking of this issue. My knowledge of how radar works isn't that good (Of course duh XD I'm a high school student that has no interest in engineering whatsoever). However, I came to understand that stealth aircraft deflected radar in two ways (They use both). Number one it's radar absorbant coating and number two its angles/contours/shape. Now the problem was that the MWE could not be absorbed by this radar-absorbent coating. (So I thought awwww... the stealth is useless). BUT the second way definitely worked since the principle is exactly the same. Compounded with the fact that the MWE is the first "non-magic" detection system that the elves have invented, its capabilities would be extremely bad. I'm basically just using the fact that stealth aircraft uses shape to prevent detection and the fact that the elven MWE is very primitive and uses the same principle as radar. Not sure how it will actually work in real life but this is fiction and I'm talking about magic technology XD. (Basically in this world, magic has to be developed and researched. It's not like there are all these techniques that everyone knows about, inherently have, or could just be discovered. It's not all-powerful. Of course, there are some people who are powerful. They inherently have large amounts of mana which allows them to do seemingly impossible things. However, the tradeoff is an extremely weak and high-maintenance body).