General Area Defense Integration Anti-spacecraft Network
From FABT
 The GARDIAN system being tested by the SSV Nelson during her shakedown run.
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| Production information | |
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Manufacturer: |
Defense Projects Agency of the Republics (inventor) |
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Type: |
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Cost: |
40,000,000 credits (warship/space station variant) |
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Introduced: |
31 March 230 CE |
| Technical information | |
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Size: |
15 meters (warship/space station variant) |
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Damage per hit: |
Devastating |
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Maximum ammunition: |
Unlimited (subject to recharging) |
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Fire mode: |
Automatic |
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Ammunition type: |
Pulse laser |
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Operation: |
Electrically-operated |
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Rate of fire: |
60 pulses per minute |
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Accuracy: |
Precise |
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Range: |
600,000 kilometers (infrared) |
| Usage | |
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Era(s): |
Milky Way Galaxy |
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Affiliation: |
Every government/military organization in the Milky Way galaxy |
- "At the flip of a switch, watch your scopes go red with fireworks. That's the promise of the GARDIAN."
- — Technical advisor discussing the GARDIAN defense system.
The General Area Defense Integration Anti-spacecraft Network, most commonly abbreviated and known by as GARDIAN, is a high-powered directed energy-based point-defense weapons platform and network utilized by warships, ground installations and planetary facilities for defensive purposes. Invented and designed by the DPAR, the research and development arm of the asari military, the GARDIAN quickly became standard among all militaries across the entire Milky Way galaxy, revolutionizing how space combat was fought. Solving the problem of operator error coinciding with a crew being overwhelmed by too many factors during a battle, the GARDIAN system was designed to be a "switch-and-forget" network of weapons, all interconnected, with the purpose of handling enemy fighters, missile swarms and other offensive measures that would normally overwhelm a warship/colony/space station's ability to protect itself. The GARDIAN linked numerous defensive pulse laser armaments together via a single targeting system, allowing them to work in concert simultaneously without the operator having to micro-manage or numerous operators being assigned to each role. This network is further augmented by the use of a VI/AI to control the system, allowing them to make even quicker judgements on the fly, further increasing the effect of the GARDIAN system.
Over the centuries since the GARDIAN was first invented in 230 CE, the GARDIAN system has gone through numerous revisions, with improvements to its capabilities made, advances in technology made, and its applications broadened from warships to being used as planet-side anti-aircraft defense batteries for colonies and military installations, and even equipped on space stations. At the beginning of any battle, the GARDIAN is considered 100% accurate: while not 100% lethal, its initial barrage will always hit a target, even if not completely knocking it out, making the GARDIAN excellent for defending colonies/military installations from air assault, and to act as an extra layer of defense for a warship ontop of its already present shielding. Most earlier GARDIAN systems utilized infrared frequencies for their pulse lasers, which was cheaper and easier to maintain than ultraviolet frequencies, despite their superior stopping power and range. Infrared was cheaper due to its focal arrays and mirrors being less prone to degradation and thus being high maintenance, a problem infrared didn't have: despite this, ultraviolet was used heavily by the Salarian Union who mounted it on their more expensive and more advanced warships, and the geth utilized ultraviolet GARDIANs on virtually all of their warships by 2186 CE. As the technology was further improved and advanced, the "Generation II" GARDIAN was invented by the Galactic Dominion after the Post-Apocalyptic War, which entirely used ultraviolet as a replacement for infrared, as the technology had sufficiently advanced to where ultraviolet was no longer as cost-prohibitive and maintenance heavy.