Dig the concept when we’re using it, but the thought of being on the business end of these weapons straight up freaks me the fuck out. It’s still considered to be “experimental” but Aeroprene weaponry is still installed in dozens of vehicles, aircraft, drones, base defenses and weapons. Field testing is the best testing and all that.

Here’s your summary: Aeroprene weapons fire small tungsten “darts” or “needles” that trail plasmatic matter behind them in a “thread” that’s capable of burning/cutting through whatever it touches. The needles are controllable in-flight, which allows the needle to stitch through the target numerous times as it drags the plasmatic thread through with it.
This means that a single needle can stitch through a target’s torso dozens of times, and then pull the plasmatic threads tight just like when you’re sewing a sock or some shit. Now use your imagination to think of what plasmatic thread will do to a target when that happens.
Fire a few hundred of these, and you can turn even the largest enemies into a pile of smoldering, unidentifiable gore.

Now a fully directable, armor piercing, target shredding firearm sounds fantastic. Then why isn’t it employed more?
Cause it is both expensiveand requires a shitloadof Nerve Harness training. The number of legionnaires who can use Aeroprene weaponry is few and far between, and the cost of the weapons are such that unless you’re part of a spec ops team, you’ll likely never see them outside of an armory.
Even an Aeroprene weapon that makes use of Gray Conduits for functionality is a serious cost, so you’ll only find them embedded in super critical stuff or facilities.

Operationally speaking, Aeroprene weapons use a rather small Charged Shell to activate the plasmatic matter and send the needle downrange. Any ammo comes in the form of plasmatic coated needles, which usually live in an internal magazine you load by opening the gun up, or by using a detachable magazine.
Now fully using the gun makes use of Chaff manipulation extensively, which is why these things are so damn hard to get a handle on. In a broad sense you have to lower the gravity scale of the needle, pull the trigger for the charged shell to activate the plasmatic matter and shoot the needle, give it an acceleration boost, then direct the needle to the target. Then, after you pierce the target, you have to continue directing the needle through vital areas until you feel the target is satisfactorily dead as hell.
Directing the needles requires visual sight of the target, unless you’re some freak of nature that’s beyond that need and can use shit like the data from DFD scans.

All of that means that to fire this weapon you will have to perform precise Chaff manipulation with:

• Illit

• Koris red shifted

• Koris blue shifted

• Borlyte + Barlyte

Each time you pull the trigger, for every needle you shoot off. Most users of Aeroprene weapons stick to a single needle since that’s all you need for most targets. But others, such as Nax and Estra, tend to just go absolutely hog wild and can handle dozens or even hundreds of needles without a problem.
In terms of vented heat and recoil it’s almost nonexistent, so both of those are handled by radiators and recoil exhaust systems.

Like I said earlier, Aeroprene weapon tech that isn’t in a gun is often embedded into a vehicle, aircraft, or some defense system. Those are referred to as Aeroprene thread ports, and they’re controlled by numerous built-in Gray Conduits. These can track their targets via DFD systems or whatever primary intel system is used by the vehicle, aircraft, structure or whatever these are built into. All of that data can be read and utilized by the Gray Conduits which… Christ Acris these notes are a mess… can then in turn be used for targeting and tracking purposes.

Your question might be something like “Why does a transportation aircraft need to turn people into pincushions?” or “I don’t have to memorize all this crap do I?” which are both highly valid things to ask. The reason this weapon tech is installed on critical stuff like troop transports or fortress defenses is because it also works as an absolutely fan-fucking-tasticcountermeasure.

Originally, we were looking into point defense lasers (not to say we still aren’t) but the Aeroprene threads came out ahead in terms of implementation. Point defense lasers had us thinking about power draw, power capacity and laser actuation angles (the areas in which it could point and shoot without obstruction).
Aeroprene thread ports needed plasmatic matter, tungsten needles, Gray Conduits and the ability to make use of already existing intel systems. The weight wasn’t an issue, power draw was borderline nonexistent, and one port had 360 degrees of coverage no matter where it was located on the hull, armor or whatever the fuck it ended up bolted onto.
Downside was needing to change out Charged Shells and ensuring the needle ammo was stocked but come on, that’s everyday operation for us already.

In practice it works like so.
A guided AA missile is fired at a Longboat; the DFD system immediately sees it, and if electronic countermeasures fail to neutralize it, the Aereoprene thread ports fire two needles that pierce the missile’s warhead and engines. The threads cut and burn through the missile, which’ll either detonate it or render it inert as it crashes outta the sky.
How about if the enemy fires multiple missiles?
The Longboat fires multiple needles, all of which can immediately divert from one neutralized missile and go after another one, repeatedly, over and over again until the DFD system gives the all clear. That functionality extends to every implementation, so anywhere you install Aeroprene thread ports you’ve got countermeasures against rockets, missiles, mortars, artillery and more all in a single package.

It ain’t perfect though.
We tested it against something like flak, and while the needles are goddamn fast, they can’t exactly intercept thousands of small pieces of shrapnel per volley. But then, because the Science Legion are all a bunch of autistic shut-ins with limitless funding, they saw that as a problem to solve and became absolutely obsessed with it. You’d think I’m exaggerating, but the amount of times the Medical Legion has to deal with researchers getting scurvy and vitamin D deficiency from never leaving their labs is a non-zero number.
That obsession gave us two results.

First, they found that they could program the Gray Conduits to extend the “stitching” function of Aeroprene threads to what they told me was the logical conclusion.
They could weave the plasmatic threads into large sheets of plasmatic matter, which would catch and vaporize any small projectiles or shrapnel such as flak. Problem is this took time (with countermeasures milliseconds count), so the intel system has to catch the threat early.
Second, they felt that this same functionality could be employed without wasting time with Aeroprene threads in the first place.

That’s how we got Soul Rend armor, which I’ll unfortunately cover later because people won’t stop dropping shit on my head WHEN I’VE GOT AN ENTIRE LEGION TO LEAD ALREADY.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria