Because the shield is formed by magnetically confined charged particles, the shield itself does not have a specific shape, so it can be a sphere, or it can be made into other shapes.
Therefore, they simply abandoned the spherical shield and adhered the shield to the surface of the equipment, making it an attachment on the equipment's surface. In this way, it can continue to play a defensive role without interfering with the weapons.
However, this requires a high level of magnetic confinement technology. So far, they have not been able to make the magnetic field evenly distributed on the surface of the object and are still working on technological breakthroughs.
However, based on the existing magnetic confinement technology, creating a magnetic field that conforms to the surface of an object is challenging but not impossible. Therefore, Chen Xin did not intervene but allowed the research team to work on the technological breakthrough themselves.
In fact, the proposals made by the project team were not limited to these two, but after many comparisons, only these two approaches seemed reliable.
Among the other schemes, one involves extending the weapon out of the shield for firing; another one makes the shield into a literal shield, held by hand like in the cold weapon era; yet another proposal coordinated the shield with the gun firing synchronizer, like those used in propeller planes of the past, designing a similar synchronizer for the shield...
These schemes are not entirely without merit, nor are they impractical, but relatively speaking, they are less feasible.
For example, installing a shield synchronizer to pause the shield when firing is a great idea, but not practical.
For weapons with low firing frequencies like cannons, this design might still be useful since there's only a brief flicker every once in a while, which is not a big issue.
But if it's a weapon like a machine gun, it means that when the machine gun is firing, the shield becomes completely ineffective.
And in modern warfare, even a fraction of a second can decide life and death, let alone the few seconds during which a machine gun continuously fires. During this time, the shield cannot play a protective role.
So this solution, though the easiest to implement—requiring only a slight improvement in the shield generator's activation—is the least practical among several schemes.
As for making it into a shield form, it's a design worth trying, but it only suits individual soldiers or installing a large one on something like Titan.
For vehicle equipment like tanks or planes, this shield design is not suitable.
The design of extending the weapon out of the shield is similar, it is no big problem for individual soldiers, and tanks can make do with it too, but it's truly unusable for planes.
Modern fighter jets, particularly the fifth-generation ones, value stealth performance, with missiles and cannons hidden in the fuselage to reduce reflective surfaces, only exposing them when in use, making it impossible to extend the shield in advance.
In the end, the project team focused their breakthrough direction on directed and irregular shields.
As for the existing shields, actually using the principle of the synchronizer is also viable. This was already reflected during testing with Titan units.
When the shield is not activated, it has no impact on combat: you can fire cannons and sweep with machine guns at will, even missile launches are unimpeded, as long as the shield isn't activated, there are no issues.
It's only when under attack, if you wish to continue attacking while the shield is activated, that you encounter the problem of not being able to target outside the shield.
The situation of the shield staying activated and preventing attacks primarily occurs when subjected to concentrated fire or surrounded by melee units.
Therefore, after evaluation, the military still equipped warships, fighter jets, and other vehicles with the shield device, adding a layer of defense for these vehicles.
However, army tanks did not equip with shields, and even Titan models only equipped new models and upgraded universal types, not achieving full deployment.
Apart from the shield project, the aerospace fighter aspect also achieved good progress. After technology validation through the proof-of-concept aircraft, the project team started designing the prototype.
To this, the countries participating in the Southern Celestial Gate plan showed great interest, with European countries almost unlimitedly investing resources into this project, even digging out the original paper archives from Europe and shipping them over to meet the needs of the aerospace fighter project.
Because for each country, the aerospace fighter project is highly valuable.
This is not only because of the combat capability of the aerospace fighters themselves, but because it represents the potential for breaking through the atmosphere with an aircraft and entering outer space.
And achieving this already represents another significance, namely, a cheap way of entering space.
The main reason humans have not extensively explored outer space is not technical incapability, but the absence of inexpensive technology.
The money spent sending one person to outer space far exceeds the weight equivalent in gold, thus highlighting how much funding a space project requires.
To date, only Flame Country, Lucia, and the now-defunct Federation could afford a manned space project among the Blue Planet's top countries and powers.
Though Europe can play with space projects, independently conducting manned spaceflight is beyond them; even the united European countries can't achieve it. They rely on Federation technologies to send their astronauts into space.
And the International Space Station is also a multinational cooperative project, which even the Federation itself struggles to sustain.
Before the disaster, nations were continuously seeking and exploring cheap, reusable aerospace technology.
Should there be breakthroughs in this area, humanity could take the step out of the cradle of human civilization on the Blue Planet, advancing into the vast infinite space, starting a new era of human civilization.
Compared to the now harsh natural environment and limited resources on the Blue Planet, the universe's vastness and near-infinite resources are humanity's hope for future development.
So countries are very attentive to the aerospace fighter project, hoping to make breakthroughs in this technology and then commercialize it to restart space activities, or simply build a space city in outer space for human migration or simply lunar colonization.
To this, Chen Xin did not make any influence or interference, nor did he carry out system upgrades for the project, merely observing the research by the project team.
It's not that Chen Xin is unenthusiastic; rather, he clearly remembers there is a distinct limitation on the system he acquired: once he departs from the post-apocalyptic environment, the system will be frozen.
