Self-replicating Mines

Self-replicating mines were developed by the Federation to prevent the Dominion from sending ships through the Bajoran wormhole to support their forces in the Alpha Quadrant.

The mines were constructed out of octagonal duranium cargo containers and fitted with matter-antimatter warheads, thrusters, and replicators.  In addition, the mines were cloaked to help prevent their detection.  The explosive system used in each mine was a modified photon torpedo, which kept the cryogenic deuterium and antideuterium separated by a toroidal magnetic field driver.  When a mine detected contact, the field collapsed, allowing the antimatter and matter to mix and detonate.  Unfortunately, a single mine is not enough to disable a warship.  To compensate for this, the mines were designed to swarm detonate in groups of 20 or 30, ensuring more than enough destructive force to disable any vessel.  Starfleet also needed to be able to replace mines quickly, in case the Dominion tried to mass-detonate them.  Deep Space Nine engineer Rom suggested that the mines be made self-replicating.  To make this possible, each mine was equipped with a replicator made from Cardassian and Federation parts.  It took the combined replicating power of many mines to create on complete new mine.  Despite this, the entire minefield could still replicate over 2,500 new mines. If the replicators' combined capability to make new mines fell below 85 per cent of their total capacity, they were designed to extract particles from space to replenish the system.

The mines could be prevented from self-replicating by isolating them in an anti-graviton beam.  The Dominion discovered that it could do this by reconfiguring the field generators in Deep Space Nine's deflector dish and directing it at the minefield.

To ensure the mines kept to a suitable formation, each one was equipped with four thrusters, allowing it to keep its station.  The thruster system was adapted from a class-1 instrumented probe that used a cold-gas nitrogen pressure tank to power it.  In addition, the warhead magnetic field on each mine was modulated to help keep the mines aligned within a four-frequency icosahedron geodesic sphere.  The sensors on each mine had a neutrino source counter, allowing them to keep a uniform distance from the wormhole opening.