Introduction

The first thing about explosives is SAFETY! Even in combat you better try your hardest to not jostle your explosives because if something goes wrong you won’t be around to try it over. This course will be teaching you structure demolition. That means buildings and bridges. I’ll also go into orbital demolition such as refineries, shipyards, platforms, and space stations.

Building Demolition

As a foot soldier, buildings will come up that need to be taken down. Often they will be bunkers, power generators, and other strongholds of the enemy. To do this one would try to insert into a building with a small team and move into the infrastructure. The demo tech would place a charge on an interior power generator or something else that would add to the explosion. If such things are not available the demo tech, who would have studied the buildings structure before the mission, would find a support structure and place a charge on it and several other key support structures. This may also be done on the outside of a building that is above ground but at the cost of more explosives unless exact placement is achieved.

For when a bunker is to been destroyed one would enter the building and again look for the buildings power generator. Also if the bunker has several levels, most of which would be underground, The top portions may be destroyed and collapsed upon the others. Because of the nature of a bunker it is difficult to completely destroy it by any other means.

Power generators are a key building to most enemy troops. Without power generators base shields don’t work, lights go out, long range communications are cut, and other things of military importance are lost. Power generators come in many forms from something the size of a keg of beer to buildings that you could land a Corellian Corvette on. On the smaller ones it is very simple to place a simple light charge on it and move away. However on the larger ones it can be tricky. They often can withstand isolated explosions fairly well because they are built to last incase a generator inside overloads and explodes. Therefore a demo tech could do one of several things. One would be to place many charges over many supports and blow the building up that way. Unfortunately that takes a lot of explosives. The next way would be to place charges on conduits and coolant carriers and cause the generators to overload or overheat. Another way is to, if they have the skill, to hack the computer and have the generators overload that way. Afterwards the tech would shoot the controls or place a small explosive on them to stop people from stopping the overload. Inventive techs may find other ways of doing the job.

Before we leave this chapter I’d like to mention that these are merely guidelines to destroying a building. There are many other ways and an inventive person may come up with them in the middle of a battlefield. Test techniques out in training if you have a chance.

Bridge Demolition

Bridges are much harder to destroy than buildings, and for several reasons:

1. Most of the bridges to be destroyed will be far larger than buildings.
2. They are built strongly, to last for long periods of time
3. They have many reinforcements that are not visible
4. Everyone realizes the strategic importance of bridges, therefore everyone should realize how well guarded they are.

An important factor to bear in mind, when working on bridge demolition, is the extent of the damage desired. Total destruction is useless, a waste of good explosives. It may even be harmful, since there may come a time when a friendly force will need to use the bridge. Bridge destruction should therefore be considered as a tactical-delay operation. It will slow the enemy down, and cause them much expense and time to rebuild. Since types of charges differ for each bridge type, I will go into specifics of bridge demolition.

Stringer bridges are the most common type of duracrete, durasteel, or timber bridges.  They are usually one or more spans, but this makes little difference in the actual placement of charges. If more than one span is to be destroyed, one should copy the first placement on the second span. The stringer-type bridge is on basically two or three durasteel “I” beams, referred to as stringers. The obvious method is to attempt the sever these primary aspects of the entire structure. This can be accomplished by charges on either side of the stringer. The result of placing all the charges on the same side of the stringer is the twisting and warping of the durasteel beams beyond future use. When dealing with a bridge of this type which incorporates more than one span, place the charges along the joints of the stringer, since this is the weakest point along the line.

A slab bridge is a simple structure, consisting of a flat slab of duracrete or timber held together in such a way that it forms one continuous slab. These are the easiest bridges to destroy, since all that is required is a diagonal line of explosive charges placed either under, or drilled into, the structure itself. If the charges are placed beneath the bridge they should be attached by some means.

The duracrete cantilever is probably better known as a causeway. It is usually a very low bridge, with many segments, or spans supported be a series of duracrete columns. The same basic procedure should be followed as previously outlined, in that one should look for the weakest point in the entire structure, and fix the charges at that point. The weakest point in most structures is the place where two objects join, so the explosive charges should be placed along the joints of the separate sections or spans. Place charges of explosives at the foot of the corresponding column to insure destruction. This type of bridge has many spans, but usually it is only necessary to destroy several of the middle sections.

Orbital Spacestations

Orbital Spacestations include shipyards, platforms of most types, many types of defense station and refineries. I won’t be discussing deep space platforms in this course because most often deep space platforms are destroyed by capital ships and starfighters instead.  

Shipyards are often the most guarded of the platforms with the exception of military orbital defense stations such as the Golan stations. Unlike many other types of demolition jobs stations require more than a simple two man team. This is because a few charges here and there are not enough to do complete damage. Stations are to be infiltrated by a team of no less than four troopers. One team would head towards the core to place charges one the main reactor. The second team would head towards the main control station where they place charges and probably kill the command crew. The next area to be destroyed would be the hangar bays. If possible place the smaller charges over the hangar fuel tanks of a few fighter or shuttle craft. Larger charges should be placed by the hangar's refueling lines and storage tanks. After these are placed the team should immediately evacuate the station. While the core explosives should do the job of destroying the station, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why on a station you place secondary explosives just to make sure because there is no way you will get back into the station for a good long while.

One thing to remember about station work is the double and triple check your timers. Unlike on the ground where you can get away from certain parts of the building on a station its not so easy. If the hull breaches you have a serious problem. Therefore try to prevent a premature explosion as well as possible.