Covenant weaponry

The Covenant and its former members use a wide array of weapons. Listed here are the major categories of Covenant weaponry.

Plasma and particle beams
Plasma weapons are the most common form of Covenant weapon, found in virtually all niches from warships to infantry. Energy blades use electromagnetically-contained plasma to produce incredibly powerful melee weapons. Some plasma weapons also use a solid projectile such as a grenade or missile to contain and deliver a plasma-based explosive payload. Fully plasma-based ranged weapons are broadly grouped into two categories by the UNSC: the bolide-type and beam-type plasma weapons. Bolide-type weapons fire discrete globules of plasma contained in shaped electromagnetic fields; plasma rifles, plasma pistols and starship-borne plasma torpedoes being common examples. Meanwhile, beam-type weapons shape the plasma into a single continuous beam. Examples include ship-borne plasma lances and infantry focus rifles.

High-velocity, long-range plasma beams are generally known as particle beams. However, there is a fine line between the two. Particle beams fire charged particles at significant fractions of the speed of light, making them far more devastating and allowing them to strike at long distances. As the technology is fairly recent, its use is contained to a few select examples. The first are particle beam rifles in infantry-scale applications, though more recently the technology was scaled up to warship size and installed on long-range turrets on a handful of experimental Covenant warships. Particle beams are one of the most precarious entrusted technologies after High Charity's fall; while some anointed fabricaries are able to produce them or the highly specific components required for them, most armories cannot.

Lasers
The Covenant use pulse lasers primarily in starship point defense. Pulse lasers suffer diffraction at relatively short ranges, limiting their utility to point defense. As a result, plasma and particle beams are favored as the mainstays for ship-to-ship combat. Covenant nanolaminate armor has been optimized to effectively counter anti-ship lasers, making them ineffective for anything but small targets. Even Covenant fighter craft require multiple seconds of concentrated fire to be brought down by a pulse laser, which has given rise to more potent, plasma-based point defense beams on some warships. UNSC targets were more vulnerable to laser damage for much of the war, though the development of superior refractive armor has mitigated this somewhat.

Fulminite
Fulminite (or viridian fulminite in its most common form) is a green, radioactive metamaterial with incendiary and explosive properties. Industrially produced, it is used in both colloidal form and in solid projectiles. Examples of its applications include the T51 carbine, the fulminator cannon (known to the UNSC as the fuel rod gun), and the assault cannons used by Mgalekgolo and combat-oriented Scarab platforms. Some forms of starship-borne high-explosive missile also continue to use fulminite-based warheads. Fulminite weaponry once formed a much larger part of the Covenant arsenal before the widespread introduction of plasma weapons, seeing use in many classes of infantry and naval weaponry.

UNSC servicemen have speculated that the moniker "fuel rod gun" has to do with the projectiles merely resembling pop cultural depictions nuclear fuel rods. Whatever the origin of the name within the UNSC, the Covenant do actually use solid and colloidal fulminite as a secondary fuel source for equipment, though it has been largely phased out in favor of superior power sources.

Subanese crystal
Subanese crystal, colloquially known as blamite by the UNSC, is a volatile crystalline material originating from one of Sanghelios' moons, Suban. Subanese crystals can be fashioned into incredibly sharp blades or projectiles which are most effective against unshielded and unarmored targets due to the material's brittleness. Common examples of such weaponry include the needler and the needle rifle.

Antimatter
Antimatter is mostly used by the Covenant in high-yield explosives in a role akin to UNSC nuclear weapons. Antimatter charges, which come in various sizes and yields, use hardened, dense casings into which a magnetic bottle containing small quantities of antimatter is embedded.

Gravitic weapons
Although gravitic technology is ubiquitous in the Covenant, the weaponized use of paragravitic fields themselves is limited to niche applications. However, gravity technology plays a crucial role in other classes of weaponry, including plasma weapons which use gravitational lensing to focus the beam and some projectile weapons, which accelerate projectiles via gravitic means. Native Jiralhanae weapons and their Covenant derivatives also utilize gravitics in more direct, often creative ways.