I was refering to Willy Vereb.
Now, i'm going to dive into details about the whole shielding system, and FTL.
Hard light refers to photons which are not moving very much, therefor solid. Humanity has plasma-based force-fields, as in they use the forth state of matter to provide a defensive barrier. It's really just a fancy trick with magnets, it's the same stuff in Tokamak reactors really.