The Nanites is a special weapon of the game Star Trek: Armada. Inflicted on AI players it deactivates their special weapon capabilities of the targeted ship for a short time. For human players it removes the ability to use the F keys for the special weapons as well as begins garbling the interface. This makes handicaps the player a lot, while not making the use of special weapons impossible. You can still click the corresponding buttons, as long as you reach them with your mouse pointer. Once the Nanites wear off, the interface and F button behavior returns to normal. It is researched at the Technology Node. The use of Nanites looks like this:

An active Corbomite Reflector has no effect on this special weapon. Neither does the Shield Remodulation. The Phase Cloak however does protect from being attacked with Nanites.

On rare occasions a bug strikes that prevents the interface from returning to a normal layout. If that happens, it might help to use CTRL + ALT + F9 to restore the interface to the standard layout. This will only work, once the effect of Nanites has weared off.