Achernar-class light cruiser

History
The Achernar-class heavy destroyers owed its very existence to the CMA's growing dissatisfaction with their capital ship fleet in light of counter-insurgency operations. The Colonial Navy had amassed a fleet of the finest and most powerful cruisers and battleships the Human Sphere had yet seen during the Cold War, but outside of a handful of successful operations against entrenched Secessionist Union armadas proved exceptionally useless. There weren't enough of them to patrol the colonies, they were too slow to chase down fast attack craft insurgents began to prefer, and far too costly to operate, especially as the UEG's cuts to the CMA's budget and resources grew in light of the VERITAS Scandal. In an ironic twist of fate, CMA was reliant on the screening forces they had neglected for so many years.

As a result, when discussions began to arise about what the next generation of CMA cruiser should look like in 2509, there were calls to cancel it in favor of additional numbers of frigates and destroyers, with many such officers rallying around Commodore-Admiral Rosario Ortega, one of several proteges of future Command-in-Chief, Colonial Navy Torsten Hermansson. As a result of the pressure, but unwilling to lose the capability their older ships possessed, the CMA's final specifications called for a sub-compact "Intermediary Vessel" that had the firepower and protection of a cruiser, but on a hull 75% of the cost and half the crew. The contract for development was awarded to Great White Spaceworks, who during the design of these ships would be bought up and incorporated into the Reyes-McLees Corporation.

The ship that became the Achernar-class was designed by a team led by Kulai Mustafin, with close consultation with the CMA. Although Ortega paid close attention to the project, rival officers who wanted to use the project to further increase their prestige attempted to interveneFor instance, officers on the Naval Procurement Board who had financial stakes in certain manufacturers attempted to replace critical systems with obsolete alternatives, while others pushed for overgunning the ships as much as possible. Indeed, the first designs were far more heavily armed and weakly protected than the final ship would be. In the end, Ortega herself pushed to reduce the weaponry, as doing so would result in a ship that was cheaper, easier to man, and more importantly had space and generous reactor capacity. In short, it was built as a platform for the future, not for the short-term.