Workspace:UNSC Fleet Modernization

Project page covering UNSC fleet modernization late-war to post-war (not all of which may be formally consolidated under a single program).

Overall notes

 * Consolidation of individual ship/fleet modernization initiative(s) to bring together disparate projects during the war to streamline bureaucracy and kill non-useful programs + see what was salvageable?


 * Status of remaining shipbuilding companies and their assets? Big ones like Reyes-McLees and SinoViet took a major hit with Reach&Mars.


 * Economics and budgeting - while defense remains important, the UNSC is winding down from war footing, with more funds being diverted to civilian reconstruction, and so can't modernize everything at once.


 * A lot of this stuff was already under research during the war, or was even partly implemented, but it's not until the '60s that these patchwork advances can be consolidated.


 * Outside the formal modernization program, I like the idea of unique frankenships patched up and upgraded (with both human and Covenant tech) to the point they barely resemble the classes they were originally built as, serving well into the post-war era up to the 2570s.


 * Which older (or war-era) ships could be refit and in what ways? (Admiralty politics and compromises might play into less-effective solutions like refits as opposed to just making new ships)

Facilities

 * Some yards survive over Mars and the Jovian Moons, though most were wrecked in the Battle for Earth


 * Neos Atlantis is where the UNSC focuses a lot of development, but future efforts may attempt to be less centralized in general. Toward the end of the war, the Navy's AIs began to see an invasion of Earth as an increasingly likely scenario, leading to an exodus of military industry away from SolCore, and away from the Covenant.

Tech

 * Materials science and improvements in superstructure construction (lessons from the Halcyon's honeycomb bracing, albeit implemented in a lighter, more cost-effective way?)


 * Power - stuff like the new reactor architecture implemented on the Autumn (unless this too was a stopgap design)
 * Plus power transmission - improved superconducting materials
 * Power and power transmission (plus materials science) are some of the largest obstacles for adopting all-out plasma weapons for a while


 * Increased automation with manpower loss (though automation was already pretty extensive with AI and whatnot)


 * By the 2580s, experimental ship types may have plasma lances - the UNSC is likely to go straight for plasma lances/"scalpels" over torpedoes given Cortana's observations in FS. However, physical plasma missiles are another matter and may actually be more useful for a while as they require much less power.


 * Upgraded hull coatings; initially refractive plates similar to the coating on MJOLNIR, later even nanolaminate-based hull coatings.


 * Various countermeasures; ablative armor, chaff screens, etc.


 * EM disruptor arrays are mostly used in lieu of shielding, though some ships may begin to receive limited shields; full shields are possible but not cost-effective for the postwar UNSC in most cases, and would represent too much of a power drain; the EM shunts are a more energy-efficient precision solution that exemplifies the UNSC's strengths of optimization and use of AI automation, which is required to calculate the electromagnetic gradients to precisely intercept torpedoes.

Layout changes

 * Bridge location. Keyes' comments in TFoR implied that open, windowed bridges such as that of the Autumn are the exception rather than the rule. While TFoR is dubious as a source for minutiae like this due to its age (and we do later see most UNSC ships with similarly exposed bridges) it could be recontextualized as an older doctrine, a holdover from a more romanticized era of space travel that started getting phased out during the war (partly out of pragmatism and the example of the Covenant), leading to most war-era and post-war ship designs burying their bridges deep within the hull; external secondary bridges and observation decks can still definitely exist, however.
 * It does bear noting that there's some precedent for the bridges not necessarily being where we think they are. In H3, the Arbiter, despite making it to a decidedly IAC-like bridge on the FUD, can't be where the bridge seems to be on the frigate since it would've been left in the aft section. So either the Charons have a secondary bridge somewhere in the fore, or the thing at the top with windows is more like an observation deck.

Timeline
The process is largely dominated by stopgap solutions until the 2560s. Most newer technologies are implemented from the mid-2560s onwards.

Joint R&D and tech sharing with Concord in the 2560s-2570s -- bridge-building projects like a UNSC-post-Covenant hybrid ship (think SSV Normandy)?

Classes/roles

 * A new heavy cruiser class to replace the Marathon


 * EWAR-oriented light cruiser?


 * High-speed "slipspace tugs" designed to pull lesser vessels through slipspace? (though this role could be assumed by any ship equipped with a modern drive, likely capital ones)

Design notes

 * More unconventional designs, e.g. a light cruiser that takes design cues from frigate or corvette designs?

Potential names
(HCW-era battles?)


 * Menachite-class heavy cruiser
 * Durendal-class light cruiser
 * Iapetus-class
 * Aurvandil-class
 * Laniakea-class
 * Xiphias-class