Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington II

[eyl]

That's true for warships. Dedicated transports, however, can take a lot more people (the transports they capture later on have a capacity of 40,000 passengers each, IIRC).

Warships, actually, can go far over the rated capacity, because they have more environmental plants in reserve so they have redundancy in the face of battle damage. Transports, maybe maybe not, but the ones they capture are military transports.

Even stretching the environmental capacity, a warship can't carry nearly as many people as a transport can (and you don't have to stretch the life support to its limits). Also, the transports I was thinking of weren't the troop transports the captured at the end, but rather the several transports they capture in the convoy before that.

[Ahriman238]

That's true for warships. Dedicated transports, however, can take a lot more people (the transports they capture later on have a capacity of 40,000 passengers each, IIRC).

Warships, actually, can go far over the rated capacity, because they have more environmental plants in reserve so they have redundancy in the face of battle damage. Transports, maybe maybe not, but the ones they capture are military transports.

Even stretching the environmental capacity, a warship can't carry nearly as many people as a transport can (and you don't have to stretch the life support to its limits). Also, the transports I was thinking of weren't the troop transports the captured at the end, but rather the several transports they capture in the convoy before that.

In point of fact, they capture the military transports early on, then enough warships to lift everyone out later.

[eyl]

Warships, actually, can go far over the rated capacity, because they have more environmental plants in reserve so they have redundancy in the face of battle damage. Transports, maybe maybe not, but the ones they capture are military transports.

Even stretching the environmental capacity, a warship can't carry nearly as many people as a transport can (and you don't have to stretch the life support to its limits). Also, the transports I was thinking of weren't the troop transports the captured at the end, but rather the several transports they capture in the convoy before that.

In point of fact, they capture the military transports early on, then enough warships to lift everyone out later.

You're right. However, I though the military transports Terralthra was referring to were the two transports they capture at the end.

[Simon_Jester]

There may be some overlap between the civilian Longstop-class transports captured from the expeditino that came in from Shilo (nominal carriage capacity roughly forty thousand men each) and the two Roughneck-class transports captured from Chernock's expedition later (carriage capacity I don't remember).

[Ahriman238]

She sat with her inner circle, studying the readouts on the ships due to arrive so shortly from Shilo. Two of the new Warlord-class battlecruisers—the Wallenstein and Farnese—were confirmed, as were the heavy cruisers Ares, Huan-Ti, and Ishtar, and the light cruiser Seahorse. They didn't have classes on the cruisers, but from the names the heavies were both probably Mars-class ships, like Krashnark, and Seahorse was probably one of the Peeps' new "frigate-class" light cruisers, like Bacchante. The rest of the escort, or even if there would be any additional escorts, had still been up for grabs when the courier boat sailed, but there would probably be at least a few more ships.

The incoming convoy. I suppose the PN has been without frigates long enough a Frigate class won't confuse anyone but later historians.

Had it been a Navy escort for troopships destined for a front-line system, there would have been, at any rate, and the additional units would have included a minimum of two or three destroyers for long-range scouting. But this was an SS operation, and StateSec had been uninterested in smaller men-of-war when it started collecting its private fleet. Honor wasn't sure why that was, though she suspected that a great deal of the reason had to do with State Security's institutional egotism. Although, she conceded, the Black Legs' apparent belief that sooner or later they would confront mutinous ships of the People's Navy might also help explain it. It did make sense to go for a tonnage advantage if you could get one, after all. Although that left the interesting question of why StateSec hadn't been interested in dreadnoughts or superdreadnoughts.

In the next book we learn that StateSec built their own wallers in secret, rather than openly take them from the Navy yards.

"On a brighter note," she went on, "look at all the personnel lift we get our hands on if we manage to pull this off." She nodded at the data on the five Longstops-class transports the warships would be escorting. "They're providing enough lift for a full seventy thousand slave laborers, assuming Tresca could find that many in so short a time, plus another forty-one thousand technicians and supervisory personnel and twenty-four thousand SS ground troops— and that doesn't even count the additional eight thousand SS support personnel attached to the intervention battalions. That's over a hundred and forty thousand total, and according to the readouts, these ships are actually designed to provide life support for forty thousand people each, exclusive of their own crews, so StateSec is planning on running them light."

-snip-

"My best guess is that they expect to pick up some more warm bodies further down the line to Seabring. But what matters most to us right now is that we can grab off the personnel lift for two hundred thousand of our people aboard the transports alone. Then each of the battlecruisers has a normal complement of twenty-two hundred, so that's another forty-four hundred, plus a thousand each in the heavy cruisers—counting Krashnark and the three we know are coming, that's another four thousand. So we're looking at enough life support for—what? Two hundred and eight thousand of our people?"

"Which still leaves us a hundred and eighty-six thousand short of the numbers we need," McKeon pointed out in the tones of a man who hated being the voice of cold reason.

Longstop transports, spacelift still a ways short of where it needs to be, but a fine start. If only they could guarantee time for two trips.

Oh, and some Peep crew sizes. 2200 for a Warlord BC, a thousand for a Mars CA.

"But the transports were designed around a lot of reserve environmental capacity. We could increase a Longstop's load from forty thousand to about fifty without stretching its life support dangerously. In a pinch, I'd be willing to call it fifty-six or maybe even fifty-seven. I wouldn't want to go much over that unless it was for a very short hop, but the enviro plants should carry the atmospheric load for that many as far as we need. The worst problem will be physical overcrowding, because that many people need a lot of cubage, and the ships' other waste processing systems will be heavily strained. But these are military transports. They're also designed to carry heavy combat equipment, and we could probably beef up the reclamation equipment by cannibalizing all the shuttles and pinnaces sitting here on Styx and adding their enviro plants as strap-on backups in their cargo spaces. It wouldn't be pretty or elegant, but there ought to be enough air to go around when we finish."

Extra 10K on each Longstop.

"You're right about the Longstops" he went on. "They're way too slow to be used as anything we'd consider a true assault transport, but they are configured to carry all of their embarked troops' equipment as well as just the personnel. If we dump all the other hardware out of their vehicle holds, we could probably pack three or four dozen shuttles and pinnaces into each of them. For that matter, they've probably got around that many of their own already stowed in their boat bays, and if we've got 'em, we could even park a lot of them on the hull exteriors. Remember that Peeps go in for a lot more small craft docking ports than we do."

Peep ships have more docking ports for small craft, I wonder why? In this case they can supplement the ships' life support using all the small craft.

"Warner?" Honor turned to Warner Caslet and crooked an eyebrow. "You're more familiar with Peep crewing requirements than any of us are. What's the minimum crew that could fight a Warlord effectively?"

"That's a little hard to say, Ma'am, since I never actually served aboard one of them," Caslet replied. But he also rubbed his left eyebrow while he thought hard. "You could start by forgetting the Marines," he said thoughtfully. "Our—I mean the People's Navy's—Marines don't have any real role in ship-to-ship combat, except to back up damage control, so we carry smaller Marine complements than Manty ships. We'd save about three hundred there, which would get us down to around nineteen. Then we could probably cut Engineering about in half and save another two-fifty."

"Cut Engineering in half?" McKeon sounded doubtful, and Caslet shrugged.

"You're going to have to take chances somewhere," he pointed out, "and our engineering departments are heavily overstaffed compared to yours because our people aren't as good. The worst part would be the loss of warm bodies for damage control—which would only be aggravated by leaving the Marines out, of course."

-snip-

"We've already cut them by over five hundred," Caslet said, "and if we thin out the energy mount crews to the absolute minimum needed to fire them in local control if we lose the central fire control net, then do the same for the missile tubes, and then gut the boat bay department completely, we can probably save another . . . three hundred to three hundred twenty-five per ship. I don't see how you could reduce a Warlord's crew by much more than that and still have an efficient fighting machine."

"So five-fifty plus three-twenty-five, then?" Honor asked, and he nodded. "All right, call it eight hundred and seventy-five, so the complements come down to thirteen hundred per ship."

"Thirteen hundred and twenty-five by my math," McKeon told her with a slow grin. "But, then, who's counting?"

Confirmation of 2200 for Warlords, including 300 Marines and 500 Engineers. 1325 for a skeleton crew that can still fight relatively effectively, but is screwed if the ship takes serious damage. Note that 300/2200 Marines is low compared to the Manties.

"I am," she said, "and it's not polite to call attention to the problems I have with math."

"I didn't; you did," he said, and she chuckled.

I don't know why I bother anymore. We all know that Honor's math deficiencies are never going to be an issue by now, but I suppose reminding the audience that she has flaws helps to keep her human.

"And how far could we cut the crews for the Mars-class ships, Warner?"

"About the same ratio, Ma'am. Call it roughly forty percent."

"So that drops them to around six hundred each," she murmured, scribbling on her pad again. "Which makes twenty-four hundred for the four of them. Twenty-four plus twenty-six . . ." She jotted a total and cocked her head to consider it. "Excluding Bacchante and this Seahorse, I make it five thousand and fifty warm bodies," she said. "Adding the two light cruisers at just under five hundred each, that brings the total to right on six thousand. Does that sound fair?"

How much room there is between skeleton and nominal crews on Peep ships.

"Well, we've got roughly five thousand Allied POWs whose training is still reasonably up to snuff, in light of how recently they were dumped here," Honor pointed out, "and we've got another eighteen hundred we've been retraining in Krashnark and Bacchante. By my count, that's sixty-eight hundred . . . which is eight hundred more than we'd need."

The Elysian Space Navy, and the plan. Send out the transports which as many people as they can, The military personnel will form a ragtag fleet of the escorts in hopes of capturing enough ships to bring everyone home.

"But we probably can come up with enough people to run the power plants and actually man the cons on anything else we can grab—we wouldn't need more than forty or fifty people per ship for that. And that would let us pack still more evacuees into their crew quarters."

The absolute, bare minimum crew to get a ship from point A to point B, if no crises (attack, hyper shear) occur.

"And don't forget that warships always have more reserve life support than anything else in space, even military transports," Montoya pointed out. "The RMN's designers always assume warships are going to take damage, for example, so they build as much redundancy as they can into the core survival systems. We could increase nominal crew sizes by at least fifty percent and still have some reserve. In fact, we'd probably run out of places to put people well before we maxed out their enviro."

Military ships are usually designed with life support for 150% their nominal crew, to provide redundancy against failure or battle damage.

"And look at the compensators and hyper-generators on those transports. They're basically converted longhaul bulk freighters the Peeps have been using to transport work forces or haul peacekeeping troops to domestic hot spots for decades. That's probably why StateSec had them immediately available, but like Alistair said, they're a hell of a lot slower than anything a regular navy would consider using that close to a combat zone. They can't even climb as high as the top of the delta band, so their max apparent velocity isn't going to be any more than a thousand lights or so, and we're an awful long way from friendly territory. Even the voyage to Trevor's Star would take the next best thing to fifty days base time. The dilation effect will shrink that to about forty days subjective, but that's still over a full T-month for something to go wrong with their life support. If we send them still further to the rear—" She shrugged.

Voyage from Hades to Trevor's Star/San Martino. 50 days in a slow transport, though only 40 days subjective. Apparently despite their beefed-up life support, Longstops are converted freighters (makes sense, all Haven flag freighters are already nationalized).

"you're in charge of drawing up the evac priority lists. I need three of them immediately: one of the people who should go in the first lift, assuming we use only the Longstops; one of the people best suited to crew any warships we take; and one that lists every soul who wants off this rock but who isn't on the first two. In addition, I want the last one organized to indicate the order in which they'll be moved out as extra lift becomes available. I don't want there to be any room for panic and fighting for places in the evac queue."

Honor organizing the orderly evacuation of Hades weeks before they'll have the chance to get anyone off, so it's known that there's a plan and the ships aren't first come, first served.

Yeah, sure. "Join the Navy and see the Galaxy!" He snorted suddenly. You know, that's probably truer for the courier crews than it is for anyone else, now that I think about it!

I love Heathrow.

He wasn't looking forward to his stop in the Danak System. Clarke had a relatively small SS detachment, which spent most of its time fulfilling regular police functions. Personally, Heathrow suspected that the warm, languid tranquility of Lois had infected them, as well. The system's Navy personnel were crisp and efficient enough when onboard ship or crewing the planet's orbital HQ base, but they tended to go native, all crispness vanishing into a sort of planetwide, laid-back surfer culture, the instant they hit groundside, and the same seemed to be true of the SS.

Danak was different, however . . . and not just because of the weather. Granted, Danak Alpha, the inhabited half of the double-planet pair of more or less terrestrial worlds was considerably further out from its G8 primary than Lois was from its G1 primary. That gave it a much cooler climate, and its weather was characterized by clouds and rain liberally seasoned with various objectionable atmospheric compounds from volcanic outgassing. At that, it was a nicer place than Danak Beta. Beta was only technically habitable, and to the best of Heathrow's knowledge, no one had ever expressed any particular desire to visit it, much less live there.

But Danak, unlike Clarke, had been settled for four hundred years, and where Lois had been a resort world catering to the tourist trade before the Republic annexed it, Danak had been a heavily industrialized system for more than two T-centuries. More than that, its current population was up to something approaching four billion, which was extremely large for a system this close to the frontier. All of which meant that miserable as Danak Alpha was, and dour as people assigned here tended to become, the system was very important to the powers that were.

A tale of two planets. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of time..."

Seriously though, it's nice to have some Havenite worlds that aren't a.) Haven itself or b.) all military base and fortified system like Barnett. Lois and Danak and Prague offer a window into daily Haven life, a sometimes horrifying window granted. 4 billion unusual population for a "frontier" world.

But there were times when it could get deadly dull, and the best a sector CO this far from the front—or the Capital Sector—could realistically hope for was that things would stay so quiet no one on Nouveau Paris even noticed he was out here. If the capital did notice him, it would almost inevitably be because he'd screwed up in some spectacular fashion, since, by definition, no one ever noticed the places where things went right. Which meant that those who wished to be promoted still higher in StateSec's hierarchy sought to avoid postings to places like Shilo like the very plague.

Shiloh Station, a nice out-of-the-way post where you can wield lots of power without much oversight, but are unlikely to achieve much in the way staff admirals in Nouveau Paris might. Then again, it's probably a lot safer than being near Haven proper these last few years, life is all about the little tradeoffs.

Unfortunately, in looking away his eye fell on Farnese's crest, and he felt a familiar sour distaste as it did. The crest said "PNS Farnese" and that always irritated him. After all, the battlecruiser wasn't a Navy ship; she belonged to State Security, and her designation should reflect that. Except that the Navy's position was that she was only a Navy ship which was assigned to StateSec, as if the true guardians of the People's safety had no right to put on the airs of "real" warriors.

Officially, all the ships StateSec has purloined for their empire-building are still Navy ships, built in Navy yards from the naval budget and simply on indefinite loan to StateSec.

Of course, Thornegrave conceded, hanging SSS on the front of a ship's name would probably look a little funny, but it's the principle of the thing! The Navy and the Marines represent vestigial holdovers from the decadent elitism of the Old Regime. It's past time that State Security absorbed them both into a single organization whose loyalty to the People and State can be absolutely relied upon. The people's commissioners are a move in the right direction, but there's still too much room for recidivists to secretly sabotage the war and the Revolution alike. Surely Citizen Secretary Saint-Just and Citizen Chairman Pierre realize that, don't they?

Clearly it's an excellent idea to put StateSec in charge of all "federal" policing and counter-espionage, intelligence-gathering on foreign powers AND the military. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Only, the old regime had absolute faith in their military's political reliability, and see what, as far as you know, that got them?

"That won't be necessary, Citizen Lieutenant Commander. I'm simply endeavoring to be certain I have your itinerary firmly fixed in my brain." The citizen general smiled thinly. "You see, the problem I'm having down here is that there should have been a message— an eyes-only, personal one—directed to me from Citizen Brigadier Tresca."

-snip-

"You don't understand, Brigham. Or you're missing the point, at least. Dennis and I have been playing chess by mail for nine T-years. It was his move, he knew Heathrow's routing would bring him here, and he would never have passed up the opportunity to send it."

The wrinkle Honor and co. couldn't have known about, a chess game played by mail in which a missing move would convince the other party there was something terribly wrong on Hades. So this StateSec commander whistles up a fleet to investigate. That would be embarrassing if Tresca really just wanted a lot more time to ponder his move.

[Mr Bean]

The wrinkle Honor and co. couldn't have known about, a chess game played by mail in which a missing move would convince the other party there was something terribly wrong on Hades. So this StateSec commander whistles up a fleet to investigate. That would be embarrassing if Tresca really just wanted a lot more time to ponder his move.

Having seen one of these by mail chess games between Pearl and Okinawan which was on just a four day delay I can tell you true chess nuts will have gamed out every single possible move long before the reply letter reaches them to move the piece. Consider how long the game could have been going on and the number of pieces in possible play then add in how many possible moves that could be made and the lag time.

In other words these long distance chess games tend to break down into very few possible moves since at any one time there are a max of one queen and king, two bishops, two rooks and two knights plus your pawns. The pawns can only move one or max two squares so you have month to decide if you want to move a pawn and you rarely do except during the opening game. Now you have knights, thanks to L movement only four possible places to be, then add in bishop and rook movement limitations and not being able to move through another pieces space and you get the probability that Tresica had at most about nine possible moves to make in response to whatever move the Sec-State General made.

Add in the fact if this game has been ongoing for months now there might only be three or four moves and if they have never missed a move? To the general it makes perfect sense.

[Batman]

Not to mention that if Tresca had wanted more time to ponder his move, why didn't he sent a message saying 'I need more time to ponder my next move'?

[Terralthra]

and we absolutely do get the word on what sort of weapon was used?

Chem-powered missiles, rockets essentially, with chemical explosive warheads.

I just re-read the assault shuttle blowing up the courier ship, and there's a huge problem there. The courier ship is accelerating at 530 gees, the assault shuttle at 400. The assault shuttle currently has only roughly double the courier's base velocity. If those are chem-burning rockets, there is no way they could have caught up with anything all. The fastest-accelerating missiles on Earth are probably Sprint or Patriot ABM missiles, and those have an acceleration around 100-150g. This is in line with the fastest we ever see a ship in the honorverse propelled by reaction drive. That means that on launch, all sixteen missiles would immediately have been overhauled and passed by the assault shuttle, to say nothing of the ostensible target.

[Nephtys]

Odd that the assault shuttle didn't have or use very basic Impeller missiles, given that we've seen Impeller MANPADs. you'd think that'd be the sort of thing such a ship would carry, being some sort of transport/gunship.

[Batman]

It's stated earlier in the passage that they already used all of their impeller-head missiles.
That technically doesn't exclude impeller-driven missiles with chemical warheads (the text mentions chemical warheads, it doesn't say a word about the drive system) but one seriously wonders what you need a chemical warhead for on an impeller-driven missile.

[Terralthra]

Odd that the assault shuttle didn't have or use very basic Impeller missiles, given that we've seen Impeller MANPADs. you'd think that'd be the sort of thing such a ship would carry, being some sort of transport/gunship.

Well, it didn't say explicitly that the missiles were chem-burning, only that they weren't impeller-headed because the shuttle had used all of its impeller-heads. They could, I suppose, have been impeller-driven with a chem warhead, but that seems...weird, by Honorverse standard.

[Simon_Jester]

The incoming convoy. I suppose the PN has been without frigates long enough a Frigate class won't confuse anyone but later historians.

The "Frigate-class" may be thus named because they're recycling the names of old patrol frigates.

In the next book we learn that StateSec built their own wallers in secret, rather than openly take them from the Navy yards.

Another point about why StateSec has no destroyers. They presumably want their ships to have the kind of heavy ground combat presence and small craft capability Tepes did, and anything lighter than a hundred thousand tons is a bit small for that. So a ship that small would have no purpose but to scout for a larger fleet, and that's not really one of the missions StateSec foresees needing its warships for.

[This may also help explain why StateSec renegades make such nasty pirates in the post-PRH era- their ships are big mean bruisers compared to normal pirates]

As to the StateSec capital ships... I wonder if they built the things at Bolthole?

Peep ships have more docking ports for small craft, I wonder why?

Maybe more routine need to use their ships (including multirole troopships like the Longstops) in planetside interventions where they have to drop large combat forces? For that matter, the Longstops themselves may be designed to drop thousands of troops at once on a planet, so they'd need enough small craft capability to do that themselves.

How much room there is between skeleton and nominal crews on Peep ships.

Although it's implied that RMN ships have the same thing going in the prewar environment- crews are made large for damage control and risk aversion. There's a healthy margin for error, and for delegating crewmen off the ship entirely and still having enough people to run everything.

The absolute, bare minimum crew to get a ship from point A to point B, if no crises (attack, hyper shear) occur.

I'm remembering one of the Star Trek movies... III, I think? Kirk and his command team succeed in hijacking the Enterprise to go save Spock.

Scotty manages to automate the ship so well that a handful of people can operate it... but as soon as the Klingons launch even a minor attack, the ship is almost defenseless because those few people can't operate everything at once and the automation has overloaded.

Clearly it's an excellent idea to put StateSec in charge of all "federal" policing and counter-espionage, intelligence-gathering on foreign powers AND the military. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Only, the old regime had absolute faith in their military's political reliability, and see what, as far as you know, that got them?

Thornegrave, on the inside of StateSec, takes his own political reliability as axiomatic- he's completely convinced of his own political loyalty. And given StateSec's role as "guardians of the people" in his mind, even if StateSec did stage a coup or something, hed probably just assume it must have been justified.

The wrinkle Honor and co. couldn't have known about, a chess game played by mail in which a missing move would convince the other party there was something terribly wrong on Hades. So this StateSec commander whistles up a fleet to investigate. That would be embarrassing if Tresca really just wanted a lot more time to ponder his move.

True.

Also, slow interstellar communications revive the venerable art of comically drawn out chess by mail games!

By the way, it might be a good idea to back up and copy some more of the character-establishing scenes from Thornegrave's point of view (which you've passed), and Chernock's (which you haven't quite gotten to yet). There's some interesting insights there, and... honestly, I think those may be the only extended viewpoint scenes we get in the entire series from StateSec officers, except maybe Victor Cachat.

I just re-read the assault shuttle blowing up the courier ship, and there's a huge problem there. The courier ship is accelerating at 530 gees, the assault shuttle at 400. The assault shuttle currently has only roughly double the courier's base velocity. If those are chem-burning rockets, there is no way they could have caught up with anything all. The fastest-accelerating missiles on Earth are probably Sprint or Patriot ABM missiles, and those have an acceleration around 100-150g. This is in line with the fastest we ever see a ship in the honorverse propelled by reaction drive. That means that on launch, all sixteen missiles would immediately have been overhauled and passed by the assault shuttle, to say nothing of the ostensible target.

The HIBEX technology testbed (similar to Sprint) had an acceleration of 400 gravities. Also, high-acceleration missiles like this are typically powered by what amounts to a stick of burning high explosive- and we know that Honorverse technology includes chemical explosives drastically more powerful than those now known. It's within the realm of the plausible that they can build a chemical rocket engine with accelerations that can at least briefly match those of impeller drive craft- though not those of an impeller drive missile, in my opinion.

[Terralthra]

The HIBEX technology testbed (similar to Sprint) had an acceleration of 400 gravities. Also, high-acceleration missiles like this are typically powered by what amounts to a stick of burning high explosive- and we know that Honorverse technology includes chemical explosives drastically more powerful than those now known. It's within the realm of the plausible that they can build a chemical rocket engine with accelerations that can at least briefly match those of impeller drive craft- though not those of an impeller drive missile, in my opinion.

Didn't know about HIBEX, thanks. Still, though, that's a purpose-built anti-ABM missile with extremely low design tolerance (based on some quick skimming). These are basic assault shuttle rockets designed to be used for ground attack. Why would any reasonable designer build something that ridiculously overpowered for such a purpose? On the off-chance an assault shuttle is attacking an impeller-drive ship with the wrong weapon, when it has the right weapon right there on the next rack over?

Also, given that impeller-drive missiles operate in the tens of thousand of gravities range...yeah. Wouldn't say there's a chance in hell they can make that much of an improvement. Regardless of how much better their chemical explosives are, exhaust velocity is still exhaust velocity.

[Simon_Jester]

To point out an analogy, in World War One an airplane that could fly 120 miles an hour would have been considered a high-performance fighter. Today that is very inadequate performance even for things like ground attack.

The same reason that's true might also apply here, just to pick one of a few possibilities. Lots of small craft are armed with various types of energy weapons (laser and plasma); it isn't much of a stretch to assume that active antimissile defense is a real possibility on armored fighting vehicles or heavy aircraft. We don't see much evidence of it, granted, but then we don't see many cases of heavy military vehicles like shuttles, pinnaces and tanks fighting each other directly in any case.

If you're trying to build a missile that poses a credible threat in an environment where heavy tanks and shuttlecraft can mount a viable point defense laser system, you need to make sure the missile closes the range to the target quickly. A missile that covers several kilometers at 300 m/s or so might simply get shot down in midflight. So maximizing acceleration starts to make sense.

High acceleration also allows the missile to be used as a kinetic impactor in situations where a chemical warhead would be unhelpful.

At longer ranges, the advantage of a high-acceleration chemical missile becomes more questionable, unless it is seriously intended as a viable "dual-role" missile that can engage vulnerable spacegoing targets (like satellite installations, freighters, and small craft).

Personally I'm not sure that's a logical design choice, which is the thing I want to pick nits about.

[VhenRa]

To point out an analogy, in World War One an airplane that could fly 120 miles an hour would have been considered a high-performance fighter. Today that is very inadequate performance even for things like ground attack.

The same reason that's true might also apply here, just to pick one of a few possibilities. Lots of small craft are armed with various types of energy weapons (laser and plasma); it isn't much of a stretch to assume that active antimissile defense is a real possibility on armored fighting vehicles or heavy aircraft. We don't see much evidence of it, granted, but then we don't see many cases of heavy military vehicles like shuttles, pinnaces and tanks fighting each other directly in any case.

If you're trying to build a missile that poses a credible threat in an environment where heavy tanks and shuttlecraft can mount a viable point defense laser system, you need to make sure the missile closes the range to the target quickly. A missile that covers several kilometers at 300 m/s or so might simply get shot down in midflight. So maximizing acceleration starts to make sense.

High acceleration also allows the missile to be used as a kinetic impactor in situations where a chemical warhead would be unhelpful.

At longer ranges, the advantage of a high-acceleration chemical missile becomes more questionable, unless it is seriously intended as a viable "dual-role" missile that can engage vulnerable spacegoing targets (like satellite installations, freighters, and small craft).

Personally I'm not sure that's a logical design choice, which is the thing I want to pick nits about.

I swear I remember something about Active Anti-Missile systems on Manticorian Army Tanks in House of Steel.

[Simon_Jester]

Ugh, that part of the book was so dry and forgettable I didn't even look at it.

[Ahriman238]

“Unfortunately from the prospect of a fast passage, however, the Longstops can only manage about two hundred and twenty gravities. That gives us a total flight time of almost exactly six hours, but the decel leg will be eight minutes—and about a hundred and fifteen thousand klicks—longer than the accel because of the velocity we'll take across the alpha wall with us."

220 Gs for the Longstops, we sure are getting a lot of info on them.

"All right, people," she said, turning to look over the staff manning the control room. "We should be receiving their ID transmission within the next ten minutes or so, but it's going to be a long, slow haul before they get close enough for us to make our move. I want you all to take a deep breath and settle down. We only get one shot at this, but we've done it before on a smaller scale, and we can do it again. Commander Phillips."

"Yes, Milady?"

"If you would, please, I want everyone relieved in rotation. We've got the trained personnel. Let's be sure the people who are going to be carrying the ball when the penny drops are rested and fed."

Again we have Honor seeing that there will probably be a fight in the next six hours wanting to be sure everyone is well-rested and fed first.

The hyper translation had been all Citizen Commodore Yang had promised. He'd never imagined anything like it, and he knew he'd stood there, gawking through the observation blister's magnifying grav lens, as ship after ship followed Farnese across the hyper-space wall into the Cerberus System. The sleek battlecruisers had been magnificent enough, with the two hundred and fifty-kilometer disks of their Warshawski sails bleeding blue lightning, but the transports had been even more awesome. They outmassed the battlecruisers by over five-to-one, and despite their weaker drives, the actual area of their sails was much greater. They had flashed into existence like huge, azure soap bubbles, blazing against the blackness like brief-lived blue suns, and the sight had driven home the reality of their sheer size. There were many larger ships in space, yet for the first time in his memory, Thornegrave had been pushed into standing back and appreciating the sheer scale of the human race's dreams. By many standards, the Longstops were little more than moderately oversized cargo barges, and he knew it, but they didn't feel that way as they glowed and flashed in the long night.

I don't much like Citizen General Thornegrave, all his inner monologue reads like a propaganda reel, but this was just a cool moment and scene.

Everyone had felt nerves tighten as Scanning got a better read on the seventeen point sources. They had expected two battlecruisers and three heavy cruisers; they'd gotten six BCs and four CAs, with two light cruisers as a screen. In the final analysis, the additional firepower shouldn't make much difference, but that hadn't kept the increased odds from making them all wonder what other surprises the Peeps might have in store for them.

Thornegrave brought more ships than his letter said to expect.

"Any sign of active weapon systems?"

"No, Ma'am," the lieutenant commander at Tactical replied. "And they're powering down the nodes on the freighters."

"Only on the freighters?" Phillips voice started out sharply, but she got control of it by the third word and smoothed it out quickly.

"So far," the tac officer confirmed. "Wait one. . . . We've got node power-down on the cruisers, as well, Commander, but the battle-cruisers are showing standby power readings."

Settling into parking orbit, the BCs leave their drives on standby, just in case a mine gets loose.

"They were tracking us all the way in, Sir—as a routine security precaution, I assumed. Why they should continue doing it now that we're in orbit is beyond me, however. Oh," she waved one hand in a dismissive gesture, "I suppose they could be running some sort of training exercise down there. They can probably use all the live tracking experience they can get. It's just that there are a lot more sensors involved than I would have expected, and lidar is normally used primarily as fire control."

"Fire control?" Thornegrave half-rose, but Yang turned and shook her head quickly at him.

"Fire control teams need practice, too, Sir," she reassured him, "and the fact that their sensors are active doesn't mean their weapons have been released. In fact, it's SOP for the weapons not to be enabled in an exercise, so I'm not afraid of anyone shooting us by accident. It's just that the exercise, or whatever it is, is on a much greater scale than I would have antici—"

Heh. "Our base is tracking us all the way in and has painted us for fire-control. They must be practicing without telling us."

"Attention PNS Farnese," the face on his display said in a cold, hard voice. "I am Admiral Honor Harrington, Grayson Space Navy, and the planet Hades is under my control. I am transmitting this message to the attention of Citizen General Thornegrave over a whisker laser in order to ensure privacy. My purpose is to allow you the opportunity to reply to my transmission before its contents become general knowledge and inspire someone to panic and do something stupid."

She paused, very briefly, and Thornegrave stared at her numbly while his brain slithered and skidded like a man on slick ice.

"I am transmitting from the central control room at Camp Charon," she resumed in that same, diamond-hard voice, "and the targeting systems now locked onto your vessels are under my command. You are instructed to cut all power to your nodes immediately and stand by to be boarded. Any resistance to those instructions, or to any other order from myself or my subordinates, will be met with deadly force. I require an immediate response to these instructions."

Honor calls upon the flagship to surrender first, hoping not to panic the task force into doing something dumb. Unfortunately, Thornegrave panics a bit, and has no idea just how outgunned and helpless he is. He doesn't attack, but he takes a bit too long to respond.

"To all units orbiting Hades," she said flatly. "This is Admiral Honor Harrington, Grayson Space Navy. I am in control of Hades and all of its facilities, including its orbital defenses. You are locked up by my fire control as I speak. You will immediately cut all power to your drives, shut down all active sensors, and await boarding. Any delay in the execution of or disobedience to any of those instructions will result in the destruction of the disobeying vessel. This is your first, last, and only warning. Harrington out."

"All ships," Yang was barking into her own microphone. "All ships, this is the Flag! Comply with all instructions from Charon! I repeat, comply—"

"Citizen Commodore—the Attila!"

Yang swung towards the master plot, and a spiked fist grabbed her stomach and squeezed as PNS Attila's StateSec CO panicked. She couldn't really blame him, she thought numbly—not when Harrington's demand came at him cold that way. If that idiot Thornegrave hadn't blustered and delayed, it might not have happened. As it was, every captain was on his or her own, and Attila's impellers were still at standby.

Honor makes it a general transmission, and someone panics and does something dumb.

Whatever he thought he was doing, it was the last mistake he ever made. Attila hadn't even moved yet. Her emergency reaction thrusters flared wildly, and her impeller strength shot upward, spinning towards full power, and Charon's sensors must have seen it the instant it began to change. The wedge was only beginning to form, still far too nebulous to interdict incoming fire, when eight remote graser platforms opened fire simultaneously. All eight scored direct hits, and beams that could have ripped through unprotected battle steel at three-quarters of a million kilometers smashed into her from less than two thousand. They punched straight through her hull like battering rams, shattering plating, tearing anyone and anything in their paths to splinters, and the battlecruiser's emissions signature spiked madly as the grasers shed energy into her. Her thrusters were still firing, turning her on her long axis, and the energy fire gutted her like a gaffed shark. And then, with shocking suddenness, her fusion plants let go.

8 Grasers utterly annihilate a BC with it's wedge and sidewalls down.

Yang's visual display blanked as the dreadful, white-hot boil of fury overpowered the filters. Attila was less than six hundred kilometers from Farnese when she went, and the flagship's hull fluoresced wildly as the stripped atoms of her eviscerated sister slashed across her. Only her standard, station-keeping particle screens were up, and those were intended mainly to keep dust from accumulating on her hull. They had never been intended to deal with something like this, and threat receivers and warning signals wailed.

It was only later that Yang realized that only one of Attila's plants had actually let go. The fail-safes on the other two must have functioned as designed. If they hadn't, Attila would have taken Farnese and probably Wallenstein, as well, with her. As it was, the flagship's damage was incredibly light. Her starboard sensors, communications arrays, and point defense laser clusters were stripped away, half her weapon bay hatches were warped and jammed, up to a half meter of her armor was planed away in some places, and she lost two beta nodes out of her forward ring and three more out of her after ring, but her port side was untouched, and the sensors and com lasers on the roof and floor of her hull survived more or less unscathed. Had she dared contemplate resistance, she would actually have remained a fighting force. . . until the grasers which had killed Attila got around to her, at any rate.

Detonation of a fusion plant at 600 km enough to remove a half-meter of armor from a BC, and kill pretty much every antenna and PD cluster outside of the armor on that side. Which sort of parallels what happened when the original fearless had to emergency eject a fusion plant and it detonated barely outside the hull. Well presumably a BC and a light cruiser's fusion plants operate on radically different scales.

Wallenstein was further away . . . and partially shielded by the heavy cruiser Hachiman. The big Mars-class cruiser took a savage beating from the explosion. She was much closer than Farnese had been, and the shock front smashed over her on the heels of the energy spike. The fact that any of her hull survived even remotely intact was an enormous testimonial to her designers and builders, but she was turned into a dead hulk, blasted and broken, and none of her people had been in skinsuits or expecting trouble of any sort. Two-thirds of them died almost instantly; of those who survived the initial blast, half took lethal radiation doses not even modern medicine could do a thing about.

But her sacrifice saved Wallenstein from Farnese's fate. She came through with only minor damage, and Kutuzov, MacAnhur, and Barbarosa, Yang's other battlecruisers, were far enough out to escape without significant injury. Best of all, all of her other ships' skippers— thank God!—had the sense to do absolutely nothing to draw the defenses' ire down on them.

They also lost a Mars cruiser to the Attila KFB.

"Good." The right side of Harrington's mouth curled to bare her teeth in what might conceivably have been described—by someone other than Rachel Yang—as a smile. "Then there's just one more thing, Citizen Commodore. You will inform your captains that any effort to abandon ship, scuttle their vessels, or wreck their computer nets will also be considered justification for the use of lethal force. Your ships are our prizes, and they are StateSec vessels. As such, and in light of what State Security has done to the prisoners on this planet, neither they nor your personnel are protected in our eyes by the Deneb Accords. They would be wise to remember that."

She never raised her voice. It remained conversational, almost normal, but liquid helium lurked in its depths, and Rachel Yang felt something shudder deep down inside her as she nodded in silent submission.

Honor warns them not to scuttle the ships.

She cut the circuit, and Honor turned to the display on her new flag deck and watched the transports accelerate ponderously out of Hades orbit towards the hyper limit with their single escort. They'd managed to cram just over two hundred and eighty-six thousand people—her people now, however they'd become that—aboard those ships. That was a little better even than Montoya had estimated, and the troop decks were packed claustrophobically full. But crowded as they were, their life support—buttressed by the scores of small craft which had been added to their systems—should suffice to see their passengers safely home.

286 thousand aboard the transports, so actually a majority of the prisoners.

The explosion had cost her ships she'd needed badly, and it would have been entirely avoidable if that idiot Thornegrave had taken the opportunity she'd given him to surrender without violence. But he hadn't, and she hadn't dared give him more time. For all she'd known, he'd simply been stalling while he used untappable whisker lasers of his own to send messages to the other convoy escorts. It had been unlikely that he could have accomplished anything through active resistance, but he might have made the attempt anyway, in which case she could have been forced to destroy all of his ships. A more likely, and almost equally devastating ploy, would have been for him to have ordered his units to purge their computers before she ordered them not to. In that case she would have taken them intact but lobotomized, which would have made the battlecruisers useless to her as warships. She could have copied the basic astrogation and ship service files and AIs over to them from Krashnark's master data banks, but for all her size and firepower, Krashnark was simply too small to require all the computer support a Warlord-class battlecruiser needed. She could have stripped them down and used them as transports, but she could never have used them in combat.

The Elysian Space Navy now numbers 5 BC, 4 CA, 2 CL. PNS Seahorse was another casualty, mission-killed and so sent to escort the freighters, but they brought another cruiser of the same class, PNS Sabine. And of course, naming conventions. The Warlords are named for kings and generals, the Mars for gods, with a sample size of three; Baccahnte, Seahorse and Sabine, I can't find a pattern or convention in the Frigate class. Possibly there isn't one, or as Simon suggested they may be recycling old names.

A CA does not have the computer support a BC does, and could not restore the BCs to combat-effectiveness if all their data was wiped, though they'd do okay at getting from point A to point B.

She smiled crookedly at the thought. Given the fact that half of Farnese's weapons were useless anyway, she'd reduced the battlecruiser's new company from Caslet's estimated requirement of thirteen hundred to just seven hundred, which had given her (barely) the trained and retrained personnel to man all of the heavy cruisers and put the required thirteen hundred each aboard the other battlecruisers. They'd managed it only by stripping Charon down to naked bone—Charon Control had only a single full-strength watch crew, with just enough other people to make sure there was always a sensor and com watch—and accepting a rather flexible definition of "trained." But none of her subordinates had argued about any of those decisions; they'd reserved their protests for her decision to choose Farnese as her flagship.

Honor takes the previous, half-crippled flagship of the force as hers. Apparently they had a shortage of experienced commanders with eleven whole ships, and enough prisoners squawked about putting that Peep Caslet in the captain's chair that Honor just gave him the most damaged ship and moved her flag there "to keep an eye on him."

They were a very mixed lot: four in StateSec's crimson and black, and fourteen, counting the two transports' skippers, in the People's Navy's gray-and-green.

Uniform colors from before confirmed. I wonder, if the StateSec wear red tunics and black trousers, does that same sharp divide apply to the Navy uniforms?

The good news was that he'd managed to put together an escort of no less than ten battlecruisers (although one of them was one of the old Lion-class) and six heavy cruisers, and the People's Marines had been able to provide two of their Roughneck-class fast attack transports. The bad news was that he'd been able to come up with less than twenty-seven thousand troops to put aboard those transports. Of course, if his warships could secure control of the high orbitals, that should be plenty of ground-based firepower. The prisoners on Hades might outnumber his troops by better than twenty-to-one, but a few kinetic interdiction strikes would take care of that nicely.

Chernocks hastily-assembled Hades intervention force and Honor is once again outnumbered with twice her BCs and the same number of cruisers, but Chernocks are all heavies. On the plus side, he's bringing enough troop transports to lift the rest of the Hades prisoners out. The downside being that they're full of troops.

Chernock suspected that an all-Navy task group could have gotten itself sorted out and drilled to an acceptable standard in that much time, but three of Yearman's battlecruisers—Ivan IV, Cassander, and Modred—were commanded by StateSec officers, and so was Morrigan, one of his two Mars-class heavy cruisers. Those officers, and especially Citizen Captain Isler, Modred's skipper, deeply resented being placed under effective Navy command, even at Chernock's direct orders. Citizen Captain Sorrenson, Morrigan's CO, was probably as resentful as Isler, if less inclined to show it, and it hadn't helped that Yearman's drills had made it painfully obvious that all four SS ships had been trained to a much lower standard than their Navy counterparts.

StateSec and the military fighting together against the People's enemies. With distrustful glances and mutters all around.

"We've all studied the data Citizen General Chernock has been able to provide on the orbital defenses, and I'm sure all of us are aware of the fundamental weakness inherent in their design. Aside from the ground bases on Tartarus, Sheol, and Niflheim, all of their weapons platforms are unprotected by any passive defenses and effectively incapable of movement. In addition, their missile defense capability is much more limited than their offensive firepower. They're short on counter-missile launchers, and they have barely a third of the missile-killer laser platforms I would have built into the defense grid. As such, their weapon systems are extremely vulnerable to proximity soft kills, and we can almost certainly penetrate their defenses without resorting to cee-fractional strikes. We may have to take our lumps from the ground bases, but their ammunition is limited, and we should be able to blow a massive hole in the orbital defenses before we have to enter the ground bases' range.

Again, shown the plans for Hades' orbital defenses it took approximately no time for the Navy to see the obvious gaping hole. Also, the defenses are weak on, well, actual missile defense.

"They made a relatively low-velocity alpha translation, right on the hyper limit. At the moment, they're approximately fourteen-point-five light-minutes from Hades on an intercept course with a base velocity of just under twelve hundred KPS." She paused for just a beat, drawing Honor's eye to her face, and then added, "Their accel is only two hundred gravities, Admiral."

"Two hundred?" Honor's tone and gaze sharpened, and Truman nodded.

"Yes, Ma'am. CIC's best estimate is that two of them are in the four- to five-million-ton range, with civilian grade impellers. The rest are obviously warships—probably heavy cruisers and battle-cruisers. Given the size of the Mars-class ships, it's even harder than usual to distinguish between them at any kind of range, so CIC is uncertain how the ratio breaks down."

Chernock's arrival is detected, ending the chapter and this post.

[Simon_Jester]

Heh. "Our base is tracking us all the way in and has painted us for fire-control. They must be practicing without telling us."

Which is more likely:

"Our base is performing an exercise without telling us,"

or

"Prisoners have taken over the galaxy's most escape-proof prison, overcoming a garrison that is equipped with machine guns, bazookas, power armor, light tanks, heavy tanks, antigravity flying gunships, giant laser cannons, tactical nukes, strategic nukes, and a massive orbital satellite network... with their bare hands."

I mean, suppose a flight of F-16s happens to be passing over a major Air Force base and a targeting radar paints them. Are they going to assume it's a radar exercise, or are they going to assume a bunch of bad guys seized the base?

At most, they'd ask ground control for clarification.

The Elysian Space Navy now numbers 5 BC, 4 CA, 2 CL. PNS Seahorse was another casualty, mission-killed and so sent to escort the freighters, but they brought another cruiser of the same class, PNS Sabine. And of course, naming conventions. The Warlords are named for kings and generals, the Mars for gods, with a sample size of three; Baccahnte, Seahorse and Sabine, I can't find a pattern or convention in the Frigate class. Possibly there isn't one, or as Simon suggested they may be recycling old names.

For one, none of the names connote great martial power or ferocity, which is consistent with the names a fleet might assign to tiny Honorverse frigates.

Probably different classes of frigates. Maybe ones that distinguished themselves in action and so seemed to merit a memorial?

StateSec and the military fighting together against the People's enemies. With distrustful glances and mutters all around.

Chernock, who is no dummy, actually takes time to be concerned about this- because he wants to ensure that StateSec ships can fight on equal or superior terms with Navy ships of the same class. At the moment, they can't.

I don't like Chernock personally, but I do admire him in a sense; he's smart and competent and he makes no obvious mistakes, aside from his lack of naval experience and training. A good antagonist; I wish he'd put up more of a fight somehow.

[eyl]

It's stated earlier in the passage that they already used all of their impeller-head missiles.
That technically doesn't exclude impeller-driven missiles with chemical warheads (the text mentions chemical warheads, it doesn't say a word about the drive system) but one seriously wonders what you need a chemical warhead for on an impeller-driven missile.

I can think of two possible reasons for chemical warhead-impeller drive missiles:

1) If they're significantly smaller than impeller-head missiles, it means that the shuttle can carry more missiles if it has a mix of chemical- and impeller-head missiles.
2) In addition, I suspect that because chemical warheads are weaker, they would have some utility for a ground-assault shuttle - they'll have a more precise and contained effect relative to impeller heads, which might be useful sometimes.

[Batman]

From what I can tell, an impeller head missile is nothing but an impeller driven missile with no separate warhead that uses its wedge for the kill.
I suppose they could use weapons with deliberately low-powered and short-lived drives since they're smaller and chemical warheads allow for different damage mechanisms but you'd expect Captain Infodump of all people would've told us as much.

[Esquire]

I assumed they were for bombing targets that either don't merit a nuke or that are in areas that StateSec isn't allowed to completely destroy. Honorverse SAMs are impeller-driven, so you need a similarly-powerful engine to have a chance of hitting even a lightly defended target, but the impeller shuts off at the last second and the damage is done by the chemical warhead, rather than wedge interactions.

[Terralthra]

The Elysian Space Navy now numbers 5 BC, 4 CA, 2 CL. PNS Seahorse was another casualty, mission-killed and so sent to escort the freighters, but they brought another cruiser of the same class, PNS Sabine. And of course, naming conventions. The Warlords are named for kings and generals, the Mars for gods, with a sample size of three; Baccahnte, Seahorse and Sabine, I can't find a pattern or convention in the Frigate class. Possibly there isn't one, or as Simon suggested they may be recycling old names.

For one, none of the names connote great martial power or ferocity, which is consistent with the names a fleet might assign to tiny Honorverse frigates.

Probably different classes of frigates. Maybe ones that distinguished themselves in action and so seemed to merit a memorial?

They aren't exactly frigates, they're "frigate-class light cruisers" - or at least, Bacchante was. Which is odd, considering a frigate is generally smaller than a DD. Maybe they're extra-light cruisers, but not built along a destroyer's design philosophy?

Anyway, both Bacchante and Sabine describe members of ancient groups: Bacchante is a follower of Bacchus, Sabines were a tribe of people who lived in the region of Rome before it was founded. Seahorse doesn't seem to fit in with that, unless it's referencing the mythological seahorses, in which case the theme is "non-God ancient/semi-mythical stuff". Or it's just not in the naming theme. I mean, the Reliant-class BCs are named after characters of myth like the Homers were (Ishtar, Lysander, Amphitrite), attributes of a warrior like the Redoubtables (Dauntless, Indomitable, Truculent), or...random shit (Nike, Victory, Royalist). Not all things have a consistent theme.

[VhenRa]

The Elysian Space Navy now numbers 5 BC, 4 CA, 2 CL. PNS Seahorse was another casualty, mission-killed and so sent to escort the freighters, but they brought another cruiser of the same class, PNS Sabine. And of course, naming conventions. The Warlords are named for kings and generals, the Mars for gods, with a sample size of three; Baccahnte, Seahorse and Sabine, I can't find a pattern or convention in the Frigate class. Possibly there isn't one, or as Simon suggested they may be recycling old names.

For one, none of the names connote great martial power or ferocity, which is consistent with the names a fleet might assign to tiny Honorverse frigates.

Probably different classes of frigates. Maybe ones that distinguished themselves in action and so seemed to merit a memorial?

They aren't exactly frigates, they're "frigate-class light cruisers" - or at least, Bacchante was. Which is odd, considering a frigate is generally smaller than a DD. Maybe they're extra-light cruisers, but not built along a destroyer's design philosophy?

Anyway, both Bacchante and Sabine describe members of ancient groups: Bacchante is a follower of Bacchus, Sabines were a tribe of people who lived in the region of Rome before it was founded. Seahorse doesn't seem to fit in with that, unless it's referencing the mythological seahorses, in which case the theme is "non-God ancient/semi-mythical stuff". Or it's just not in the naming theme. I mean, the Reliant-class BCs are named after characters of myth like the Homers were (Ishtar, Lysander, Amphitrite), attributes of a warrior like the Redoubtables (Dauntless, Indomitable, Truculent), or...random shit (Nike, Victory, Royalist). Not all things have a consistent theme.

He's theorizing they are named AFTER Frigates. For example say there was a distinguished one named Guardian back when the Havenite Navy used Frigates, another named Broadsword who achieved something great. The Frigate-class CLs are named after said frigates.

[Batman]

That wouldn't make them frigate-class cruisers though, they'd just be cruisers named after frigates, with the class name being 'insert frigate name they chose for the class naming ship'. Or, they're doing what Terralthra said, they seriously decided to name the lead ship of the class 'PNS Frigate' and the ships are completely ordinary cruisers with a patently silly class name, or the ships are completely ordinary cruisers but are designated as frigates for some bureaucratic/political reason or other (it's not like this hasn't happened in the real world, see the US Navy's eventual CGNs).

[Black Admiral]

Or possibly they're something like the Royal Navy's Battle- and Weapon-class destroyers, and as proposed named after frigates that - back when the Havenite Navy still used frigates - managed notable achievements. We know the PN's named classes along those lines before; PNS Breslau back in THOTQ was a City-class light cruiser.

Certainly I can think of sillier IRL ship/class names (the WW2 Flower-class corvettes spring to mind).