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This fanfiction article, Hope-class destroyer, was written by StoneGhost. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission. |
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- "It's not much more than a remote controlled gun, And it's probably the most ungainly thing the UNSC Navy's put to space in two hundred years. But suppose you can assign two or three to every major UNSC warship- that's suddenly three extra MACs you have, each with two shots on a single charge. And if necessary, that's also three ships you can put between yourself and the plasma torpedoes and not lose sleep over it. Suddenly, your chances against a previously untouchable enemy aren't so slim. It gave us hope."
- ―Commodore Henry Ward, 2544
The Hope-class destroyer was a class of unmanned destroyers utilised by the UNSC Navy during the Human-Covenant War. After extensive battle analysis from conflict with the Covenant Empire had shown, the only weapons that were suitably effective against the Covenant were Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, which delivered a solid slug at velocities of around half the speed of light, and to a certain extent, nuclear munitions. The Hope-class was an attempt to exploit this meager advantage to its full potential, hopefully aiding the UNSC in its ongoing struggle against the Covenant. Stripped down to the bare minimum needed to maintain a viable mobile weapons platform, the Hope-class removed superfluous armaments, single ship complements, capacity for maintaining a crew and even armour plating to increase its expendability, essentially allowing more MAC cannons to be fielded simultaneously against the Covenant. As a result, the vessel was fully automated and remotely controlled by an Artificial Intelligence. While denied the honour of individual hull names, ships of the class received commissions as if they were any other ship of the UNSC Navy, a distinction unique among unmanned craft. The Hope-class destroyer was based on the spaceframe of the Remembrance-class frigate, stripped down and radically altered both externally and internally.
History[]
Background[]
The Human-Covenant War erupted in 2525 with the successive loss of Human-colonised worlds, no matter how much combat power was assigned to hold them. It was rapidly and painfully apparent to all those at the highest levels of the UNSC that Humanity was facing a threat to its very existence, especially as more of the Covenant's technological advantage became apparent, and all attempts at dialogue failed. Strategically, various novel approaches were theorised and some of these enacted in order to fight back and preserve the integrity of UNSC space, though in time all of these would fail. At the tactical level, all services of the UNSC quickly adapted their doctrine, tactics and technology in development, forced to do so through the abject failure of their existing operational practices and the genuinely crushing losses that this resulted in. There is historical consensus that, within a decade, on the ground and in the air, the UNSC Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps had undergone a transformation in the face of this new enemy in terms of equipment, operational doctrine and tactics. By 2535, they were able to contest territory and hold their own in most cases against numerically superior Covenant forces, and even with Humanity's obvious technological deficiency.
All of this came to nothing, however, because the sky above could never be secured. Unlike the other services, the UNSC Navy invariably could not stand up to the might of its Covenant counterpart without overwhelming numerical superiority, and sometimes not even with it. This was regardless of the new tactics it attempted and the new technologies it fielded. Indeed, the percentage of UNSC warships destroyed in battle actually increased, from 42% of all vessels committed to action in 2527 to 49% in 2531. The overwhelming disparity between Covenant and UNSC spatial technology, coupled with the oppressive nature of this domain of warfare, partially account for this failure. Blame can also be laid at the organisational resistance to change within the UNSC Navy, and a shipbuilding strategy that favoured incremental upgrades to existing ships rather than introduction of newer classes, even when it was apparent that some serving vessel classes had minimal impact and exceptional mortality rates. Indeed, the UNSC Navy of 2552 operated, in the main, exactly the same classes of warship it had fielded nearly three decades earlier, albeit with moderate refit- a fact which has long since both fascinated and bewildered historians. The UNSC Navy's inability to secure the space above a colony was generally the most significant factor in the overall loss of a colony. These were often glassed by the Covenant afterwards, destroying all infrastructure, sometimes rendering worlds uninhabitable and therefore denying the UNSC any strategic value in reoccupying them. The result was that, by 2530, the single biggest planning priority in the UNSCDF was in developing effective tactics, bringing in game-changing technologies and improving fighting power of the UNSC Navy. By this time, planners had begun to accept the obvious, and looked into contingencies for when more and more of UNSC territory, manpower, material strength and resources were wiped out.
A vast array of technologies, initiatives and projects strove for these goals with varying success. Project ARK focused on the problem- at first theoretical, later all too real- of evacuating large populations from inner colony worlds. The introduction of the Mark 5 'super' Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, coupled with the existing Orbital Defence Platform, enormously increased the Navy's range and firepower in defence. Anti-plasma torpedo countermeasures, including the Mark 1 decoy and Tactical Intercept Station, protected UNSC ships from enemy fire. The development of TRIPWIRE slipspace sensors gave prior warning to allow timely reinforcing of colonies, and new warship classes were developed, albeit to supplant rather than replace serving ones, including the Vengeance-class destroyer and Trafalgar-class command carrier. All of these had an impact on the war, eking out a long, tenacious 27 years of resistance from the UNSC Navy, but came too late to stem the tide of losses. The Hope-class destroyer, by contrast, was developed, produced, tested and deployed extremely rapidly, going from drawing board to initial operating capability in just seven months between July 2529 and February 2530.
Development and production[]
Autonomous weapons platforms to supplement or supplant traditional warships had periodically been proposed through the long history of the UNSC Navy, though had never progressed beyond the concept stage. Between the conclusion of the Interplanetary War and the start of the Human-Covenant War, a time period of over three hundred years, the UNSC did not conduct any large scale fleet action, to the point that such battles were purely theoretical by 2525. Instead, vessels operated mosty alone or in small mutually supporting groups, far from eachother and from immediate assistance. Moreover, the threats likely to face such vessels, at a time when a single UNSC warship would represent the most powerful military force in any system it entered, were more likely fast attack vessels, improvised explosive devices, boarding and other such asymmetric threats on the frontier of Human space. In such circumstances, the idea of an autonomous fighting vessel, relying on another nearby ship for control, relatively limited in utility, and of little use against irregular and insurrectioninst forces, was difficult to justify. AI-controlled spacecraft were widespread, however these were not weapons platforms for replacing or supplementing warships, but were instead smaller craft employed as reconnaissance vessels (such as the RQ-117 Clarion) or short range fighter craft (like the QF-99B Dart).
With the onset of the Great War, and in the throes of frantic scrambling to find new or previously disregarded tactics and technologies to fight the Covenant, the concept of unmanned, remote-controlled, fully fledged warships was revisited. In 2528, a year which laid bare the true inadequacies of UNSC warships against the destructive power of the Covenant's plasma and particle-based weaponry, a team under the leadership of then-Lieutenant Commander Henry Ward began studying the feasibility of a self-powered, self-propelled Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. War was working as a staff officer in Section Three of the Office of Naval Intelligence, leading a small team advising technical experts on the UNSC Navy's needs and operational experience. The idea was that the MACs would attach themselves 'like limpets' to larger UNSC vessels, specifically of cruiser tonnage and above, and detach before battle to boost drastically the weight of firepower that could be directed at the enemy. These 'cannon boats', as they were known early on, would be directly operated by the warship's smart AI, a relatively simple addition to its many tasks, through the shp's existing MASER array. They would continue functioning if any one of them was destroyed, or, if the parent vessel was knocked out, would carry out their last received instructions until they could connect with another parent AI. Funding was allocated for development of the concept in July 2529, at which point Lt Cdr Ward was permanently attached to a much larger team of military advisors and civilian naval architects and industry technicians. To speed up production and make best use of economies of scale, the designers chose the existing Remembrance-class frigate, a proven design, as a basis for the spaceframe. All superfluous material was stripped away, leaving the bare spine of the vessel, its reactors and their exhausts, the MAC and its magazine, and a bridge module entirely devoted to communications receivers. The result was a vessel that was not only light on resource demand, imperative as the UNSC shifted it economy towards a total war footing, but was also extremely lightweight. For simplicity's sake, the reactors of the Remembrance-class were retained, giving the new vessel superb acceleration and handling characteristics. The vessel was denied its own sensory, targeting and navigation equipment, instead receiving all of this information from the vessel and the AI in control. This reduced cost and complexity, ultimately allowing larger numbers to be produced.
Concurrent to the technical development of the as-yet unnamed vessel, Ward and his Navy team explored ways of integrating the employment of the vessel into existing naval doctrine, as developing new doctrine to maximise its effective use. The team were enthusiastic about the vessel's potential to make a difference if correctly implemented and, more importantly, if commanders could be educated on how to use them to maximise this potential. In 2526, at the Battle of Biko, then-Lieutenant Ward had observed first-hand from his Bumblebee lifeboat as the frigate Forward Unto Dawn picked up survivors from the heavy cruiser UNSC Dresden, which had been mortally damaged by Covenant fire. In spite of standing orders that ships not endanger themselves in order to rescue survivors, Forward Unto Dawn did so by sheltering in the 'shadow' of the much larger vessel's hull, staying until the hull of the larger vessel glowed with heat, and ultimately recovering nearly two hundred of Dresden's complement including Ward. Much later, he recounted that some of the survivors onboard his Bumblebee had begun counting how many pistol rounds they had between them. This incident served as the basis for an unusual additional role the Hope-class destroyer would eventually undertake, in addition to its usage as a weapons platform augmenting conventional warships. Similar to that of UNSC Dresden's hulk, Hope-class vessels would be used in a sacrificial manner in order to intercept enemy fire destined for other vessels with greater capability and containing UNSC service personnel. Initially, this final use was possible only on specific instructions from their controlling artificial intelligence, but later updates allowed them to be thrown in the line of fire automatically to spare other vessels. This was in part made possible by their comparatively impressive acceleration and agility. Although this was possible with enemy plasma torpedo fire, it was ineffective against plasma projector 'lances', which travelled through space at the speed of light and therefore could not be intercepted.
The simplicity of the Hope-class destroyer was a key reason it was produced in such high numbers, and therefore became so prolific throughout UNSC fleet formations. Its basic superstructure and austere package of equipment meant that it could be produced in smaller shipyards which were usually unable to handle vessels of military size and specification. This was especially useful to the UNSC at a time when it was preparing civilian-operated industrial shipyards to expand in order to accept military orders, in order to satisfy the demand of a rapidly expanding (and continually attrited) Navy. The Hope-class destroyer could be readily constructed, in modules, in berths designed to build civilian liners and freight vessels, easing the eventual expansion to produce warships of greater complexity and scale. Most of these civilian-operated shipyards would be requisitioned and operated by the UNSC as the war progressed and it required centralised control of materiel production.
Introduction[]
The vessel was formally designated the Hope-class destroyer in January 2530, a month before it achieved initial operating capability, on completion of its final space trials. There was some controversy over the exact naming; some within the development team were loath to give it a traditional ship class designation, pointing out that they would not be formally commissioned and were more akin to unmanned space vehicles like the Dart and Clarion, albeit on a greatly increased scale. Others, Ward included, argued that they were similar enough to true warships in size, usage and armament to be designated a warship class, an argument that did not convince the UNSC Navy. Ultimately Ward succeeded by arguing that giving it a conventional name and designation as a warship would encourage Navy commanders to use it as such, as opposed to disregarding or misusing it, and that it would also boost morale, and the UNSC Navy's theoretical strength, by inflating the number of warships in service.
The Hope-class was introduced with the commissioning of DD-336, and was deployed on a large scale basis in order to stem the precipitous rate of colony losses at the time. The class was deployed mainly to the remaining outer colonies, though as these were lost the ships were pulled further back to protect inner worlds. As the vessel was cheap and simple to mass-produce, it could be seen often in numbers defending colonies of high priority, in conjunction with heavier vessels, which was how the class was ideally suited to operating. Even so, the vast numbers of Covenant ships regularly facing UNSC fleets and the near-constant operational deployments ate quickly away at remaining Hope-class ship numbers, especially in the last six months of the war. Following the destruction of Reach and its shipyards, the production of Hope-class destroyers all but ceased, with surviving shipyards elsewhere focusing on more flexible and useful ship classes. With nothing replacing lost vessels, the last three of the class fought at Earth in late 2552, where one was lost to enemy action. The remaining two vessels, DD-339 and DD-340, were finally retired in 2554. Post-war, naval historians remarked that the Hope-class destroyer had the potential to have drastically altered the war's outcome, but was produced both too late in the war and in too small numbers to achieve the desired impact.
Battle of Miridem[]
The Hope-class' first combat action was at the Battle of Miridem in 2544. Defending the world of Miridem were four Hope-class destroyers, DD-341, DD-342, DD-343 and DD-344. Also present were seven Remembrance-class frigates, two Halcyon- and one Marathon-class cruisers, and four orbital defence platforms. These were joined by the newly commissioned Vengeance-class destroyer UNSC Sheffield, which had by chance been conducting orbital trials in vicinity of Miridem, and was recalled for its defence. As soon as Covenant forces were detected, the UNSC's naval forces, under the command of Commodore Henry Ward, assumed a defensive formation, while all ground forces were mobilised and placed on alert. Facing UNSC forces was a Covenant force comprised of one CAS-class assault carrier, six CCS-class battlecruisers, five SDV-class heavy corvettes and four Covenant frigates, which were attempting to destroy the human presence in the system. The battle commenced just over twenty minutes later, as UNSC sensors detected the Covenant vessels moving into MAC range. In the opening moments of the battle, the assault carrier and three CCS-class battlecruisers were obliterated by the ODP's opening salvo, depleting their charge but destroying Covenant forces just before they themselves opened fire. However, the Covenant returned fire and destroyed three of the Platforms and disabled the fourth with plasma torpedoes. The UNSC's three cruisers opened fire, destroying one SDV-class heavy corvette and disabling a CCS-class, while a total of fifteen MAC rounds from the frigates and destroyers finished the disabled vessel off and scored kills against a further two corvettes. The Covenant returned fire, aiming for the three UNSC cruisers. The Covenant succeeded in destroying one Halcyon-class cruiser, however two Hope-class destroyers (DD-342 and DD-343), and three Remembrance-class frigates including the UNSC Remembrance and UNSC Journeyman, deliberately turned into incoming plasma torpedoes, sacrificing themselves to protect the other vessels. Both fleets repositioned at this point; the UNSC's returning volley crippled another Covenant corvette and two frigates, though following this three of the four remaining Remembrance-class frigates were destroyed, as well as the remaining Halcyon-class. The one surviving Marathon-class cruiser, Absolution, survived because DD-341 deliberately steered into the path of oncoming plasma torpedoes, itself being destroyed but saving the cruiser from destruction in the process.
By this time, the vast majority of civilians had been evacuated on transports being protected by the UNSC fleet, so the Navy retrieved its surviving Longsword fighters, remaining ground forces and the contingent of SPARTAN-IIs which had been engaged on the ground. Following this, the three remaining UNSC ships, one frigate, one destroyer and one cruiser, evacuated via slipspace jump on random coordinates, and the Covenant's remaining frigate, corvette and two CCS-class battlecruisers moved in to glass the planet and obliterate the few remaining unlucky stragglers.
Battle of Adrastos[]
Battle of Sigma Octanus IV[]
Battle of Reach[]
Battle of Onyx[]
Battle of Earth[]
Post-War Service[]
Role[]
The main role of the Hope-class, like all destroyers, was the destruction of enemy warships in a supporting role to other vessels, both lighter and heavier. The Hope-class would engage its targets in large numbers, and overwhelm it with accurate, powerful and en-masse MAC fire. Of course, due to the nature of the war, vessels of the class were rarely concentrated in one area but spread out among human territory, despite the fact that they worked most effectively in numbers. When used together, the vessels would arrange themselves in 'fire groups' of three and, numbers permitting, would assign themselves to a vessel of high importance for protection.
Unlike the Halberd-class destroyer, and other UNSC vessels, however, the Hope-class was intended to be semi-disposable. As MAC cannons were arguably the single biggest tactical advantage the UNSC held over the Covenant, the Hope-class was essentially just a MAC cannon- stripping down all unnecessary material that did not greatly benefit the cannon's ability. Fully automated, the Hope-class could be controlled from extreme distances due to its advanced communications array, which was a two-way link between the vessel (feeding telemetry to command elements) and the controlling entity (acting on this and controlling the vessel). A 'Smart' AI could simultaneously control up to seven Hope-class vessels, allowing for seamless command and function between them and maximising their ability far more than separate sentient crews ever could. Due to their somewhat disposable nature, Hope-class destroyers were often sacrificed for more valuable units such the Marathon-class cruiser and other high priority vessels. This naturally led them to be commonly utilised as expendable escort vessels, despite having no single ship complement and little in the way of point defence weaponry to lend to a vessel being supported. The Hope-class was incapable of in-atmosphere operations, and possessed no single ship complement of its own.
Layout[]
Long and thin, the Hope-class in this aspect appeared similar to most other UNSC vessels, though all similarities stopped here. The ship was essentially a long MAC cannon with a hull attached to its rear half, which housed the ammunition stores and fuel reserves. Above this, mounted onto a structure similar to the bridge module of a UNSC frigate, was a hive of antennas acting as the vessel's advanced communications array, which was arguably the most expensive element of the vessel. The rear of the craft featured a geometric cuboid-shaped section which housed the deuterium fusion reactor and the thrusters. As the ship was fully automated, it featured no crew accommodation, bridge or even decks. Maintenance was provided through a series of access tunnels, which were not sealed off from space and required occupants to utilise vacuum suits. The Hope-class' spaceframe was reinforced with several struts and bracings that lent it an increased amount of structural strength, partially negating its thin and fragile cross-section.
Armament and Defences[]
The primary armament of the Hope-class was its single Mark II Light Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. This was the same model used by the Remembrance-class frigate, which took up most of the ship's upper prow and ran two thirds of the ship's overall length. The Mark II accelerated a 600-ton solid metal projectile to speeds exceeding 30,000 metres per second, giving it superb accuracy and terminal ballistic characteristics over extreme ranges. The impact energy alone from the slug travelling at such a velocity equated to 64 kilotons of TNT, or 267.7 terajoules of released energy. A single slug was able to severely damage or completely destroy most unshielded Covenant vessels, while multiple strikes were needed to defeat present shielding. In microgravity environments the slug maintained close to its muzzle velocity for as long as it travelled uninterfered with by the force of gravity; this, coupled with its high initial velocity, meant that the MAC could strike at targets quickly, accurately and over long ranges. The amount of energy needed to charge the weapon's magnetic coils was significantly draining on the reserves of such a small vessel. Due to the absence of many other power-intensive systems, however, the Hope-class could fire two slugs on a full charge, then needed to be charged for 45 seconds before it could be discharged again at full power; this amount of time with an inoperable main weapon often proved fatal when in combat scenarios. The Mark II could be fired on a partial charge, which decreased the amount of time the MAC was offline, though this concurrently reduced the velocity of the projectile, which reduced range, accuracy and terminal effects. Due to this pause, it was imperative that an individual vessel operated alongside another Hope-class destroyer or ship of another class, allowing a more sustained combined rate of fire. The power drain following a shot was noticeable, and contact between controlling units could be interrupted from anywhere between one and seven seconds as power flow was interrupted.
The Hope-class destroyer's defensive armament consisted of four twin 4.1 inch Mark 22 naval guns, mounted laterally in high-elevation turrets. These, like all the ship's functions, were controlled remotely by an AI. The twin 4.1 inch gun was developed as the last line of defence against anti-ship missiles, including hypersonic and slipspace-capable models, and enemy single ships, including interceptors, bombers and boarding craft. Functioning as the only layer of a Hope-class's air defence systems, the Mark 22 was a close-in weapon system responsible for tracking, engaging and destroying extremely fast-moving enemy targets that posed a threat to the ship.
The Hope-class was largely unarmoured, saving weight and materials and contributing to the craft's 'throwaway' nature. However, sections of the exposed MAC barrel were armoured with twenty centimetres of Titanium-ceramic plating. The communications array was the most heavily armoured external part of the vessel, as the destruction of this would cut off the vessel's contact with its controlling AI, rendering it useless. This section was protected by an average of 60cm of armour plating. The main computer core, located deep inside the ship's hull section, was heavily protected by surrounding sections. Like nearly all UNSC ship classes, the Hope-class completely lacked energy shielding.
Engines and powerplant[]
Like other UNSC vessels, the Hope-class was powered by a Deuterium fusion core. This combined deuterium nuclei into heavier elements, accompanied by a net gain of energy. The core provided enough energy to run the vessel's systems, including the communications array and the MAC Cannon. The latter, being by far the ship's biggest energy consumer, could be charged for two shots before needing to recharge. By this process, reaction propellant was also heated, which was then expelled through the craft's four thrusters, providing thrust. The Hope-class' engines were relatively underpowered, though its extreme light weight meant that the vessel maintained speed and agility on par with a UNSC frigate.
The Hope-class did not possess a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, which was not strictly necessary for either the ships' combat roles or its more disposable nature. This required the vessel 'piggy back' larger UNSC ships into slipspace in order to to accompany fleets engage Covenant forces above Human colony worlds.
Known Ships of the Line[]
(Note: This is not a complete list)
| Hull Classification Symbol | Commissioned | Notes |
| DD-336 | September 2543 | assigned to the UNSC Home Fleet, destroyed during the Battle of Earth |
| DD-337 | September 2543 | destroyed during the Battle of Earth |
| DD-338 | September 2543 | destroyed during the Battle of Earth |
| DD-339 | October 2543 | retired 2554 |
| DD-340 | October 2543 | damaged during the Battle of Earth, retired 2554 |
| DD-341 | October 2543 | Assigned to Miridem and destroyed during the Battle of Miridem |
| DD-342 | November 2543 | destroyed during the Battle of Miridem |
| DD-343 | destroyed at the Battle of Miridem | |
| DD-344 | destroyed at the Battle of Miridem | |
| DD-345 | destroyed during the Battle of Onyx | |
| DD-346 | destroyed while under construction during the Battle of Reach | |
| DD-347 | destroyed during the Battle of Reach | |
| DD-348 | destroyed during the Battle of Reach | |
| DD-349 | destroyed during the Battle of Reach | |
| DD-350 | destroyed during the Battle of Reach | |
| DD-351 | destroyed at the Battle of Tribute | |
| DD-352 | destroyed at the Battle of Tribute | |
| DD-353 | destroyed at the Battle of Tribute | |
| DD-354 | destroyed during the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV | |
| DD-355 | destroyed during the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV |
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