That's Logistics (and Starfighters)

[Cyrus Tregessar]

If you ever wanted to get into a good discussion and bureaucratic and logistical nightmares, you only needed to take a quick trip to Coruscant Orbital Station Gamma-Six-Eight, better known as the headquarters for Sith Navy Fleet Forces Command (a subsection of FLEETCOM HQ). There in the labyrinthine halls populated primarily by mid-level officers and senior enlisted personnel (who had perfected the art of despising both their livelihood and circumstances whilst being horrifyingly aware of the consequences were they all to commit mass suicide to escape this purgatory) one should continue on to the section of station devoted to the supply, maintenance, and reinforcement of the vast starfighter corps.

Headed by a Rear Admiral long past his prime (and the leading candidate to ingloriously off himself to escape the endless paperwork hell he lived in) you would discover an organization weighed down by having to balance the needs and demands of no less than sixteen different classes of starfighters produced by at least seven different corporations and distributed across all of One Sith space. A part for an Allegiant could not function on an Axe Wing, nor was the maintenance requirement for a Star Wing even remotely similar to that on an FE Starfighter, and indeed there were instances were replacing something with the wrong part could prove not just useless, but very possibly catastrophic (highlighted by the incident report from the Carrier Abrogation).

So it should come as no surprise that one of the major acts undertaken by Fleet Admiral Cyrus Tregessar (with the full backing of Grand Admiral Worgemuth) was to totally restructure the starfighter corps in Sector Fleet Iron Lance, with the intention of reducing the complexity of the logistical demands on the navy.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

The most sweeping changes were the easiest to make. Dubbed 'Phase One' it was simply a proclamation and re-direction of funding with the end result being that the vast majority of the various fighter designs were scrapped, put on hold, or otherwise relegated to second-tier units and system defense stations. Front line fleets would have their starfighter complements made up of only a few standardized designs. Further purchasing of blacklisted classes would be restricted (Iron Lance Command itself would stop, though individual Sith Lords could still do whatever they wanted).

The phase one proposal was routed to FLEETCOM HQ and a response was received shortly after approving the change, with the addition that Iron Lance Command would act as the testbed to implement the changes across the entire navy.

Phase Two was a similar restructuring of personnel. Several standard squadron formats were established, based around one or two starfighter classes. The basic 'Fighter Squadron' would be the building block of the whole Starfighter corps, and consist of twelve Allegiant-class Fighters. Interceptor Squadrons would be made up of Avenger-class units with one or two FE Starfighters to provide Electronic Support. Fighter-Bomber or 'Strike' Squadrons would be based off the Delta Star Wing II. Dedicated Bomber Wings would be made up of the older 'Hog' Gunship.

Phase Two had a second rather unintended side effect. It illuminated a particularly glaring gap in the starfighter corps, that being a long range escort and patrol snubfighter. A hallmark of the ancient Old Republic and later New Republic fleets, such fighters had once proven pivotal in past wars.

They would do so for the Sith in the next.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

So it was that Cyrus found himself reviewing designs submitted by defense contractors, senior flag officers, and occasionally a creative enlisted. It was mind-numbing work, the vast majority of the submissions either totally failing to meet the requirements or having some immediately glaring flaw, obvious to all bu the author. Here and there designs met the listed criteria and were stamped for further study, then shipped off to R&D for re-review and feasibility testing.

As of yet, nothing had passed.

The current proposal, submitted by a minor defense supply corporation clearly trying to cater to some Sith Lord or another, was reasonable, except that it neglected to include a hyperdrive. Cyrus deleted the proposal without comment, any more like that and he was going to just tell the engineers to come up with something and let that run until too many people died.

The next submission was less a design proposal and more a technical drawing detailing the process that a certain Commodore [member="Malos Kas"] had started for a similar project. A quick review of the design showed promise, and Cyrus couldn't help but feel compelled to throw his two cents in.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

The details of the craft that the Sith navy needed were practically set in stone by the gap in fighter designs. It didn't take a lot of work to figure out exactly what needed to go where, it simply came down to figuring out how to make it all work. It had to be a snubfighter, and with that long-range endurance and the ability to operate independently or in groups was paramount. That meant it was going to be a larger than normal hull.

So you had some extra room and mass to play with. Part of that would be taken up with armor and shields, of course, as endurance had to be calculated both in terms of logistics and the ability to sustain damage. Of course heavy armor was useless if you got mired down in electronic attack, so barring having a pack of FE's accompany every squadron, EWAR equipment onboard each fighter was just as essential as redundant shielding. Throw some chaff and countermeasures in the back and you had defenses on lock.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Offense was a different. Long-range Patrol and Escort meant the fighter needed to be good at several different tasks, not all of which complemented each other. So it became a matter of take from one to add to other and hopefully you picked the right area to focus on when it came down to it.

For this particular craft, it had to at least dogfight decently well that covered escort, and made it so a patrol couldn't get butchered by a random group of interceptors. Right now the Star Wing II had the range and durability to handle patrols, but it was a poor dogfighter, and Cyrus had been reluctant to try and train its pilots for yet another mission.

Whatever this craft ended up being called, and however it manifested, it would be the elite fighter of the Sith Navy. Its pilots would be drawn from the veterans of the other squadrons. That was a matter of practicality, they would have to be proficient at all the core mission types.

Dogfighting required maneuverability over speed. Interceptors could handle high-speed pursuits and tackling bombers at range, this was a ship meant to support larger ships. That was good, speed was hard to make up the larger and heavier you got, but manuverability? That could be handled. It did mean you'd probably end up slow, so you would have to be reliant on confusion and armor to pull off a strike mission, but that was already accomplished.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

The other critical component of a good dogfighter was having better guns than the other guy. You could always just load the thing up with laser cannons, but that was easy enough to defeat, and anyway it looked tacky. The crafty Commodore had evidently decided to go a different route, taking inspiration from some designs uncovered from Force-knew-where.

The weapon was called a 'Solar Ionization Cannon,' an unwieldy name for what was essentially a supercharged laser cannon that had some ability to penetrate shields and an increased armor-piercing effect over a regular blaster-style cannon. The power draw appeared to be not significantly higher than a standard heavy laser cannon. A pair of flex-tube launchers rounded out the armament.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

It was a pretty standard line up of weapons, but 'standard' wasn't exactly the sort of design that Cyrus was looking for. The core concept was sound, the SI cannons in particular had advantages over a regular laser cannon that were well worth the increased power draw. The latter problem could easily be made up because of the larger size of the vessel, potentially allowing for superior shields as well. Double redundancy had a nice ring to it. The missiles though... there was a definite opportunity cost in having two conventional launchers alongside only two cannons.

It took several hours of computer simulations to come out with a feasible solution. The full size launchers would be scrapped, replace with nanomissile tubes with a higher rate of fire but lower impact overall. Those would be used almost exclusively in dogfighting, with a third SI cannon using up the remaining power and space. In a head to head shootout against another fighter, the craft would be tough to beat.

It wasn't finished yet. One simply could not have a long range fighter with no effective way to tackle capital ships.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

During the Galactic Civil War the rebels had relied almost exclusively on snubfighters for harassment and hit and run operations. For them, it had been a matter of practicality, a necessity brought on by limited resources and the overwhelming power of the now outdated Imperial Star Destroyers. The ability of snubfighters to be effective at those missions required some sort of warhead weaponry, able to crack open a capital ship (at least the smaller ones). Conventional warheads helped that along, to a point, but the volume one had to expend to penetrate capital ship armor meant you were limiting the fighter's ability to operate for extended periods of time. The less time you spent returning to a base to rearm, the more time you could keep the enemy guessing, trying to figure out where the next raid would come.

For the new design, this was a problem. At present, it had no real ability to tackle capital ships at all, much less continue to do so over a period of time without resupplying.

The answer to the problem would come in two parts.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

The first was an old solution the problem of capital ships, and took the form of energy bombs. There were various types, based around all the usual forms of demolitions, and few of the more unusual, like gravity bombs. Bomb bays were not a new concept at all, present on TIE's and Y-Wing's, but the limited room on this particular fighter meant he would have to do more with it than just the ability to drop and let free fall from an altitude (how did that work in space anyway).

Instead it was like a pared down warhead launcher, with targeting capability and the a limited launching mechanism. It would fire off with low ranges and not exactly high velocities, but utilized right could drop a bomb right into a crack in a ships armor, or up against a turret, or wherever else it was needed. The modularity of the bomb bay also allowed for the ordnance to be used like a mine, or deployed in the conventional manner, though both of those were of dubious value for a long-range fighter.

But bombs were for the kill shot, and the fighter still needed some way to crack the hull to facilitate the end result. Souped up laser cannons helped to a point, but it didn't take a lot of digging to figure out a way to make them even better. An old fightercraft, the Hornet-class Interceptor had been designed around the ability to supercharge its laser cannons, giving them nearly the firepower of a turbolaser.

Similar tests with the SI Cannons proved that the power and armor piercing capability was doubled, but the resulting looser coherency but higher strength of the beam meant that there were potentially dangerous heat issues and the shield penetrating ability was reduced to the point of becoming a non-factor. It was a simple matter to hardwire a cooldown period in after supercharging the cannons, which mostly meant it would be dangerous to use in a dogfight.

For a standard strafing run, have the lead craft punch a hole in the shields and the second craft follow up with supercharged bursts and bombs in the slot. Done right, you could crack a frigate or cruiser open in a single run.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Unfortunately, what R&D can cook up with a fancy presentation and colorful schematics doesn't always pan out to reality when the project goes to trials. The SI cannons proved prone to overheating in normal use, and when supercharged had a tendency to warp and fry internal components. If that particular concept was to be carried over to production models, it would be in a few special orders or not at all. The concept was sound, but needed further testing and refinement to make it work, another one to be listed for 'further development.'

The second major problem was that one could simply not properly seat five full size energy bombs in a combination storage and launcher bay without them being dangerously unstable, or without increasing the size of the craft. Both were unacceptable, so the solution was to cut the payload in half. Turned out some clever engineer figured out a way to save mass and space by cutting each nanomissile magazine down to 10 shots, and they could squeeze a third bomb in safely.

It met most of the goals. It was agile, able to out-turn most fighters it's size and match even some dedicated interceptors, and against those it had the advantage of heavy shields and armor. It could out-shoot most other fighters are range, even if it didn't have the sheer volume of fire of other space superiority vessels. It had nanomissiles to even out a dogfight, and bombs to strike capital ships. For long range patrol, it had a significantly more extensive sensor suite than normal, a significant asset for reconnaissance. Sure, it was mind-blowingly expensive for a one-man fighter, but when you were the largest Navy in the galaxy sometimes you could afford a bit of an expense.

Cyrus stamped the project as approved for deployment into the fleet.