Battleaxe Program

The Battleaxe Program was a secret Drakeian military program set up in 2023. It was often referred to as the Battleaxe Project in addition to the Battleaxe Program.
==Overview==
The Battleaxe Program was set up in 2023 by a secret military group from the Drakeian nation of Draknia. It's aim was to produce a fully functional starship, before anyone else, for planetary defence, and also the ensure a higher position of power if a war came. The Project's aim was originally to create a vessel capable of space travel within the system due to the lack of hyperdrive technology.
Most of it's technological gains came from reverse-engineering technology found on numerous crashed Ancient Dragon ships scattered across Drakeia and included technologies that also got infantry scale use, such as energy weapons and personal shields.
However, the discovery (and subsequent hiding) of a crashed Ancient Dragon ship with intact hyperdrives in 2026 prompted the program to update it's aims and produce an interstellar ship, rather than have it limited to the system. After the DES Battleaxe was completed in late 2029 and Draoga Necron was chosen as it's captain, the project started work on a new ship, but gave the plans for the original Battleaxe Class; it's Handaxe Class Shuttles; and plans for a smaller, more economical ship made from several standard components, to the government of Draknia so they could rapidly form a fleet on the assumption that once launched, it would be impossible to keep the other nations from witnessing the D.E.S. Battleaxe.
After the launch of the Battleaxe, the project turned their attention into designing a mid-role ship that wasn't as costly as the Battleaxe Class, but wasn't as cheap and underpowered as the Hatchet Class, while also incorporating advice gained from Draoga and later the captains of the Hatchets. The result of this was the Waraxe Class, which got designated as a Cruiser and started to enter production in late 2031. Many in the military believed the unification war and the crucial role the small and newly formed starship navy played in it made the Battleaxe Program work faster.
Following the development of the Waraxe, the project turned back to the original Battleaxe Class, claiming a half-built military one and began to retrofit it with improvements and lessons learned from the Waraxe. While not as slow as their initial construction which had earned the project much ridicule from military shipyards, their retrofits were slow and the informally nicknamed "Battleaxe II" was only nearing completion by mid 2032, long after the other Battleaxes being built at the same time had already entered service. With the loss of the D.E.S. Battleaxe in mid 2032, the military interfered with the Battleaxe Program once again, officially allowing the use of the name D.E.S. Battleaxe II for the new ship but also demanding it entered service before the year ended.
The Battleaxe Program continued to live on as a clandestine R&D department responsible for Draknia's starship design, with much of it's research being dedicated to both fine-tuning existing starship technologies, while learning from alien technology the military had managed to obtain.
==Disclosure==
The project was never actually disclosed, but was threatened with it many times when their work was slow and lacking results. This rushed nature meant the original Battleaxe had to be retrofitted with all it's more advanced Ancient Dragon technology, most notably it's hyperdrive, to meet it's 2030 launch deadline, although plans called for it to be integrated by design which would've delayed the launch for at least several years as the ship was already mostly built and to fully integrate the new systems would've required deconstructing large portions of the ship.
Category:Drakeians
Category:Drakeian Starships