Cavalier-Class Destroyer

With their entire fleet decimated, and the few ships that remained rendered horribly obsolete by the technological advances made in the wake of the Human-Sangheili alliance, the Navy was forced to commission a number of new ship classes, incorporating superior technology to that previously used. The Cavalier-class was the UNSC's replacement for aging Heracles-class that had preceded it, signalling a radical shift in design thinking. By 2554, seventeen had been completed, with another sixteen still in drydock awaiting final fittings for deployment, and had already proven itself a capable combat ship.
==History==
With the utter annihilation of the UNSC Fleet in 2552, first at Reach and then at Earth, the UNSC was left with barely a handful of ships, all far too old or damaged to remain in service. Realising that though the Covenant had been dealt a devastating blow during the Battle of the Ark, with the loss of much of their fleet and leadership, they still remained urgent threat to humanity and Earth, the UNSC embarked upon a massive rearmament campaign, Project DAINSLIEF, an attempt to replace the equipment and technology in service with modernised replacements. The Cavalier-class was a part of the Naval upgrade effort, and the old Heracles-class ships were phased out and replaced with the newer Destroyers. In testing, few problems were found in the design other than the expected issues with the installation of new equipment and some initial troubles with the plasma beam, but still proved a robust design.
The Cavaliers saw first combat action during the Battle of Unmoving Virtue, the first major naval engagement that included UNSC forces, where Battlegroup Audacious assisted the Sangheili Fleet of Righteous Fury in the assault on the Thrakakrathan Shipyards. Working in tandem with the Sangheili warships, the Destroyers proved more than capable against the Covenant's closest equivalent, the woefully out of date Laktran-class Frigate. After the battle, Cavaliers would be a part of the response task force that arrived at Ketesh and assisted in the repelling of a Covenant reprisal force, and would become a mainstay in the UNSC Navy.
==Design==
Rather than building upon a pre-existing Frigate class, like the older Heracles-class Destroyer, the Cavalier was built from the ground up, so to speak, to specialise in its role as a capital ship escort and anti-ship weapons platform. Preliminary plans had been drawn up before the end of the war, but the loss of Reach put construction on indefinite hold until the UNSC could afford to begin rebuilding. It has some design features that are radical departures from previous doctrine, and is aesthetically unique.
In a drastic departure from traditional UNSC ships, the Cavaliers are flattened laterally with two side "pods" to the port and starboard aft section. Each of these pods is modular, housing important electronics systems and armouries for the ship's weaponry. The dorsal hull features a massive heat radiator, allowing efficient heat radiation. At the aft of the ship are three thruster clusters, two mounted at the rear of the side pods and a main cluster aft of the main hull. Rather than the traditional rocket thrusters used by conventional UNSC ships, the Cavalier pioneered the use of hall effect thrusters mounted on capital ships, the first of their kind to operate efficiently enough to be economical. Its reactor is the improved variant of the FMA-B 14 Fusion Reactor, developed by Sierra Space Systems in 2550 but constructed by Misriah Armouries after the former company's acquisition by the latter. The ship is also equipped with the SFTE-52, developed in 2552 making use of a captured Covenant slipspace matrix, featuring superior calculations and processing power to past models, allowing the ship to achieve velocity and accuracy comparable to Covenant ships, finally closing that particular gap.
The Cavaliers feature offensive systems largely similar to the Heracles class - two MAC's, a number of 50mm CIWS turrets, and twenty six Archer missile pods. There are some differences - the MAC's are the 2552 upgrade, each capable of firing three shots with a single charge, improving their rate of fire 300%. The ship also mounts two dorsally mounted DEW-12 Pulse Laser Turrets for improved point-defence, as well as a single plasma beam weapon, derived from captured Covenant technology and improved by superior human understanding of scientific concepts. The modifications made to the standard plasma torpedo are few, and the weapon is mostly copied verbatim from the original weapon, and the improvements made available to the Sangheili for their use.
Perhaps the most dramatic difference is the incorporation of multiple defensive measures, some intentionally redundant to enhance the protection available to a ship. Cavaliers utilise standard Ceramic-Titanium Composite battleplate, proven to be at least partially successful against Covenant DEW's. More importantly, the hull also features a layer of Ancile metamaterial running through it, able to generate a powerful electromagnetic field. While not enough to short-out nearby fighters or dropships, the field is capable of collapsing the containment fields of Covenant plasma torpedoes, allowing the plasma to disperse harmlessly into space. The field is not perfect, and is still vulnerably to laser and particle beam weapons, but has increased the UNSC's survival ratio substantially on its own. On top of that, the Cavaliers were also the first UNSC warship class to feature the MJLNR-X7 energy shield system, a fully-fledged Solid Light Barrier generator, capable of withstanding hits from most Covenant weapons. The shields were tested on the prototype vessel, the UNSC Avalon, in wargames with the Sangheili - the results were so impressive that the design, while only a fraction of what UNSC shield technology could do, was hurried into production for use in the Navy, supplementing CEMPF systems.
In function, the Cavalier differs little from the Heracles', intended to escort capital ship formations and provide a defensive screen against enemy dropships and fighters, and conduct offensive operations against enemy capital ships. It combines the size and manoeuvrability of a Frigate with the firepower of a Cruiser, producing an extremely agile ship with the firepower equivalent to a much larger ship, an extremely lethal package.
==Quotes==
*"I served aboard the Pandora during the Unmoving Virtue campaign - these things could take on friggin' Assault Carriers! And they're just Destroyers!"
*"They look pretty flattened, don't they? Supposedly, its to maximise the radiation of excess heat into space - but wouldn't that light up every sensor in the system? Kinda a glaring design flaw, ain't it?"
*"Why keep frigates in service at all? The Cavaliers are better in combat, and with Carriers frigates don't need to carry fighters - and without that, there's no real point to them, is there? I mean, I'm not in the military, but its pretty obvious isn't it?"
*"An admirable craft, but its aesthetics leave much to be desiged. So blocky and angular, and the hull colour...at least the Covenant put some effort into it. Our own ships are far better - curved, sleek machines."
Category:Destroyer classes
Category:UNSC Ship Classes