Béarn-Class

The Béarn-Class Heavy Carrier was a warship designed to change the art of war in space forever.

While the French Forces Spatiales Nationales had experimented with carrier-capability before, those earlier designs had either existed only as prototypes or added this feature only for narrow mission profiles.

In contrast, the Béarn-Class was fully dedicated to its role, fully intended for serial production and succeeded in reshaping the entire doctrine of the French Cosmo Navy.

## Technical Specifications

### General

Destined to become the flagship of french space fleets and battlegroups, the Béarn-Class was conceived with a large complementary escort fleet in mind. For this reason, the class featured a wide range of advanced communications systems, sensors, and data-processing suites. All information of the fleet would be channeled into the carrier's central Combat Information Center, where commanding officers could take full advantage of all assets at their disposal and use the Béarn's revolutionary carrier-capability to its fullest effect.

### Armament

Despite being designed with a support and command role in mind, the Béarn-Class fielded a sizable arsenal of diverse weaponry. The main focus was extreme long-range firepower in the form of four heavy ship-to-ship missile launcher batteries, six frontal- and two aft-torpedo tubes. The ship also possessed two turreted laser batteries, allowing it to effectively engage enemy ships charging to mid- and close range.

These armaments were granted to the carrier, as it was clear the ship would be unable to easily outrun dedicated enemy forces trying to bind it in a fight. Consequently, the ship was given enough weaponry to effectively support its escort fleet even in direct ship-to-ship combat. This trend would be followed up by dedicated “battle-carrier” designs, branching off the pure aircraft-carrier lineage.

### Defenses

Taking full advantage of the increased effective mass ratios due to its size, the Béarn-Class boasted heavy armor with the addition of numerous point-defense batteries and decoy dispensers. Additionally, all critical ship systems had multiple redundancies and every habitable section aboard was fully compartmentalized. As a result, the ship gained a reputation to be virtually unsinkable in any realistic combat scenario.

This, however, was not a perfect achievement. While the vessel did prove exceptionally resilient overall, damage to the flight deck could impede its primary function in battle relatively easily.

### Strike Craft, Shuttles and Spatial Superiority Fighters

The Béarn-Class was designed to accommodate a wide range of fighters, bombers and strike craft, including future generations of spatial fighters to be introduced into the French Cosmo Navy. This versatility was one of its greatest advantages over other nation's spatial aircraft platforms, which usually utilized specialized fighter designs only.

The exact complement of the Béarn-Class carriers, therefore, varied greatly between deployments. Most commonly, they would field space superiority fighter squadrons, reconnaissance craft and torpedo bombers, but load-outs focusing on bombing capabilities or even boarding shuttles were not unheard of.

## Tactics and Strategy

The introduction of the heavy carrier as a regular warship of the French Forces Spatiales Nationales had such a huge impact because it was a tactical as well as a strategic weapon.

On the battlefield, the Béarn-Class would effectively guarantee the space-superiority of the French forces, allowing commanders to call in airstrikes, interceptions and bombing runs on short notice. This essentially granted french fleets an advantage otherwise only enjoyed by forces fighting close to their home bases and outposts.

Therein lay the massive strategic value of the carrier, effectively extending the french operational range to an unprecedented extent. The introduction of the carrier would not only change the tactics of space battles but changed the power dynamic of interplanetary expansion completely. With this change in doctrine, the French Cosmo Navy, and by extension, all of Pan-Europa, committed to military efforts spanning interplanetary space.

## History

The Béarn-Class was the first carrier of any Cosmo Navy to successfully enter series production in its first iteration. Four of these ships were originally built, with a second-generation following closely, commissioned and financed largely by allied nations of the Pan-European federation.

The ship would continue to serve to great effect, even beyond the second interplanetary war.