Cougar-Class Carrier

GNRJ-Cougar-Class Carrier

## Offensive and defensive specs

### Armament

1 500cm ultra heavy coil gun,16 240mm A-11 ultra heavy cannon in 8 double turrets,576 macro missile pods

## History

The first of the cougar class carrier was commissioned in 118 DoS and was completed in 138 DoS. The massive ship was intended to be a huge carrying craft, but quickly found it's self stuck between the two camps of cat doctrine one wanting to have a carrier that could project force over a massive area via use of deploying small ships and another wanting a massive dreadnought that could crush any ship in a single shot. The compromise was the birth of the assault carrier. After the launch of the GNRJ-Cougar two more were commissioned and took an additional 20 years to complete each. The Cougar class participated in the Grey fleet crisis in 151 DoS by providing a large deterrent against the Grand Duchy's Nightmare class dreadnoughts. Post crisis intelligence gathered suggested that it was one of the few ships that the Republic of Judecen had that the Grand Duchy's commanders feared direct combat with.

The class was to expensive to replace so it continued service as a way to resupply military positions for a long period until the outbreak of the Serpent war in 177 DoS. With the high cost and time required to replace these vessels they were strictly controlled by the Republic for only priority defense of regions that were deemed "to important to lose", limiting the chance of losing one of their behemoth ships.

## Design

The Cougar class was designed prior to the wide spread adoption of point-defense guns and only has rail guns/coil guns and missiles as its armament. Once point-defense became more wide spread it was deemed to expensive to refit and install the systems so it was escorted by tiger class corvette's as a compromise to the large cost.

## Classification

   One of if not the most controversial topics among navy enthusiasts has been the classification of the Cougar class as either a carrier or a dreadnought.

### Dreadnought

Among the major arguments for why the Cougar class should be defined as a dreadnought is its main armament which eclipses all other spinal mounted coil guns mounted by every other ship in Aetherian. It had the same amount of 240mm turrets as the later Galjerschmitt dreadnought making it a powerful assault platform that vastly overpowered nearly all other dreadnoughts in terms of coil gun length and secondary turrets; it also lacked a launch platform like every other modern carriers. The carrying capacity of the Cougar class is simply an offshoot of its size, large enough to dedicate enough rooms to fighter craft and supplies to make it a viable planetary siege platform.

### Carrier

The counter to these arguments and the arguments in favor of the Cougar retaining its title as a carrier follows that the length of coil gun doesn't determine whether or not a ship's role. Well its secondary armament is impressive it also lacks tertiary weapons and a point-defense grid making it very poor in ship-to-ship combat. The intention of the Cougar class was largely to carry large amounts of cargo for military purposes, its coil gun and secondary armament was simply filling in open territory within the ship. To defenders of its status as a carrier calling the cougar a dreadnought was like calling a Nightmare dreadnought a carrier simply because it also was able to carry a large amount of forces; just because it had the ability to act in that role didn't mean it was a part of it.

### Assault carrier?

The uncomfortable compromise between the two camps has always been to call the Cougar class an "Assault carrier" a carrier capable of dealing heavy damage to an enemy force well acting as large transport. This classification was aggravating to all camps of the argument and was only farther increased as the Mass Alliance's Reparation carriers and the Ofilian's White dragon carrier also took the name of assault carrier.

## Known ships

The Cougar class has a particular naming conversion of former leaders of the Republic of Judecen senate leaders from the late 100's and chose three leaders known for helping to expand the Republic's territory.

* RJGN-Avil Reminor -C.O unknown
* RJGN-Arrona Felixa -C.O unknown
* RJGN-Shouna Fukonima -C.O unknown