Solomani Navy: Post-war Reconstruction
1. The Armistice following the Solomani Rim War was a period of frenzied reorganization by the Solomani navy, as they gathered their scattered forces and re-established an order of battle to counter further Imperium aggression.
2. As the Armistice became extended, Naval Staff realized that they desperately needed to regenerate the sinews of war, in order to both retain their budget allocations and build up the necessary infrastructure to maintain their forces.
3. Naval command, somewhat reluctantly, supported a widespread Confederation-wide civilian industrial regeneration, that in it's initial phase would last well over a generation.
4. During this period, the Navy slowed considerably naval construction for large capital ships, maintaining a small set of widely spread yards that would slowly develop into the regional naval depots, to maintain core skills and naval engineering industrial base.
5. Medium sized ship construction, largely the cruiser classes, was almost completely discontinued, new construction serving as testbeds for ship systems and naval doctrines.
6. Existing large capital ships were forward deployed to act as local fleet flagships, or if they had jump four capability, as strategic reserves primarily deployed around their new naval depots, to act as fast response forces.
7. Cruisers were deployed to the frontiers, where they were permitted to through constant deployments to wear themselves out, in an effort to study the viability of various ship systems and naval doctrines. Construction of new medium hulls was and is insufficient to replace existing numbers, their roles and missions increasingly taken over by intermediate size hulls.
8. However, both as a way to subsidize local industrial bases and a way to increase numbers, the Solomani Navy started building programmes of new small ship construction that could easily be manufactured in civilian yards, but insisted on very tight standards and a centralized control over the general features of the new ships, though permitting some regional variances to be optimized for locally prevailing conditions and needs.
9. The next phase of the Solomani Navy Renaissance was re-establishing naval and logistical infrastructures, including a cutting edge express ship communications network.
10. This phase took another generation to realize; large capital ships numbers grew, though at a glacial pace, and new construction were mostly retained centrally as fast reaction forces, and older battleships were rotated out to the frontiers, to take over the missions of the increasingly depleted numbers of cruisers couldn't pass on the intermediate sized ships.
11. In order to support task forces based around intermediate sized ships, new purpose built escort carriers were commissioned; termed mobile landing platforms, nicknamed ponies, they performed the functions of assault carriers though on a smaller scale.
12. In contrast to battleship construction, assault carriers received priority, due to their new roles as subsector command ships and unofficial mobile internal security bases, more as the power projection of Solomani Security, rather than a naval presence mission.
13. Having re-established the necessary naval infrastructure, increased construction of large capital ships were authorized, including new fleet carriers, in the third reconstruction phase, due to be completed in 5'623 AD.
14. The unrelenting operational tempo of the forward deployed cruisers and capital ships, with minimal and rushed overhauls, finally takes it's toll, as hull stresses cause most of the existing cruisers to be scrapped, and decimate the ranks of the older capital ships.
15. Solomani Naval Staff, increasingly alarmed at the shortfall of medium hulls, find themselves checkmated by legislative bureaucratic inertia, and a fixed, rather small, cruiser budget allocation.
16. Impressive performances by intermediate size ships has made legislators question the need for medium sized hulls, as the line of battle function is performed by large capital ships.
17. Furthermore, citing lack of capacity at naval depots, which was and continues to be true, occupied as they are in the construction of modern capital ships, and that intermediate hull construction takes up remaining capacity at their usual partners, new medium sized hulls and fitting out would be by newly established private shipyards, whose board of directors have remarkably been quite generous in campaign contributions.
18. Bowing to the inevitable, and knowing that there will be accounting discrepancies, the Solomani Naval Staff have turned over cruiser construction to the more innovative of their naval architects and engineers, giving them carte blanche to try out anything.
19. Solomani cruiser numbers remain small, and remain a favourite pastime of Imperium intelligence analysts and agents to try and figure out their actual capabilities.
20. Solomani Naval Staff have commissioned the Graf Spee class, based on an enlarged intermediate sized hull and the newly developed 10 SK/C 5555 particle accelerator spinal mount, as fleet intruders, though Imperium media has classified them as pocket cruisers.
