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Description
Date: 5th, October 87 AE
Authorization Date: 5th, January 88 AE
Author: Commodore Oluchi Imani Duvalier

Unclassified Version

After-Action Report
Location & Event: Rockhaven Military Review

Introduction

Near the end of September 87 AE just a few short weeks into the shakedown cruise of the CSS Unathi we were redirected with a first circuit summons to arrive at the Coalition solar system under the name Rockhaven. In typical bureaucratic fashion the relaying of the invitation to participate in the Coalition of Shattered Star’s annual military review was delayed in delivery as varied military ranks and levels no doubt spent their own amount of time processing it. With it in hand, and myself in command of a new vessel, we found ourselves heading rather deep into Coalition space on a mission of military diplomacy. I don’t think any of the top brass had any idea what a Coalition Military review entails nor did the supposed diplomats in their good thinking intentions have any idea either. Nothing realistically can prepare someone for coalition traditions especially with expensive warships and destructive ordinance is involved. For the purposes of this document in brief I will attempt to present a reasonable picture of the events that unfolded from the perspective of an officer of the Commonwealth navy in a means that hopefully will prove useful to anyone else assigned this honorable task.

The Review

The Rockhaven review at first appeared to be like our own annual Combined Military Readiness Drill (CMRD) however the differences ended within a few hours of arrival. It seems odd in retrospect as the initial ceremony is part military meet and greet and part red carpet publicity event. The initial reception was as one might expect, formal, with every uniform pressed, medals polished and everyone looking about as sharp as an ammunition box of flechette rounds. Quite a few of the most well-known commanders of the Coalition were on hand, and security was tight. We expected that obviously, but the walk to the auditorium to hear a brief speech was a bit different. Quite literally the press or perhaps the military press seemed to take to both sides of the officer’s entry route posing unusual questions. Others still seemed to be there to seek favors from given target officers. I can’t say if that last part is normal, or a fluke but it has to be noted so that the next person to attend one of these events is prepared for the possibility.

The ceremony’s main speaker was High Admiral, Lordess of the Fleet, Matriarch Alto. For reference I think the title is similar to something the British would have used back on Earth albeit with gender-terms for a female individual. This is common in the Coalition it seems, going so far as to have a gender prefix for all variations of gender that are common to the species of their nation. As a general rule it may be wise to assume no specific gender until you hear an individual offer it in introduction through their title prefix or, until it is referenced otherwise. My recommendation about personnel for missions within the commonwealth for the purposes of diplomacy or international relations stands, when selecting personnel for interaction it is best to avoid individuals who are high-strung, excessively religious, prudish, or who lack a sense of humor and or open mind. After Rockhaven I do add to that list that all personnel also should be screened for potentially malicious racist habits, and the overly amorous. Attached is the censored version of the medical after-report of a crewman who apparently was a bit inept with the opposite gender and got roughed up. Before you the reader makes any judgment, the crewman in question was disciplined, it’s his own fault really; his pickup lines were an embarrassment for the entire male gender.

But going back to the original topic, shortly after the speech, general quarters were called and all individuals were to make a mad dash towards the exits as though it were a high alert situation. This of course led to a bit of pandemonium. The Unathi’s Extraction team did an excellent job of ferrying out attending senior officers and I off the station and this part of events went without incident. However it was then that we spotted the first of several starship collisions. Before we could get underway several more occurred and in the frenzied events of crews attempting to get out of the crowded and chaotic area about the station, it is a miracle more accidents did not occur. This phenomenon is still a mystery to me, how is it precisely that the coalition still has starship collisions during known military drills? There hasn’t been such an incident during Commonwealth drills in several decades easily. It makes one wonder if perhaps their Naval Control system is simply not designed to handle the volume or perhaps it’s some form of crew readiness tool. Professionally, I find it very strange to put at risk very expensive starships in this way. I suppose it’s a means to test crew skills but, the risk of damaging a starship or hurting a portion of the crew for a portion of a drill that isn’t even a combat exercise is somewhat unacceptable. However, when in Rome we did as the romans did, and managed to make way with a specialized authorization code that allowed safe exit albeit in a limited time frame. The use of the codec still seems odd, as it seemed not to be in everyone’s possession so perhaps the chaos of getting underway is more a look at a ship’s command’s resourcefulness…This is idle speculation however.

The actual war games of the event consisted of three missions that are apparently randomly selected with individual commands being assembled. The normal cohesion of fleet operations is switched with these random assignments to take away complacency which mind you the Commonwealth Navy may want to consider as a new feature for our own fleet drills. With that said the first operation was an fleet resupply operation. This operation was simulated with no live fire having been traded. A number of Coalition vessels posed as raiders our group which consisted of my command working with a flotilla of torpedo-destroyers, auxiliary and heavy cruisers. I have to add a specific note here, the coalition’s prime cruiser seems to be the Vlaew class, and it is comparable only to the Kongo class in name. The Vlaew is bigger than the Kongo, and probably should be more accurately named the “Ultra-heavy Cruiser” if not an outright battlecruiser for the kind of firepower it bears*. With that said the battle began with scattered FTL arrival, and heavy damage to the torpedo boats, we ‘lost’ a couple of freighters and managed an emergency hard burn reposition which the raiders seemingly were unable to recover from. It wound up a victory but a costly one. I would put this outcome to our unfamiliarity with the Coalition vessel’s performance profile and vice versa.

The second operation was a refueling operation, the freighters in our operations group needed to pull tachyons off a decaying star to refuel. We found ourselves ambushed but that lack of familiarity instead played out in our favor as, the heavies of the fleet, my vessel included didn’t quite arrive where the raiders expected. We found ourselves fending off a full-out battlecruiser of the ‘Soratine type’ and a slugging match was the result. We won but for the simple grace of the enemy overestimating their firepower and underestimating ours. You would think someone else would have heard of a carrier that bears primary capital weapons. On the other hand, I’m finding myself underwhelmed at the lack of output on the Unathi subclass….something has to be done about this.

Our third and final encounter was the lead up to an approach to a defended enemy world. This is the portion of the drill that became live fire. It is also here where I realized that the Unathi Sub-class has a particularly irritating shortcoming, too many damn fighters for its capabilities. Our objective was to use air support assets to clear a path to a planetary objective that needed to be liberated. Although I say planetary the target was actually a large moon that had been terraformed for the purpose and was maintained for military exercises. No actual civilians, very few animal species and pretty much mostly plants. Again we may want to look into utilizing a world in this way so that with the exception of high end weapons our naval crews landing parties and so on all get a real chance to fight for real as opposed to the restricted combat range style of things. The primary air support engagement occurred ahead of the fleet group in the moon’s thick asteroid belt, our BSI’s went against their fighters and I have to say despite the age of the BSI the little bastards held up. The official score says we won but two of the three battles were inconclusive so I’d say it was at best a marginal victory but more likely a draw with the enemy honorably ceding the field. This poses a critical question, for the admiralty, why is it that we have only one type of starfighter and that one is well over fifty years old? I digress on the issue of fighters the next stage we moved to the next portion of the operation and the group the Unathi was assigned to was joined by a Coalition fleet carrier and its supporting elements. For reference the Coalition Fleet Carrier in this operation was the Arch Royalis, commanded by Fleet Admiral Shurya Koronikov. This is the same commanding officer whom commanded the CNV Footlocker during the belkov Incident. As an additional note, the Arch Royalis is a Majestic type fleet carrier of the ‘supercarrier’ subtype; it is more comparable to the original Opathe class in operational performance.

The next two stages of the mission saw modest success as breaking through the defenses proved difficult until a unique solution was to sneak the landing craft in using the orbital ‘monitor’ type vessels as distraction, gun support and for cover. Anti-orbital fire proved accurate and deadly until the monitors created a window at some loss. The ground battle which unfortunately we were not expecting and thus had no complement of marines to add to saw more or less a tactical victory after some eight hours of fighting. The win wasn’t due to absolute defeat but rather land area held when the final whistle was blown for the exercise.

*Please refer to field report 21-52-003 for a battle analysis of the cruiser and the suggested differences leading to the suggested classification change.

Summaries of Performance

As the third and final portion of this report, in regards to the operations of the first of the Unathi sub-type of hybrid Carriers I have to say the performance simply is not there. Propulsion is about the only thing that worked properly. For this vessel to bear the name it does, I am sure General Unathi herself is doing acrobatics in her grave as it stands. It my recommendation that the following be addressed at the next scheduled drydock for the following reasons as discovered during the fleet exercises.

Hull:
A complete inspection of the Unathi revealed stress fractures in the tertiary structural members along the port and starboard sides of the vessel. Normally this would be remedied with a little dry-dock time but the slow leak of atmosphere because of the cracks is unacceptable and a moderate hazard to the crew and vessel. I recommend increasing the tertiary structural material rating from 45 SAE to 70 SAE which is ten above the maximum rating for the propulsion system. All stress fractures are not seemingly due to hits but the vessels high acceleration.

Weapons:
The primary armament for this vessel is tepid, had we been in a real fight with a real battle cruiser rather than a simulation the Unathi might have been a loss, rammed to death because she could not bring proper weapons to bear. The Simulated enemy battle cruiser was able to get close enough o receive raking fire from the Unathi’s anti-air support guns with enough accuracy that gunenrs reported being able to fire rounds at porthole covers. Although nothing is wrong with the functions of the existing Mark VI torpedo systems I suggest upgrading to a tonnage-equal in the Mark VIII range. A thickening of Anti-Air DRAIL weapons may be needed to improve defense screens also along with a appropriate increase in munitions tonnage to compensate.

Amor:
The armor held up as expected, stress cracking on internal members discounted. Regenerative effect seems to have not only kept hull penetrations down but also kept the persistent atmosphere leaks due to cracks at a minimum by constantly healing the fractures somewhat. More research is needed to determine if perhaps this can be made to repair the secondary and pressure hulls also.

Propulsion:
No issues in performance or function; a respectable improvement to the navy’s propulsion technology.

Fighter Complement:
There are simply far too many, flight control was overburdened to the point that more than one flight controller had a psychological stress-breakdown during combat launch and/or recovery. The sheer number of flight deck accidents is also unacceptable as it reduces combat readiness with each accident during routine procedures. At one point of the sickbay occupancy 50% of the injured were pilots or flight crew, and this was BEFORE rockhaven. I’ve taken the liberty of calculating the fighter to space ratio of the Opathe class, and found that even with the larger size of the Opathe accounted for; it still has three times the space per fighter as opposed to the Carondelet and the Unathi subtype. It may be better to reduce fighter wings and overhaul handling facilities.

Summary

Overall the Unathi sub-type shows promise, but a cruiser is a cruiser and the hull form is clearly not in favor of carrying the number of fighters originally outlined by the Carondelet design, so of course it’s insane to think it would work on the Unathi sub-type. It is my suggestion to cut back on the fighter complement, increase the primary firepower overall, strengthen the AA belt and fix the hull-fracture issue. In the end the Commonwealth Navy could simply use the hull form to produce two sub-variants, one designed more in line with a armed carrier concept (carondelet?) one more in with a Cruiser-hybrid (Isegun?) and then Revise the Unathi sub-type into a strike carrier who perhaps can carry either a tactical fighter complement or a tactical ordinance load.

I should also mention that I do recommend we participate in the Rockhaven event next year; it is a good opportunity for a fair cultural exchange that has limited chances of a diplomatic debacle. Plus if we had not, we would not have found the stress-cracking issue in the Carondelet type vessels outside of combat; the worst possible time. We may also should take motes on some of the Coalition procedure and naming nomenclature for their vessel classes, it seems out nations have very different notions on things and this may be a cultural hurdle in the future that could be costly in lives and equipment if not addressed and understood.

Description
Date: 5th, October 87 AE
Authorization Date: 5th, January 88 AE
Author: Commodore Oluchi Imani Duvalier

Unclassified Version

After-Action Report
Location & Event: Rockhaven Military Review

Introduction

Near the end of September 87 AE just a few short weeks into the shakedown cruise of the CSS Unathi we were redirected with a first circuit summons to arrive at the Coalition solar system under the name Rockhaven. In typical bureaucratic fashion the relaying of the invitation to participate in the Coalition of Shattered Star’s annual military review was delayed in delivery as varied military ranks and levels no doubt spent their own amount of time processing it. With it in hand, and myself in command of a new vessel, we found ourselves heading rather deep into Coalition space on a mission of military diplomacy. I don’t think any of the top brass had any idea what a Coalition Military review entails nor did the supposed diplomats in their good thinking intentions have any idea either. Nothing realistically can prepare someone for coalition traditions especially with expensive warships and destructive ordinance is involved. For the purposes of this document in brief I will attempt to present a reasonable picture of the events that unfolded from the perspective of an officer of the Commonwealth navy in a means that hopefully will prove useful to anyone else assigned this honorable task.

The Review

The Rockhaven review at first appeared to be like our own annual Combined Military Readiness Drill (CMRD) however the differences ended within a few hours of arrival. It seems odd in retrospect as the initial ceremony is part military meet and greet and part red carpet publicity event. The initial reception was as one might expect, formal, with every uniform pressed, medals polished and everyone looking about as sharp as an ammunition box of flechette rounds. Quite a few of the most well-known commanders of the Coalition were on hand, and security was tight. We expected that obviously, but the walk to the auditorium to hear a brief speech was a bit different. Quite literally the press or perhaps the military press seemed to take to both sides of the officer’s entry route posing unusual questions. Others still seemed to be there to seek favors from given target officers. I can’t say if that last part is normal, or a fluke but it has to be noted so that the next person to attend one of these events is prepared for the possibility.

The ceremony’s main speaker was High Admiral, Lordess of the Fleet, Matriarch Alto. For reference I think the title is similar to something the British would have used back on Earth albeit with gender-terms for a female individual. This is common in the Coalition it seems, going so far as to have a gender prefix for all variations of gender that are common to the species of their nation. As a general rule it may be wise to assume no specific gender until you hear an individual offer it in introduction through their title prefix or, until it is referenced otherwise. My recommendation about personnel for missions within the commonwealth for the purposes of diplomacy or international relations stands, when selecting personnel for interaction it is best to avoid individuals who are high-strung, excessively religious, prudish, or who lack a sense of humor and or open mind. After Rockhaven I do add to that list that all personnel also should be screened for potentially malicious racist habits, and the overly amorous. Attached is the censored version of the medical after-report of a crewman who apparently was a bit inept with the opposite gender and got roughed up. Before you the reader makes any judgment, the crewman in question was disciplined, it’s his own fault really; his pickup lines were an embarrassment for the entire male gender.

But going back to the original topic, shortly after the speech, general quarters were called and all individuals were to make a mad dash towards the exits as though it were a high alert situation. This of course led to a bit of pandemonium. The Unathi’s Extraction team did an excellent job of ferrying out attending senior officers and I off the station and this part of events went without incident. However it was then that we spotted the first of several starship collisions. Before we could get underway several more occurred and in the frenzied events of crews attempting to get out of the crowded and chaotic area about the station, it is a miracle more accidents did not occur. This phenomenon is still a mystery to me, how is it precisely that the coalition still has starship collisions during known military drills? There hasn’t been such an incident during Commonwealth drills in several decades easily. It makes one wonder if perhaps their Naval Control system is simply not designed to handle the volume or perhaps it’s some form of crew readiness tool. Professionally, I find it very strange to put at risk very expensive starships in this way. I suppose it’s a means to test crew skills but, the risk of damaging a starship or hurting a portion of the crew for a portion of a drill that isn’t even a combat exercise is somewhat unacceptable. However, when in Rome we did as the romans did, and managed to make way with a specialized authorization code that allowed safe exit albeit in a limited time frame. The use of the codec still seems odd, as it seemed not to be in everyone’s possession so perhaps the chaos of getting underway is more a look at a ship’s command’s resourcefulness…This is idle speculation however.

The actual war games of the event consisted of three missions that are apparently randomly selected with individual commands being assembled. The normal cohesion of fleet operations is switched with these random assignments to take away complacency which mind you the Commonwealth Navy may want to consider as a new feature for our own fleet drills. With that said the first operation was an fleet resupply operation. This operation was simulated with no live fire having been traded. A number of Coalition vessels posed as raiders our group which consisted of my command working with a flotilla of torpedo-destroyers, auxiliary and heavy cruisers. I have to add a specific note here, the coalition’s prime cruiser seems to be the Vlaew class, and it is comparable only to the Kongo class in name. The Vlaew is bigger than the Kongo, and probably should be more accurately named the “Ultra-heavy Cruiser” if not an outright battlecruiser for the kind of firepower it bears*. With that said the battle began with scattered FTL arrival, and heavy damage to the torpedo boats, we ‘lost’ a couple of freighters and managed an emergency hard burn reposition which the raiders seemingly were unable to recover from. It wound up a victory but a costly one. I would put this outcome to our unfamiliarity with the Coalition vessel’s performance profile and vice versa.

The second operation was a refueling operation, the freighters in our operations group needed to pull tachyons off a decaying star to refuel. We found ourselves ambushed but that lack of familiarity instead played out in our favor as, the heavies of the fleet, my vessel included didn’t quite arrive where the raiders expected. We found ourselves fending off a full-out battlecruiser of the ‘Soratine type’ and a slugging match was the result. We won but for the simple grace of the enemy overestimating their firepower and underestimating ours. You would think someone else would have heard of a carrier that bears primary capital weapons. On the other hand, I’m finding myself underwhelmed at the lack of output on the Unathi subclass….something has to be done about this.

Our third and final encounter was the lead up to an approach to a defended enemy world. This is the portion of the drill that became live fire. It is also here where I realized that the Unathi Sub-class has a particularly irritating shortcoming, too many damn fighters for its capabilities. Our objective was to use air support assets to clear a path to a planetary objective that needed to be liberated. Although I say planetary the target was actually a large moon that had been terraformed for the purpose and was maintained for military exercises. No actual civilians, very few animal species and pretty much mostly plants. Again we may want to look into utilizing a world in this way so that with the exception of high end weapons our naval crews landing parties and so on all get a real chance to fight for real as opposed to the restricted combat range style of things. The primary air support engagement occurred ahead of the fleet group in the moon’s thick asteroid belt, our BSI’s went against their fighters and I have to say despite the age of the BSI the little bastards held up. The official score says we won but two of the three battles were inconclusive so I’d say it was at best a marginal victory but more likely a draw with the enemy honorably ceding the field. This poses a critical question, for the admiralty, why is it that we have only one type of starfighter and that one is well over fifty years old? I digress on the issue of fighters the next stage we moved to the next portion of the operation and the group the Unathi was assigned to was joined by a Coalition fleet carrier and its supporting elements. For reference the Coalition Fleet Carrier in this operation was the Arch Royalis, commanded by Fleet Admiral Shurya Koronikov. This is the same commanding officer whom commanded the CNV Footlocker during the belkov Incident. As an additional note, the Arch Royalis is a Majestic type fleet carrier of the ‘supercarrier’ subtype; it is more comparable to the original Opathe class in operational performance.

The next two stages of the mission saw modest success as breaking through the defenses proved difficult until a unique solution was to sneak the landing craft in using the orbital ‘monitor’ type vessels as distraction, gun support and for cover. Anti-orbital fire proved accurate and deadly until the monitors created a window at some loss. The ground battle which unfortunately we were not expecting and thus had no complement of marines to add to saw more or less a tactical victory after some eight hours of fighting. The win wasn’t due to absolute defeat but rather land area held when the final whistle was blown for the exercise.

*Please refer to field report 21-52-003 for a battle analysis of the cruiser and the suggested differences leading to the suggested classification change.

Summaries of Performance

As the third and final portion of this report, in regards to the operations of the first of the Unathi sub-type of hybrid Carriers I have to say the performance simply is not there. Propulsion is about the only thing that worked properly. For this vessel to bear the name it does, I am sure General Unathi herself is doing acrobatics in her grave as it stands. It my recommendation that the following be addressed at the next scheduled drydock for the following reasons as discovered during the fleet exercises.

Hull:
A complete inspection of the Unathi revealed stress fractures in the tertiary structural members along the port and starboard sides of the vessel. Normally this would be remedied with a little dry-dock time but the slow leak of atmosphere because of the cracks is unacceptable and a moderate hazard to the crew and vessel. I recommend increasing the tertiary structural material rating from 45 SAE to 70 SAE which is ten above the maximum rating for the propulsion system. All stress fractures are not seemingly due to hits but the vessels high acceleration.

Weapons:
The primary armament for this vessel is tepid, had we been in a real fight with a real battle cruiser rather than a simulation the Unathi might have been a loss, rammed to death because she could not bring proper weapons to bear. The Simulated enemy battle cruiser was able to get close enough o receive raking fire from the Unathi’s anti-air support guns with enough accuracy that gunenrs reported being able to fire rounds at porthole covers. Although nothing is wrong with the functions of the existing Mark VI torpedo systems I suggest upgrading to a tonnage-equal in the Mark VIII range. A thickening of Anti-Air DRAIL weapons may be needed to improve defense screens also along with a appropriate increase in munitions tonnage to compensate.

Amor:
The armor held up as expected, stress cracking on internal members discounted. Regenerative effect seems to have not only kept hull penetrations down but also kept the persistent atmosphere leaks due to cracks at a minimum by constantly healing the fractures somewhat. More research is needed to determine if perhaps this can be made to repair the secondary and pressure hulls also.

Propulsion:
No issues in performance or function; a respectable improvement to the navy’s propulsion technology.

Fighter Complement:
There are simply far too many, flight control was overburdened to the point that more than one flight controller had a psychological stress-breakdown during combat launch and/or recovery. The sheer number of flight deck accidents is also unacceptable as it reduces combat readiness with each accident during routine procedures. At one point of the sickbay occupancy 50% of the injured were pilots or flight crew, and this was BEFORE rockhaven. I’ve taken the liberty of calculating the fighter to space ratio of the Opathe class, and found that even with the larger size of the Opathe accounted for; it still has three times the space per fighter as opposed to the Carondelet and the Unathi subtype. It may be better to reduce fighter wings and overhaul handling facilities.

Summary

Overall the Unathi sub-type shows promise, but a cruiser is a cruiser and the hull form is clearly not in favor of carrying the number of fighters originally outlined by the Carondelet design, so of course it’s insane to think it would work on the Unathi sub-type. It is my suggestion to cut back on the fighter complement, increase the primary firepower overall, strengthen the AA belt and fix the hull-fracture issue. In the end the Commonwealth Navy could simply use the hull form to produce two sub-variants, one designed more in line with a armed carrier concept (carondelet?) one more in with a Cruiser-hybrid (Isegun?) and then Revise the Unathi sub-type into a strike carrier who perhaps can carry either a tactical fighter complement or a tactical ordinance load.

I should also mention that I do recommend we participate in the Rockhaven event next year; it is a good opportunity for a fair cultural exchange that has limited chances of a diplomatic debacle. Plus if we had not, we would not have found the stress-cracking issue in the Carondelet type vessels outside of combat; the worst possible time. We may also should take motes on some of the Coalition procedure and naming nomenclature for their vessel classes, it seems out nations have very different notions on things and this may be a cultural hurdle in the future that could be costly in lives and equipment if not addressed and understood.