Colony-class destroyer
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Colony class destroyer |
| Operators: | Imperial Navy |
| Preceded by: | Viceroy-class |
| Succeeded by: | none |
| Built: | 1999-2011 |
| Planned: | 18 |
| Completed: | 18 |
| Active: | 17 |
| Lost: | 1 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Destroyer |
| Displacement: | 8,000 tonnes |
| Length: | 156.4 m (513 ft) |
| Beam: | 21.8 m (71 ft 6 in) |
| Draught: | 7.5 m (24 ft 7 in) |
| Installed power: | 3x Admiralty standard XI gas turbine engines |
| Propulsion: | 2 shafts |
| Speed: | 33 kn (61 km/h; 38 mph) |
| Range: | In excess of 7,800 nautical miles (14,000 km) at 18 kn (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Complement: | 392 (422 as station flagship) |
| Armament: |
|
| Armour: | Kevlar splinter protection, light plating around magazines and VLS |
| Aircraft carried: | capacity for one helicopter (usually Westonland Feline, or AW Merlin) |
| Aviation facilities: |
|
The Colony-class destroyer is a class of eighteen guided-missile destroyers built for the Vionna-Frankenlischian Imperial Navy from 1999 to 2011. Large in size and complement and heavily armed, the Colony-class is a general-purpose warship designed to serve as flagships of small squadrons or as part of larger colonial stations. Eighteen were constructed for Imperial service with seventeen still in service. One, HMNS Kenega, was lost in action during the San Rositan invasion of Kenega.
Development
Planning for the Colony-class began in 1995 as a replacement for the Viceroy-class which had been the first new warships constructed after the War of Restoration. Created to provide the bulk of Imperial Navy colonial stations, the Viceroy-class had been a successful design and a total of 26 were built between 1981 and 1989. The Viceroys were smaller than many conventional destroyer designs and saw little action during their service. Despite their smaller size, the Viceroys had been expensive to maintain and many of their systems had swiftly become outdated leading the Admiralty to begin planning their replacement rather than develop a costly upgrade package to bring them up to date.
The plan which eventually developed was known as the Marsten Defence Scheme after the then-Chair of the Imperial Navy Acquisition Board, Rear Admiral Sir Anthony Marsten. The plan stipulated that, to save costs and make more ships available, that colonial naval stations should be made up primarily by frigates and small vessels with a small number of large, general-purpose destroyers as a core. As a result the MDS included basic designs not only for the Colony-class, but also for a new class of colonial-service frigate and also for a class of light carriers. Lobbying by the Imperial Air Service, which was responsible for the colonial air squadrons, forced the light carriers to be cancelled but the rest of the scheme was presented to the Parliamentary Defence Committee in March 1995. Though interested, the Committee rejected the inital draft of the plan as too expensive; considering the idea of a new class of frigate an unnecessary additional cost. MDS-2, drafted in April, removed the frigate design and increased the size of the Colony-class design from 7,000 to 8,000 tonnes. Instead of the purpose-built frigate design, MDS-2 called for a greater number of the new Town-class frigates to enter construction in order to compensate. Presented to the Parliamentary Defence Committee in late April, MDS-2 was accepted and the funds were made available for the development of the Colony-class design into a run of 14 vessels.