Guide:Cavalry

Cavalry
Class Overview
Category	light destroyer
Operational	2151 - 2193
Constructed	33 total 12 Cavalry 17 Mars 4 Turing
Dimensions
Length	189.3 m
Beam	38.2 m
Height	50.0 m (sensor dish retracted) 55.1 m (sensor dish extended)
Mass	132,800 tons (Cavalry, Mars) 137,200 tons (Turing)
Performance
Cruise Speed	w 2
Max Speed	w 3.1
Endurance	2 years
Complement
Officers	9
Enlisted	75 (Cavalry, Mars) 89 (Turing)
Tactical Systems
Beam Weapons	Cavalry 2x plasma cannon (6.0 GW) (dorsal fwd hull) 2x plasma cannon (6.0 GW) (ventral fwd hull) 1x Type A phased particle cannon (500 GW) (bow) (NDD-600 - NDD-609) Mars 2x laser emitters (800 MW) (dorsal fwd hull) 2x laser emitters (800 MW) (ventral fwd hull) 1x Type A phased particle cannon (500 GW) (bow) Turing 1x laser emitter (800 MW) (dorsal fwd hull) 1x laser emitter (800 MW) (ventral fwd hull) 1x Type A phased particle cannon (500 GW) (bow)
Missile Weapons	Cavalry 2x torpedo tubes (w/24 photonic torpedoes) (bow) (NDD-610, NDD-611) Mars 1x torpedo tube (w/12 photonic torpedoes) (bow)
Shields	Polarizable armor (forward hull, nacelles) 1-layer graviton shield (Turing only) Navigational deflector (main hull bow)
Transporters	Cavalry (original) none Cavalry (refit), Mars, Turing 1x GP (1-pad); Mk-I
Auxiliary Craft	2 atmospheric shuttlepods
Historical
Ships of Note	USS Carronade (DD-51) USS Cavalier (DD-76) USS Poisson (DD-71/NCC-47) USS Procope (DD-64)
Canonicity
Design	FASA
Name	FASA, SFC, own
History	FASA, SFC, own

The UESF military doctrines of the 2140s were still based on the experiences of the rather lopsided battles against unorganized feline Xindi forces in what were actually just peacetime police operations. The blind faith in ‘heavily’ armed and armored cruisers was badly misplaced in the actual conflicts of the era, as was the idea of operating without major front line supply and repair bases. Yet the UESF was still very much limited to operating in or near the Sol system and the major human settlements elsewhere, in terms of technology, politics and tradition alike. Even when these triple barriers began to crumble, a fatal conservatism prevailed in strategic thinking. When Earth in 2151 fielded a series of new destroyers, they were not propelled by the revolutionary deep space engine of the Enterprise class, but by the much humbler fusion-powered S66-D, capable only of warp 3.1 at very best. In face of the recent experiences of the exploratory cruiser Enterprise (NX-01) with deep space threats, the UESF should have immediately discontinued the light destroyer program and diverted the funds to longer-ranging combatants. Instead, the Admiralty deemed the design ideal for system defense and proceeded with full production.

Tactical scenarios were based on unrealistic extrapolations of a limited dataset: it was predicted that invaders would utilize large starships conceptually similar to the Vulcan voidships, and such an adversary would best be fought with short-ranged strike vessels possessing great offensive firepower. The anti-fighter defense role, factually more important against the continuing pirate threat, would be left to the already existing, heavily armored cruisers bristling with defensive plasma cannon. Thus, the Cavalry (DD-600) class of destroyers featured only four 6 GW plasma turrets and dedicated significant room to twin missile tubes or a single hypermodern phased particle cannon. Also, heavy armor was concentrated on the bow of the hull, and frontal profile was minimized by reducing beam, for once overriding the doctrinal call for aerodynamic performance.

The narrow hull gave unwelcome commonality with the preceding Djartanna destroyers: internal volume was at a premium. The utilitarian hull featured just four decks, of which the lowermost was essentially divided in two by the ventral radiator assemblies of the heavily armored compression fusion reactor amidships. The forward part of the bifurcated deck housed ventral plasma cannon banks, while the aft one held power transfer systems. The two middle decks housed the missile launchers or the alternately carried Type A phase cannon forward, engineering spaces abaft, and crew berthing amidships. Deepest within, just forward of the reactor core, were the sickbay on upper and the mainframes of the Yoshimitsu combat management system on lower middeck. The top deck was actually numbered Deck 2, as atop its fire control spaces and bow plasma cannon banks lay a series of crew-accessible superstructures, including the navigation bridge, a retractable sensor dish, the top of the reactor core and a lifepod station. The upper level of a stern shuttlebay also extended above Deck 2, giving enough internal volume for carrying of two Monarch or Skeet atmospheric shuttlepods. Two airlocks/docking ports on Deck 3 rim facilitated intership access, and a single GP transporter was added in a series of refits between 2156 and 2159.

The multiple means of disembarkation were quite necessary as, despite the hull itself having rudimentary atmospheric maneuverability, the Cavalry as a whole possessed no operational landing and takeoff capability. The single, 120,000 ton set of fourteen-spool warp coils was packed into an open frame, standoff nacelle well below the stern, on a sturdy twin pylon mounting. Since the coils were somewhat less modern than the powerplant, much of the reactor output was left unused by the warp drive system. This benefited the high performance impulse engines, whose twin nozzles in the aft corners of the hull could fire past the nacelle for violent maneuvering. Linear acceleration was also commendable, surpassing that of both the lighter Icelands and the heavier cruisers. An emergency nacelle separation maneuver would provide even greater agility, yet leave the ship hopelessly crippled afterwards.

Operating a single-engined combat vessel was a novel experience for the UESF, and many civilian specialists more familiar with the configuration were employed in training the crews. Two Dnestr class commercial transports were purchased for training duty, and modified internally to provide a more destroyer-like service environment. In return, it was customary for a while to paint the destroyers with false viewports and cargo pod seams to reinforce the illusion of a freighter-like silhouette, although few adversaries could be fooled by this. It was not the intended job of the destroyers to protect convoys or lure in pirates in any case. The standard mode of system defense operations was reactive rather than proactive: to pounce at approaching enemy fleets from several directions with slashing attacks, then retreat as a single formation towards an ambush set up by a heavy contingent of cruisers. The fatefully misguided Xindi bombardment of the Caribbean in 2153 and its follow-up actions involving Klingon and further Xindi penetrations seemed to justify the doctrine, in which intrusions by a low number of heavily shielded point targets would be deterred by decisive counteroffensives of similarly few UESF units.

A formation of Emmettes in the company of a Christopher light cruiser and two outrider Iceland destroyers displays one school of traditional Earth shipbuilding, that relying on the wedgelike aerodynamic hull form. The two Cavalries, USS Phalanx (DD-612) and USS Patton (DD-627), round out the family with their somewhat narrower main bodies.

Other operational experiences showed that the concept required some fine-tuning, however. USS Carronade (NDD-601) was lucky to survive a Romulan raid on Defense Outpost 4 on January 1st, 2152 – the first attack truly verifiable as the doings of the Rihannsu, although the evidence was initially mistranslated just as badly as in the earlier Intrepid and Enterprise encounters, thanks to extreme Romulan prowess in information warfare. The plasma cannon armament was found to be singularly ineffective against the Romulan shields, and later destroyers received an updated secondary armament – but not of the phase cannon type, which had also performed poorly in the engagement. Instead, advanced warp-accelerated lasers, developed and tested using the Cavalry testbed USS Poisson, were soon substituted for the obsolete plasma cannon mounts. Torpedo tubes were installed on the last two units of the original production run (twin tubes replacing the main phase cannon), as well as on seventeen second-batch vessels (single tube supplementing the particle beam armament). The armor grid was reconfigured no less than seven times to produce optimal shielding to match the latest Romulan firing patterns. Throughout the Romulan conflict, the Cavalries still remained much more vulnerable to enemy retaliation than the Messier, Triton or Enterprise cruiser modernizations, Dauntless or Christopher newbuilds, or the almost equally massive modern Marshall heavy destroyers, all of which now mounted Andorian shield generators.

Still, the Cavalries proved to be formidable warcraft and matched in the elegant balance of martial skills what they could not achieve through simple strength in shielding, weaponry or numbers. The last of the original 29 ships were completed in 2156. The Marshall class had recently been introduced to meet the new tactical requirements, combining deep space range and endurance with heavy armament – the latter concentrated in a fighting section derived from the Cavalry hull. The early first loss of this new class made it possible for the older destroyer type to extend continuity in another fashion as well: the penultimate Cavalry, DD-627, would perpetuate the name Patton in the upcoming years of conflict. USS Cavalier (DD-626) in turn was the last Cavalry loss in the Romulan War, shot to pieces well after the official declaration of ceasefire and limping to a crash landing onto an unexplored, barely M-class world on May 24th, 2161. Seven months later, on January 21st, 2162, rescuers found all the survivors of the crash, led by LT Lawrence D. Baker, alive and in good health. Their recovery was a long-awaited positive media event in the middle of the postwar atmosphere of disillusionment, ambiguity and anxiety.

Four unfinished late-standard Cavalry (aka Mars subclass) hulls were completed in 2160 with shield generators and two single 80 MW warp lasers, and equipped with advanced sensors for long range armed reconnaissance, to serve the UFP Starfleet as the Turing subclass. Their sorties in the Tarn conflict of 2162-64 were success stories that overshadowed the early UFP defeats and helped secure the UFP Starfleet reputation, even when yet another military conflict ended in an apparent draw. These vessels proved useful in later exploration duty as well, whereas most of the 21 surviving original Cavalries and Marses were sold forward to other UFP navies (chiefly the UESF) in 2161- 68 pending the formation of an operational common fleet.

References

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• Back to the Table of Contents
• Back to "Into The Romulan War"
• Appendix A: Of Ship Statistics
• Appendix B: Glossary
• Appendix C: Starfleet Organization - General Outline
• Appendix D: Abbreviations From Outside