In the aftermath of the battle of Freeport Nine, a serious need for additional warships has arisen for the Corsair Empire's fleet. With the Fes, Minorca, Majorca, and others turned space debris, the Deterrence Conclave has recognized the need for new ships to enter service quickly. Thus "Project Aegean Dagger" has been conceived. Three older Hel class cruisers, going by the names "Sturmvogell", "Raufbold" and "Fledschlange", now wait in dry docks on Rhodes Shipyard for their respective retrofits. Outdated weapons and computer systems, sub-par damage control facilities, haphazard designs, certain minor damages, and general rough edges continue to plague these vessels.
After the tragedy around Freeport nine, there is a serious need for new warships. The Empire is managing fronts in Omicron Theta, Sigma-15, Omega-5, Omega-48, Dresden, Cambridge, and Dublin, and we are still feeling the wounds left by the thousands of warriors who gave their lives in defense of Freeport Nine. For now, most of these fronts are relatively stable, and we have some breathing room, but this situation is still precarious, and more major losses could force us to make serious concessions we do not want to make. More ships will buy us the time we need to reinforce our various fronts. In short; We need new ships and we need them quickly. While a new Praefect could take months to even over 2 years to be completed, retrofitting all 3 Hels could take only weeks to complete in full whilst still being capable vessels.
Military scholars and generals on Crete have been careful to study the tactics and outcomes of the battles in Theta and not only those, but also skirmishes with the Sirius Coalition and Rheinland. Though the competence of the Praefect can not be called into question even after a century of service, there is evidence that having some lighter vessels that can better round-out a task force and cover each-others weaknesses will be beneficial to our fleet compositions. The hope is that these Hels can fill this role. In particular the Hessians usage of both the Hel, and their heavier variant of the Hel known as the Vidar have proven to work well together. When the Hels enter service, their performance will be extensively monitored to see if in the future the Corsairs should employ lighter cruisers. Indeed, the Unioners in their continual struggle against the Hessians, Coalition, and Rheinland Military, have proven that the Hel is a formidable cruiser. The Hel has seen deployment by many different groups in Sirius, and it is only fitting that such a venerable warship should serve under us.
Leading the project is Sergeant Alfonso Cornelius, a member of the influential Cornelius family, and the person who first proposed the idea of modernizing these cruisers. Alfonso has been given the authority to allocate whatever resources are necessary to this project. He has both a military and organizational background. Working along side him are Colonel Razzario and Dr. Bautista, who will be directly managing and controlling the project. Colonel Razziro has served directly on several cruisers and battlecruisers for the past 11 years, and his knowledge of weapons systems and doctrine will be critical to refurbishing these ships. Dr. Baustia is a some-what recent graduate of an engineering school, finishing with extremely high marks, and already having worked on minor repair operations for damaged ships on Tripoli drydock B. This will be his first major task, and his progress here will be watched closely to see if he will be fit for future operations of the sort. It is the Conclave's hope that these 3 people will be able to bring this project across the finish line.
The Strumvogell was the first in line for its retrofit. First, the fire control systems and programs were thrown out almost entirely. Not only were many labels and messages in a different language, but we also found them to be imprecise, and some not capable of working with the new developments made in weapons technology. The systems in modern Praefect designs were found to be sufficient, with some slight modifications. We also put a newer scanner on Sturmvogell, and integrated it into our new fire-control.
We also began to work on fixing the Heavy Weapon mounts. We managed to mount light cruiser turrets with relatively little effort. The Heavier weapon mounts were more challenging. We have to fix up a lot of the wiring especially going towards the mount on the bow of the vessel. We still are not finished with this process, and will give a further update on this matter soon.
Finally, Colonel Razzairo has begun collecting a list of safety measures that can help make the ship safer. The ship is devoid of Guard Rails, proper labels, symbols, and other such things. By the next report, the process of adding those should be finished.
Following up on our previous report, we are near to finishing the weapons on the Sturmvogell. After we struggled with the front Heavy Weapon mount, we replaced a large portion of the section between the bridge and the aforementioned Mount but we got it properly working, and connected it to the Fire Control systems of the ship. All other turrets on the ship have also been connected to the fire control systems using super conductors. Upon our testing we found the accuracy of the weapons to be satisfactory, and the responsiveness of the weapons was perfect for what we were looking for. Targeting inter-faces were installed in the bridge of the ship, and await their programming when the armaments of the Sturmvogell are ordered and finalized. We are currently thinking on 2 LTP-121 turrets mounted on the bottom, and one of our Anti-Matter Projectors on the top-forward slot but this has yet to be finalized, if one thing is certain we will have to experiment with what works and what doesnt for these vessels, they do indeed open up newer possibilities for our fleets, and perhaps the doctrine difference will not be as severe as we are expecting, yet I feel we cannot afford to shoot blindly in the dark with these ships. We will have to use them, monitor them, and improve them.
We finished off the implementing of our Xiphos turrets by giving them their own tracking systems and sensors distinct from the heavier anti-capital weapons and located more locally to the weapons themselves, the Xiphos turrets being operated in 4 inter-connected groups. The Xiphos turrets can still be operated directly from the bridge, and can be told to focus specific targets capital targets, while still acting more autonomously as anti-light and anti-projectile weapons. We have learned from our skirmishes with the Core and Bounty Hunters guild that effective anti-fighter is not an area we can afford to take short-cuts on.
Some areas where the main protection were titanium alloys were replaced, or covered in additional protection using, an ablative armor plating. These areas include the areas around all turrets, the bridge, and the engines. The titanium alloys were sent to a refinery on Crete, and will be refined, and used for future ship repairs.
Dr. Bautista alongside working on the front weapons mount, has also done some minor work on the life support systems on the ship, using xeno-biotic filters to make them more efficient, and require supplies less often. We also made a choice to add additional blast-doors and in ship armor to help protect the interior from as much damage as we can. The addition of guard rails and caution tape was finished extremely quick after all areas that needed work on that front were cataloged, and organized.
As per a suggestion from Bautista, the shield generator for the Sturmvogell was harmonically reinforced. We deemed any extra armor additions to the Sturmvogell to be un-needed as the goal was to have a lighter-cruiser as opposed to having a slightly different Praefect, so we instead checked up on all of the interior damage control systems, of which in a welcome surprise almost all were found to be in great working order. We copied Nav-Map data from a Database on Crete, and uploaded it to the systems on the Sturmvogell. There are not many more additions we can make for the ship until we get the new heavy weapons from Planet Crete. The ship is also properly stocked at this time with all needed munitions and with the supplies needed and is ready to receive its crew.
A specific group was formed by Razzairo to determine what weapons would be suitable for the Sturmvogell. After consulting certain cruiser captains, engineers, strategists and others, a decision was reached, and the weapons were ordered. Currently they are being produced on Planet Crete and will be ready soon enough. Due to the recent logistical delays regarding Samura, it might be weeks until the weapons are finished. We are in need of Platinum, Silver, Niobium, and certain Nano-Electrical parts they usually help supply for us. Either way, these Heavy Weapons stand as the last part of this project we have to complete before the Sturmvogell is ready for service.