23 May 4009
0800: Session on Performance and Assessment of the Hellfire class, Duranium Legion Naval Conference
It is no doubt indicative of how most of the Lords Admiral expected the day’s session to proceed that Lord Admiral Absolus Criasus amusingly turned up decked out in a full suit of experimental power armor then being trialed by the Imperial Guard. While a member of the Legion Navy certainly was not supposed to be traipsing about in Ground Forces research and development materiel, certainly no one would fault the watch team on duty at 0700 that morning at the Legion Projects Armory for following the orders of an admittedly imposing Lord Admiral, regardless of interservice boundaries. This aside, while the humorous side of the Lord Admiral’s stunt was appreciated by his colleagues, whether said stunt would have the far more desired effect of moderating tensions in what was sure to be the most heated session to date would remain to be seen.
In any case, regardless of any personal reluctance he may have felt the Lord Admiral was nothing if not dutiful and thus set about the business of the day. After delivering the usual exhortations for his colleagues not to behave like schoolchildren - or, failing that, not to behave any worse than schoolchildren - Lord Admiral Criasus outlined the schedule for the morning session. He himself would open the proceedings with a summary of the service record of the Hellfire-class beam frigates, seeking to provide a basis of objective facts for the following discussions. After this, expert testimony would be heard from Lord Captain Selene Styx, Captain Jocasta Gelanor (in absentia, to be delivered from prepared remarks by the Speaker), and Commander Aion Styx, with each (living) expert responding to questions from the assembly as able. Finally, with this being done individual Lords Admiral would be invited to present their own brief assessments for the consideration of the assembly, as always permitting for comment periods in each instance. This would, Lord Admiral Criasus hoped, provide a comprehensive and useful basis for the afternoon session on the future of particle beam weapons in the Legion Navy.
To begin his own purely factual summary, Lord Admiral Criasus began with the first battle of Kuiper 79, which had been fought immediately prior to the deployment of the Hellfire class, noting that First Fleet under his own command had lost some 22,500 tons of warships in the ensuing victory. By contrast, the second battle of Kuiper 79 had featured the first two Hellfire examples, and despite significant teething problems for the frigates this battle had been won with no Legion Navy losses and with Hellfire herself claiming a Sovremenny as her first kill. The Lord Admiral continued his narrative by discussing the battles fought as part of the Invasion of Belaire, noting that while the Hellfires had not been present for the jump point assault itself, their presence in battles immediately preceding and following the assault had produced some 45,000 tons of Belaire casualties - plus another 15,000 tons in the form of a Sovremenny cruiser which had been crippled and left for Disruptor to finish off. The jump point assault itself, on the other hand, had seen some 62,500 tons of Legion Navy losses, some no doubt due to the nature of the assault itself but others likely avoidable had the assault fleets been able to pull back and engage the Belaire cruisers at extreme range. Altogether, whatever might be said about the efficacy of the Hellfire class itself, the fact remained that the Legion Navy had suffered 85,000 tons of losses (averaging 10% of engaged forces) in battles fought against the Belaire without Hellfire support, and zero losses when fighting with that support. All possible explanations and excuses aside, the correlation if nothing else was certainly compelling.
Fastidious as ever, Lord Admiral Criasus also provided a helpful visual aid for those in his audience who might otherwise not pay much attention to his admittedly ruminous words. “Battles” prior to 2 August 4007 are not included for good reason; the reader will recall that prior to 2 August 4007 the Belaire Navy seemingly had not yet learned how to fire their weapons.
This had been, quite easily, the most opinionated statement the Speaker had made throughout the Conference, and had his claims not been backed by comprehensive numerical analysis the Lord Admiral’s claim to staunch neutrality would certainly have been in jeopardy. As it was, this display of opinion was seen by many of the Lords Admiral as indicating the potential to obtain a committal statement on the Hellfire debate from the Speaker, potential which proved to be entirely nonexistent. Notably, when asked by Lord Grand Admiral Tethys Argyron whether the Hellfire class was an effective weapon and should see its use expanded, Lord Admiral Criasus flatly responded in the negative; when this was followed by insinuations from Lord High Admiral Jack Macaria that this response implied a measure of opposition to the Hellfire class, Lord Admiral Criasus once again flatly responded in the negative. In retrospect, the lack of insightful questioning was likely due not only to the proclivities of the Lords Admiral towards political infighting, but also due to an apparent lack of preparation for the contents of the Speaker’s presentation. Curiously for a high command which prided itself on exhaustive reporting and publication of reams upon reams of pedantic statistics, few if any among the Lords Admiral had yet assessed the quantitative effects of the Hellfire class on Legion Navy fleet performances. As such only Lord Admiral Gaia Pandia, predictably, raised any questions of a quantitative nature, although Lord Admiral Criasus remained noncommittal as his colleague pressed him on the relative attribution of ship losses in the Belaire jump point assault to the innate dangers of such an operation versus the lack of Hellfire support.
As continued questioning of the Lord Admiral failed to score any meaningful political points due to his quite impenetrable stonewalling, the discussion surrounding this presentation died down rather quickly. With the discussion shortly concluded, Lord Admiral Criasus gladly offered the floor to Lord Captain Styx, eager to move the proceedings along.
As the commander of the Kuiper 79 Mission Control Department during the Invasion of Belaire, Lord Captain Selene Styx could provide a valuable operational perspective on the use of the Hellfires. She began her remarks, however, by announcing quite candidly that she disagreed with the interpretation of statistics given by her superior, noting that while the basic observations were correct, significant uncertainty existed when so few engagements could be considered as data points, with close calls on either side that might have gone badly any other day. As an example of this, the Lord Captain recalled the recent defeat of the Belaire Home Fleet, during which battle Captain Gelanor had pushed her Hellfire squadron beyond their breaking points to destroy the Belaire Sovremenny squadron before the rest of her fleet closed to point-blank range. The Lord Captain noted that while this maneuver had been successful, the damage suffered by the Hellfires due to weapons malfunctions could easily have proven fatal, notably the exhaustion of engineering supplies and manpower to keep the weapons operational could well have led to a catastrophic failure in the engine rooms or other critical components which could not have been addressed in time to save the ships and their crews. Thus while the Legion had in the end suffered no losses from the battle, this was due to supremely excellent luck as much as tactical superiority, and the Lord Captain emphasized that the Hellfire class could not continue to rely on luck to keep themselves intact.
This said, Lord Captain Styx turned her attention to the abortive pursuit attempt against Belaire Cruiser Squadron 4. Here she offered a thoroughly operational perspective, noting that while the pursuit had been tactically a success albeit only a small one, it had also had the effect of delaying the launching of the jump point assault by several weeks as the dispersed assault fleet assets were forced to regroup. While the ultimate impact of this delay had been minimal in any negative sense, and perhaps even positive given the reinforcements from Fourth Fleet which had bolstered the assault, the Lord Captain made it a point of emphasis that the opportunities which could be opened up by the use of Hellfire squadrons were not necessarily as valuable as they might appear from a raw numerical perspective. Particularly, based on the extreme maintenance requirements of the class she anticipated that the presence of Hellfires on long, far-reaching campaigns across several systems would ultimately drag down the rest of the fleet due to these extreme logistical requirements, or else be limited to judiciously-chosen engagements rather than general fleet operations.
In short, Lord Captain Styx summarized her position thusly: while the Hellfire had undoubtedly proven itself as a tactical weapon, which if nothing else did justify its place in the Legion Naval arsenal, it was of questionable utility as an operational asset, and in the Lord Captain’s opinion the Hellfire squadrons would see little practical use as attached assets in the new fleet doctrinal plan as fleet commanders realized these limitations and declined to deal with them.
It will be no surprise to learn that the Lord Captain’s statement was taken by the assembly as somewhat controversial. While much of the quite spirited debate which followed was both less than edifying and unfit for printing, notably Lord High Admiral Macaria and Lord Grand Admiral Argyron were both escorted from the Conference chamber by the Imperial Guards to enjoy an early lunch, a few points of some interest were raised. Lord Admiral Pandia, displaying her usual head for the unglamorous realm of logistics, requested the Lord Captain’s opinion as to what measures, if any, could be taken to render the Hellfire class or a future successor tenable for fleet operations from a supply and maintenance perspective. While qualifying her reply by emphasizing her lack of logistical or ship-design expertise, Lord Captain Styx did suggest that a reduction of armament, perhaps to four guns as originally planned, would allow for additional munitions to be carried as well as additional armor plating to be mounted on the hull. While some among the more fanatical Hellfire supporters took umbrage at this suggestion, fearing that reduction of armament would mean an unacceptable reduction of combat ability, the more moderate members of the assembly noted approvingly this rare attempt at a constructive suggestion rather than maudlin mud-slinging.
Another constructive exchange, albeit tangential, was had with Lord Admiral Niobe Chryson, who sought Lord Captain Styx’s speculative opinion as to whether the Legion Navy might have seen overall better combat results had the Hellfire class taken the place of the Bellerophons during the recent battles. The Lord Captain’s opinion was mixed, as while she readily conceded that the Hellfire class would have proven tactically superior to the Bellerophons, operationally the long-range surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of the latter class had proven invaluable, not only for fleet operations but also as the catalyst for the commerce raiding which had occurred from 16 February onward. While Lord Admiral Chryson had no doubt hoped for a more conclusive answer, as her dislike of the Bellerophon class was well-known, publicly she only expressed her concurrence with the tactical assessment of her junior officer.
As the questioning of Lord Captain Styx drew to its conclusion, multiple Lords Admiral inquired as to how, in her opinion as the operational commander, the Hellfire class might have been used to reduce Legion casualties. Here the Lord Captain was entirely committal, stating that no tactical gains would have been possible, in simple terms all Legion Naval losses had been suffered while the Belaire had remained within 90,000 km of the jump point, well within both Belaire laser and Legion 152 mm battery firing ranges. This being said, she did concede that had the Belaire fleet chosen to immediately open the range to take advantage of their voluminous missile fire, it may have been possible for the Hellfire squadron to jump into the system and assist in a pursuit action, but this certainly could not have been planned for particularly since the Belaire had not used this tactic in any case. Despite some obligatory objections from certain members of the assembly, this answer generally satisfied the Lords Admiral, and the discussion was wrapped up shortly thereafter.
As the next speaker would have been the late Captain Jocasta Gelanor, who had commanded the defense of the Belaire jump point on 17 February, Lord Admiral Criasus instead would read from her prepared remarks making some allowances for their obvious draft form. As such, the Lord Admiral informed the assembly that no questions would be taken save for pure clarifications of fact, as he himself could certainly not claim to speak on the late Captain’s behalf.
In summary, Captain Gelanor had dedicated the bulk of her remarks to explaining and defending her decisions during the aforementioned battle, fully aware that this was the primary reason why she had been summoned to the Naval Conference. From the outset, she emphasized that while she had been under no illusions regarding the impact her decisions would have on the developing Hellfire debate - indeed, the reader will recall that this battle had directly precipitated the Naval Conference itself in its aftermath - her first and only concern during the battle had been to maximize the advantage of her own fleet while minimizing losses of ships and crews. Her order to the Hellfire squadron to continue firing even as their weapons failed in rapid succession had been driven by a firm belief that the Hellfire was a highly effective weapon even in its frankly underdeveloped present form, and not by any interest in making a point to her superior officers.
In her assessment of the results, the Captain had predictably been quite glowing with regards to the frigates, including claiming that it would be disingenuous of her to allow Disruptor to claim the Sovremenny kill which she had made as the work had clearly been done by the Hellfire squadron. Interestingly, she also expressed near certainty that her fleets would have suffered some losses, however sustainable, had the Belaire laser cruisers not been eliminated prior to the final closing action; she emphasized at this point that many of the vessels in her fleet had already suffered battle damage to their armor belts, in some cases with bare structural elements exposed to enemy fire. Even the Belaire, Captain Gelanor claimed, would not have failed to target the most vulnerable of these vessels, particularly destroyers such as Char which as it was had taken nontrivial internal damage during the battle.
In conclusion, Captain Gelanor had offered a few suggestions for improvement, which while strictly out of scope for the present session were read out anyways as a concession to the Captain’s unfortunate lateness. Predictably, she identified a lack of munitions and maintenance stores as the chief limitation of the class, with fire control range a secondary consideration. Insightfully, however, rather than recommending a reduction in weapons loadout the Captain suggested that additional space could be found for needed stores with future advancements in fire control technology, which might reduce the needed size of the hardware even as performance and targeting range improved. In her concluding remarks, Captain Gelanor expressed her earnest hopes that such a second-generation improvement of the class would pave the way for particle beam weapons to become a crucial, if secondary, mainstay of the Legion Navy. While there is no doubt that many of the Lords Admiral would have objected to this final sentiment, of course no such objections could be raised nor by this time was Lord High Admiral Macaria present to request any thinly-veiled “clarifications” to such an effect.
In any case, the recent loss of the honored Captain was still a fresh wound for many members of the assembly, and hearing in a sense her final words had been a moving experience for these individuals. Thus, after a moment of silence Lord Admiral Criasus ordered that the session be adjourned briefly, with light refreshments to be served so as to lift the spirits of the Lords Admiral before they would continue their work.
Once the Lords Admiral had returned from their short break and once again taken their seats in the Conference chamber, Lord Admiral Criasus called the session back to order and gave the floor to the final scheduled speaker for that morning, Commander Aion Styx. As the one and only captain of the erstwhile Hellfire herself, the Commander’s personal perspective was eagerly awaited by the assembly, albeit perhaps for different reasons depending on which member of the assembly was queried.
In addition to his famous command, Commander Aion Styx was a well-decorated officer in his own right even despite having survived the explosion of Hellfire. While not yet seen as the future replacement for Captain Jocasta Gelanor due to his relative youth and inexperience, certainly the Commander could expect a promotion in the not too distant future.
Commander Styx began his remarks by reflecting on the numerous teething problems faced by the class in the earliest days of its operation. Some of these of course were well-known, for example the Commander recounted the experience of his helm officer during the second battle of Kuiper 79 during which attempts to evade fire from the Belaire Sovremennys had caused the frigate squadron to pass in and out of its own limited fire control range. Other anecdotes were not so well-known and in fact few if any of the Lords Admiral had heard these stories; for example while the chronic lack of sufficient munitions stores was well-known, the Commander recounted from personal experience how the haphazard placement of these storage sections - as one unfortunate consequence of the rushed design process had been a poorly thought through internal layout - frequently hampered his engineering crew’s best efforts to keep the guns firing during battles. The amusing account of how firing the Hellfire’s starboard gun battery had also caused the Commander’s private toilet to flush unexpectedly due to ill-planned wiring layouts was particularly well-received, although curiously none of the Lords Admiral thought to interrogate the Commander as to why exactly he had been in a position to notice this particular interaction. On the whole, Commander Styx stated, the Hellfire was utterly symptomatic of a ship which had been the product of a rushed design and construction process, compounded by conflicting and ever-changing requirements from the Legion Navy procurement offices.
In spite of this, however, Commander Styx could give nothing but praise when it came to his ship’s capabilities in battle, as while the pace of a sniper’s duel between Hellfire and Sovremenny squadrons might be a bit slow for the taste of many Legion Naval officers, the Hellfire had proven more than a match against ships twice her size, destroying four times her own displacement in enemy tonnage during her all-too-brief career. Astutely, the Commander noted that if the threat and value of the Hellfire class was not apparent to the Legion high command, it was certainly apparent to the Belaire which had repeatedly prioritized the frigates over larger Legion targets during each engagement - a targeting priority the Commander could personally attest to, having lost an engine in the second battle of Kuiper 79.
While his personal insights were certainly valued, indeed being the primary purpose for his attendance that morning, the Commander further sought to present a quantitative assessment of the Hellfire class performance, hoping to validate his own informed opinions by grounding them upon objective facts. In contrast to the numerical narrative presented by Lord Admiral Criasus earlier in the session, which had sought to produce a fleet-wide operational picture of the Hellfire class impact, Commander Styx instead attempted to produce tactical-level evidence that the Hellfire itself was not only a strategic asset but in fact a highly-efficient weapons system in its own right. To emphasize this point, he drew the attention of the assembly to two principal results: first, that the Hellfires had on average made up 9% of the total displacement of the fleets they had been components of during a battle; second, that Hellfire gunnery had directly accounted for 11% of the Belaire losses suffered during these battles - a number which, for the sake of a conservative estimate, dismissed the additional Sovremenny kill claimed by Disruptor in the last of these engagements. In conclusion, despite its own issues the Hellfire class had outperformed expectations in combat against the enemy, or so the Commander claimed.
While unintentionally so, in presenting his own visual aid Commander Styx unwittingly imitated his far superior officer, Lord Admiral Criasus. As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Commander inadvertently opened himself up to accusations of brown-nosing, although fortunately for himself any such thoughts were not voiced during the ensuing discussion period.
As was by this point tradition, the claims advanced by the Commander were not received passively by the Lords Admiral, with the anti-beams faction being particularly irritated at being in their view lectured by an extremely junior officer. Amidst the many rather rude retorts directed at the Commander, which if nothing else certainly put to the test the ideal of the Naval Conference as a discussion among equals, Lord Admiral Glycon Limos raised an important question of data interpretation. While the data as presented did suggest the efficacy of the Hellfire frigates, he conceded, the data did neglect to consider that a significant fraction of the fleet displacement in each case would be occupied by jump-capable warships which were certainly not expected to serve as primary combatants. Therefore, the Lord Admiral wished to know whether the analysis would change if the fraction of primary combatant tonnage made up by the Hellfires were considered rather than the fraction of total tonnage. Commander Styx clearly had not anticipated a statistical rather than egotistical challenge to his hard numbers and objective facts, and to be blunt fumbled in his response, claiming that he couldn’t be certain but the tonnage ratio wouldn’t rise significantly enough to make a difference in his analysis. Helpfully, at this point Lord High Admiral Geras Makedon spoke up to rescue the junior officer from his plight, noting that while the Hellfire tonnage ratio of primary combatants might rise up to perhaps 12% or so, this would likely be something of a wash were the fifth Sovremenny kill claimed by Disruptor factored into the analysis, and the central claim of the analysis was unlikely to be significantly altered.
Later, as the major part of the questioning had passed and the assembly was beginning to settle down, Lord Grand Admiral Thanatos Adrastus took a speculative tact towards Commander Styx, asking how the Commander viewed the Hellfire class from the perspective of Legion Naval philosophy which emphasized close-range encounters with heavily-armored warships. The Commander’s reply proved insightful and illuminating; while he acknowledged that the reality of Hellfire combat was that of long-range sniping and gunnery dueling, he also noted that the role of the class was wholly offensive. In contrast, he pointed out, the other major ship classes of the Legion Navy were increasingly trending towards a dual role of both offensive and defensive functions, exemplified by the mixed 152 mm and 102 mm batteries equipped on the Invincible-class light cruisers. In contrast to this increasing complexity, Commander Styx concluded, there was a certain primal joy to be found in commanding a ship with a singular and destructive mission within the larger fleet, even though that aggression was only manifested at long range.
While this last response from the Commander was certainly not out of character for a Legion Naval officer, for many of the Lords Admiral who had come up through the ranks in command of railgun-only vessels and fleets, this perspective proved hard to digest. Some would later note that Commander Aion Styx was not only a junior officer, but also of a newer breed of officers, having only been promoted to the flag officer ranks less than four years ago. Many of the Lords Admiral therefore took his words as being perhaps reflective of the thinking of a new, younger and less conservative breed of Legion commanders; whether this indicated optimism or pessimism for the future of the Legion Navy of course would vary from one Lord Admiral to the next.
As Commander Styx had said all that he could say on the subject, he yielded the floor back to the Speaker, who in turn opened the floor for any additional comments from members of the assembly. Surprisingly, relatively few of the Lords Admiral present seemed interested in making additional remarks, a fact due in part to the volume of debate expressed in the preceding question and answer sessions, but no doubt due in equal or larger part to the conspicuous absence of two particular Lords Admiral from the Conference chamber. Nevertheless, a few final salient points were raised.
Lord Admiral Caerus Priapus, speaking from his experience as commandant of the Legion military academy, noted that the rushed deployment of the Hellfire had caused significant trouble for the academy staff as well. Critically, the lack of even draft forms of new training and doctrinal manuals on which to base a curriculum had forced the instructors at the academy to scramble madly in efforts to piece together some coherent educational plan for the crews and officers expected to serve on the new class. This disruption had led to pronounced effects even now, nearly two years later, as while a curriculum had been largely developed by this time the strain on staff resources to maintain two essentially separate programs of study had proven taxing for the academy staff, and it was likely that further expansion of the beam weapons program would only increase this strain. In response to this, Lord High Admiral Makedon noted that one possible solution would be to increase the size of the academy staff and facilities, an option which likely would be in line with other goals of the Legion high command in any case.
Lord High Admiral Aeneas Chalcon noted that while the relative tactical ability of the Hellfire class remained a topic of debate, its relatively small size as only a frigate-rated warship meant that it was relatively little burden for the Legion’s naval maintenance facilities, particularly those in Adamantine which were still underdeveloped. He further noted that this perhaps would counterbalance the points raised earlier by Lord Captain Styx regarding the logistical burden of the particle beam weapons. Lord Admiral Pandia voiced her concurrence, as well as her relief that someone besides herself for once had thought about logistics.
Aside from these and a few comments giving general opinions as to whether the class was good or bad, with no real substance offered, it seemed by this time that the Lords Admiral were finally tired of this endless Hellfire debate. As such, Lord Admiral Criasus issued brief closing remarks thanking the Lords Admiral for their dedication, earnestness, and relatively civil behavior.
After this the Naval Conference was adjourned for a light luncheon.