UNION OF NATIONS SPACE COMMAND NAVAL FLEET POST-WAR STATUS [2553-2632]
[CONTRACTORS]
•SinoViet Heavy Machinery shipbuilding capacity has been massively crippled by the war, thanks to the loss of its major facilities at Actium, Reach, and Andesia, and the destruction of its headquarters during the Covenant attack on Southeast Asia. It doesn't help that exclusive ship construction rights were also given to Reyes-McLess, who's own facilities were still relatively intact and mainly located near the Hyperius Quadrant [1], where most of humanities industries and major population centers were being relocated at the time, along with being the main focus of colonization efforts. While SinoViet continues to be the main leader in civilian vehicle design, its days as a major shipbuilding company are over, though there are still attempts by the new CEO of the company to regain a spot in the shipbreaking business, with a deal pending between the company and the Recluse Concord [2].
•Reyes-McLees Shipyards has enjoyed a much better shipbuilding business in-contrast to SinoViet, becoming the main producer of ships, both military and civilian, for humanity since 2553. As mentioned in the section above, this was due to the Reyes-McLees assets managing to come out of the war relatively intact. While they certainly took their own losses, thanks to the fact that they rely on a much more mobile and decentralized infrastructure, as well as making use of slipspace capable fabrication factories and dockyards, these weren't as critical as those taken by SVHM, who's infrastructure was much more centralized and relied on fixed, non-mobile facilities. This has made the company a much more attractive option over other competitors, especially with the UNSC's focus being put on much more decentralized and mobile means of industry, military and infrastructure. However, creating ship designs themselves have been much more limited, with the few designs that they submitted for the Naval Expansion & Modernization Program: STARFORGE being subverted by the much more advanced and effective designs submitted by Icarus Aerospace Combat Engineering.
•Icarus Aerospace Combat Engineering, while much younger compared to its competitors, has grown rapidly during the past decades. This success is no doubt thanks to its designs for the next generation UNSCN warships, benefitting much from a much stronger willingness to work with non-human ship designers, resulting in what one could consider hybrid ships. These combined the best of human automation and electronic warfare systems with the advanced armor, weapon, sensor and communication technologies of ex-Covenant factions, resulting in some of the most effective human warship designs, leading to the company becoming the main contractor for the UNSCN in ship designs. Another reason that the company managed to grow so rapidly, one that is heavily noted by various intelligence organizations, is through the use of different companies to their own advantage. Each one of these companies are merely puppet organizations, designed purely so that the IACE can expand its influence in all other types of fields, using its advantages in said fields to gain an edge over its competitors. This is especially true for those giving a try in combining human and alien technologies and conducting mass production of them. The company, similarly, to Reyes-Mclees, relies heavily on mobile facilities and a decentralized infrastructure, with much of said assets spending most of their time in the Hyperius Quadrant, and their HQ is located on the Insciente-Class Mobile Long Range Stellar Habitat [3], All That Glitters. They also have special access, given by the IUN [4], to a few high-grade shipyards and drydocks, located at far-out outposts, for their own shipbuilding purposes, despite RMS having exclusive rights. Those are not the only notable things about the company though, a large number of IACEs members are both alien and AI's, they have a special few dockyards that were converted to highly guarded and tightly locked research facilities based around the Maginot Line, much of its leadership are ex-UNSC admiralty who had a hand in Forerunner and Archeohomina study, and there are rumors spreading around that IACE was originally a public front for Special Assembly Plant Concord.
•Aerofabrique SA has seen itself gaining a dominant position in designing and manufacturing orbital defenses for the UNSCAF as well as inter-system defense ships, with its Strident-Class Littoral Combat Ship and Zeng Fei-Class System Defense Cutter designs gaining the company a fortune, even nearly a century later, and as well as having a hand in designing secondhand designs for independent human colonies needing their own defense forces. However, with the recent down drop of the stock market values for ASA, roughly sixty-four percent, the company has found itself struggling.
[FACILITIES AND NAVAL YARDS/BASES]
•Sol-based fleet yards suffered heavily during the Covenant invasion, with the Jovian Moon yards being the biggest loser, having lost all of its secondary dockyards and its primary superheavy ones taking massive damage, so much so that they had to be rebuilt from scratch. Although Mars' own primary works managed to escape destruction and heavy damage, though 50% of secondaries were lost. Rebuilding projects since then have seen the yards rebuilt and repaired, though with more and more of infrastructure and industries being focused away from Sol, and from the old territories of humanity in general, it is unlikely that it will be the primary ship producer for the UNSCN anymore, though it will certainly be one of the strongest.
•The Epsilon Eridani naval yards, after being rebuilt, have been further expanded upon, with additional facilities being built in the Oort Cloud and outer asteroid belt of the system, fully exploiting their rich resources as well as becoming the home of many research facilities. While it isn't quite the fortress it was before being besieged by the Fleet of Particular Justice, it still remains as one of the most developed human settlements outside of Sol, as well as one of the fastests ship producers thanks to the readily available abundant of resources, and a strategic position for the UNSC due to its optimal Interstellar Slipspace Lanes.
•Erem continues to have a small ship building capacity, having much less extensive and limitedly developed shipyards, and its non-optimal ISL's means that the system does not have much of strategic value for the UNSC, publicly, and will most likely become a backwater system as humanity moves further and further away from the old inner colonies. However, this is also seen as an advantage, as its unsuspecting nature allows for the establishment of extensive facilities dedicated to Naval research projects, including those relating to AI's.
•Crystal, due its status as the main staging point for colonization of the Hyperius Quadrant, has seen its minor infrastructure, including those spread throughout the system, heavily expanded since 2554. This has led to Crystal becoming a well-developed military hub, industrial world, and naval yard, though still smaller compared to Pre-War Reach. It had even become one of the two sites selected for the construction of an orbital ring in 2598, which was completed in 2630 alongside the New Harvest ring, that heavily boosted the shipbuilding capabilities of the colony, making it the main producer of warships for the UNSC outside Sol. Crystal also houses an underground weapon testing facility, mainly relating to exotic forms of directed energy weapons.
•New Harvest, the first colony established in the Hyperius Quadrant, has become quite developed for a relatively young colony, seeing that most of the military industries that were moved away from Sol were relocated here, and serves as the main naval port and military hub within Hyperius, as well as being the third main producer of UNSC ships.
•All other colonies have been expanded with their own shipyards, with those having more strategic value being more developed, and most of them are capable of intersystem travel and can "piggyback" slipspace capable ships, while the others can be quickly taken apart and put inside translight ferries. And the introduction of the MLRSH has seen a slightly smaller subclass being conceived, the Xanthus-Class, designed to act as mobile fleet yards for the Navy. Twenty ships of the class have been built, with five more under construction.
[SHIP DESIGNS AND TECHNOLOGY]
•Ship designs made during the 2550s and 2560s weren't really meant as actual next-generation designs but rather as stopgaps, meant to quickly plug in losses taken during the war. These implemented semi-directional energy shielding, enhanced electromagnetic plasma deflectors that could better defend against DEWs, magnetic chaff dispensers, decoy launchers, stealthy polymer coatings, the triple-reactor architecture used on the Pillar of Autumn, sublight drives based on impulse drives, multi-layered hulls mainly made up of superconducting-thermal dispersing ablative materials, first generation FTL communicators, and prototype hyper scanner detectors. These vessels make up sixty-two percent of the current Navy
•The ships born under the STARFORGE program were true next generation designs for the Navy. These used repulsor drives, faster slipspace drives with more efficient and advanced navigators, full energy shielding, semi-directional hard light barriers, nanolaminate-equivalent octagon battleplating, high entropy alloy superstructuring, gravimetric shock-absorbers, electromagnetic ionic precision focusers and other advanced energy weaponry, rapid-fire twisting rail mass drivers, EARN armor applicant, electronic warfare systems capable of jamming FTL sensors and hiding ships in layers of ghost signals and false data, translight sensors, fusion reactors that combined tokamak and Covenant pinch generator designs catalyzed by antimatter setup in the same triple-reactor architecture, and lighter loads of more powerful missiles. These ships have replaced thirty-eight percent of the stopgap designs, with one hundred-percent replacement being slated to 2663.
[1] Located in the outer fringe of the Human Space, in the opposite direction of Covenant Space, this massive cluster of solar systems holds a surprising number of worlds that require little terraforming to be habitable for humans. This, mixed with its position, made it the main focus of clolonization efforts in the post-war years. A popular nickname for the quadrant, given by refugees coming from colonies glassed during the ending years of the war, was the "Haven Sector".
[2] A minor ex-Covenant group that is based out on the Agitated Tide, the sector where the first outer colonies to fall to the Covenant are located, and also has become a melting pot for independent human factions and other ex-Covenant groups like the Concord.
[3] A new ship-class conceived during the mid 2540s, these vessels are essentially meant to be mobile colonies, as well as serving as mobile HQs for the UNSC and IUN, going in hand with efforts to decentralize humanities industry, military, and infrastructure, as well as relocating major population centers and industry in the Haven Sector. Seven have been built, with three more under construction.
[4] Sort for the Interstellar Union of Nations, this is the successor to the now defunct UEG.