Guided Missile Frigate

Early in the Kamian Succession Wars, the Foundation began fielding a new class of warship. Frigates had existed since time immemorial, but had often been little more than scaled-up fast-attack ships. With better engines, greater firepower, and a higher endurance, the ships were typically used as defensive vessels and escorts.

Instructor Henry K. Harbatkin changed all that, when he envisioned a new type of vessel intended for simple, dramatic firepower. His Guided Missile Frigate prototype, G.S.S. Sandstorm, fielded an unprecedented 4,200 missile tubes.

Precursors

The Foundation had long experimented with "burners" or dedicated missile ships. The general line of thinking was often that, since massive-scale directed-energy weapons did not run out of bullets and were often the only thing capable of significantly damaging an enemy capitol ship, then anything not fielding those could have little impact on a conflict.

Every ship still carried guided and dumbfire missile tubes by the dozens, with even light destroyers typically mounting upwards of sixty. Various dedicated guided missile destroyers and even light cruisers had been fielding, with one cruiser variant sporting 2,000 missile tubes. However, the larger these ships grew, the more they relied on heavy guns as their main weapons, and the tubes were pushed aside.

Only G.S.S. Verde saw significant action in its indented role, and while serving with distinction, the ship is often remembered as a "mis-matched hodge-podge" (a rather unfair remark, given her track record).

Harbatkin's Sandstorm

Harbatkin had a different idea. In Foundation parlance, every missile is effectively "guided" in the sense that there's no point in firing a missile in space if it doesn't have some form of course correction or target seeking. What differenties the missiles is primarily their launchers: "guided missile tubes" vs. "dumbfire banks".

A guided tube has an operator, typically a coordinator sitting at a control station, in a battery room and coordinating with a commander. Operators will somtimes steer missiles directly, but often handle targeting and coordination duties in conference with the missile's guidance system. All foundation targeted weaponry has fire and forget capability, but the use of operators greatly expands a missile's capacity. Operators may guide a single or dozens of missiles.

Weapons launched from dumbfire banks can still be guided, but banks cannot be reloaded nearly as quickly. In many cases, the bank requres external loading (a loader outside the ship) other times they simple have very low, even hand-reload speeds as opposed to the "feeder" system on a guidance bank.

The sandstorm had two hundred of the standard guided tubes along with an unprecedented four thousand dumbfire banks. The ship also carried no directed energy weapons or indeed any weapons of any kind.