Community Vessel Transport

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CDF Naval Service
Community Vessel
Vessel Class: Transport
Role: Troopship, hospital ship, relief ship
Displacement: 60 000 tonnes
Length: 370 m
Crew: 500
Passengers: 0-5 000
Captain: Commander

The Community Defence Forces of Sober Thought need transport ships to move troops into combat zones and carry wounded troops out of the same, or during peacetime to move troops and equipment into disaster areas and carry wounded and displaced people out of the same.


Building

Naval Service naval architects modelled the fleet transport on the real world MS Amsterdam cruise ship. In fact, the same hull with some fairly minor alterations in the holds and superstructure serves as a cruise ship operated by STaqua. In times of crisis or war, the "civilian" passenger ships are easily and quickly converted back into naval transport ships. Most of their crew remains the same, but wearing their literal and figurative Naval Reserve hats instead of their merchant marine ones.

Until the twentieth population wave of one hundred million citizens, the CDF commissions three transport ships per wave into the Naval Service. They bear the hull numbers of T-1 through T-3 in the first batch, the second T-3 through T-6, and names beginning with the letter T. Those from STaqua bear no true naval hull numbers. Furthermore, their names begin with many different letters of the alphabet and have a variety of themes evoking pleasant, carefree associations befitting cruise ships rather than the warships which they can become.

Cruise ships have the same dimensions and displacement of their full-time naval equivalents. Merchant ships require a crew of 800, and accommodates 200 first-class and 1 200 second-class tourists. They can be quickly converted back to their naval roles, beginnning by the elimination of the 300 crew who are responsible for purely creature comforts. The hundred first-class cabins are reconfigured to accommodate sixteen soldiers each, the three hundred second-class cabins to accommodate eight, the three hundred crew slots to accommodate two and, if necessary, some of the common areas to accomodate up to seven hundred more soldiers. Heavy equipment and supplies fill the rest of the common areas and cargo holds so that one large brigade group can move on one cruise ship-cum-troopship.


Naval component

The purely naval component on the ship consists of five sections: bridge, naval weapons, engineering, support and stores. The Bridge Section, headed by the Commander acting as captain and Vice Commander as executive officer, consists of about 100 all ranks. It looks after command decisions, navigation, communications, sensors and the like. On Naval Reserve ships, the naval bridge crew is virtually identical to its civilian counterpart.

Although by internal and external law they are considered warships, transport ships have few arms. Furthermore, the Naval Weapons Section's systems are purely defensive, provided by four quad anti-aircraft missile launchers armed with 120 missiles and four twin 20 mm dual purpose guns. The section consists of about 80 all ranks under a Lieutenant. The ship relies mainly on its escorts like cruisers, destroyers and frigates for most of its defence.

The Engineering Section, consisting of about 100 all ranks under a Chief Lieutenant, keeps the three screws of the ship turning reliably. The Support Section, consisting of about 150 all ranks under a Chief Lieutenant, does the same thing for the physical plant and personnel.

The Supply Section, consisting of about 70 all ranks under a Lieutenant, includes stevedores and warehousers who operate cargo cranes and supply systems. The Supply Section can be beefed up to speed offloading, but the ship must still dock in a friendly harbour with good port facilities to properly load and unload with any sort of efficiency or timeliness.


Air component

The air component is usually an Air Service Composite Helicopter Flight. A Lieutenant is responsible for 80 all ranks, three HTN-55 Hortense transport helicopters and one HUS-77 Hudson search-and-rescue helicopter.

The air component is somewhat variable according to the mission at hand and its status as a Naval Service or Naval Reserve ship. On cruise ship reconversions, the flight deck is usually the promenade deck and suffleboard playing surface. On hospital ship missions, the composite helicopter flight may be expanded to a composite helicopter squadron with more HUS-77 Hudsons or HU-77 Huans serving as air ambulances.


Land component

This is the most highly variable component on the ship, ranging from a token presence of 35 troops in a Marine Light Infantry platoon to an overpowering presence of 5 000 troops in a large armoured infantry brigade group.

Brigade groups typically number about 4 000 all ranks, and the ship can carry all their personnel, all their heavy equipment and weapons, and enough fireworks to get the game started. In a pinch the ship can carry another 500 to 1 000 soldiers, although at that point the ship is truly cramped. For amphibious landings on hostile shores, the Community Defence Forces use smaller but more heavily armed landing ships which have more equal portions of naval, air and land service personnel.

On a less violent note, the transport ship can also act as a full-blown hospital ship. With only slight physical changes, one health battalion -- light on ambulances and paramedics but heavy on nurses -- can care for up to 2 000 ambulatory and 1 000 stretcher cases. Hospital ships can be used in support of naval or combined operations, in aid to the civil power during public emergencies at home or in nation-building exercises abroad after civil disorder creates a failed state.

With even fewer troops and more bulk supplies, the ship can act as an emergency relief ship on international aid missions or a large extraction team for citizens and friendly foreign nationals caught by natural disaster or civil unrest.