Corvette
A corvette is a warship smaller than a frigate used by most current real world navies and some NationStates navies. NationStates space forces sometimes include eponymous and analogous spacecraft.
The original corvettes in the age of sail were sloops of war or small frigates, but this term passed out of use in the mid-19th century. A hundred years later, the British and Commonwealth navies revived the term and applied it to ships ranking between a patrol vessel and a frigate. They were designed for escorting merchant marine convoys and protecting the latter from submarine or U-boot attacks.
Typical RL corvettes serving in today’s navies displace between 500 and 2,500 tonnes and are 55 to 100 meters long. They usually are armed with medium and small caliber guns, surface-to-surface missiles, and surface-to-air missiles, and underwater warfare weapons. Many can accommodate an ASW helicopter.
The ASW function continues in NS navies, but augmented by a somewhat more generalist weapons package and doctrinal use as escort ships. The list of known NS naval corvettes include:
- Andrehervian Naval Force’s Visby class of Andrehervia
- Asgarnian Naval Force's Mountain Class
- Community Vessel Corvette of Sober Thought
- Naval Militia of Hamilton Ontario
- Krienhild-class of Wingarde
Other NS navies acknowledge corvettes implicitly in rank structures:
NationStates space force
The following nation or space forces are known to have used space corvettes:
