Vanguard-class
Vanguard-class (marine) warship
The Vanguard class ADC was designed by the High King of Ma-Nenya, High King the High Lord Commodore Semir-randil. It is designed to be "as the aircraft carrier was to the battleship." ADC stands for Air Dominance Cruiser.
They are the first class of surface ship to be constructed by the Commonality in many years - and by far is the most powerful class in the CCN (Commonality Crown Navy).
The Vanguard carries a submarinal hangar bay, designed to launch M# interceptors or G# heavy-bombers (both of which are capable of submarinal 'flight') from beneath the waves, and thus freeing her upper deck for more important things - like guns.
In 'quiet' mode, the Vanguard class' upper deck are smooth; but their upper-decks are entirely reversible, composed of 'double-sided deck plates'.
On one 'side' of the deck plates, (on some of them, at any rate - others merely have 'iris' gateways, designed to allow the deployment of missiles from launchers on the secondary weapons deck below the uppermost deck) there are 'EF-beam cluster panels', designed to 'knock out enemy anti-ship missile fire' - and on the other, there are access ports, designed to 'iris' open, and reveal the secondary deck below. Once reversed, the collapsable EF-beam cluster panels disengage, and 'destructure', allowing offensive weaponry to be deployed. She is, of course, fitted with offensive weaponry also; this ranges from kinetic gun-tubes to OTH kinetic missile launchers, or kinetic harpoon launchers; to EF missile tubes; to US missile launchers. They are intended as fleet-killing warships with global reach.
Three Vanguard class ships have been either damaged beyond repair without massive overhaul or utterly destroyed; in the Nargothrond Incident, the IDS [i]Vanguard[/i] suffered broken primary, secondary, and tertiary supertructures when the fragments of the fallen Orbital Battlestation slammed into the Bay of Turath around her. The original IDS [i]Nenya[/i] was destroyed on assignment off the coast of Reichskampfen when Russian Forces launched nuclear weapons at her; she shot down a number of incoming before her point defense systems were overwhelmed. It is projected that several thousand ICBMs, both nuclear and otherwise, must have been launched to guarantee her destruction; of course, only one needed to actually impact. In the Shadow War, the IDS [i]Turath[/i] was lost with all hands along with her attending Battlegroup in an engagement with a massive Whispering Voices flotilla; outnumbered by dozens to one, the IDS [i]Turath[/i] held out for some time before eventually being overwhelmed and destroyed, although her attending Devastator-class cruisers survived mostly intact. It is noteworthy that only one of the three Vanguard class warships lost were actually involved in combat at the time of their destruction, and only two of the three losses can be actually attributed to an enemy; the original IDS [i]Vanguard[/i], although destroyed by an Ardan asset, would not have been lost if Triumvirate of Yut warships had not engaged and all but destroyed the [i]Nargothrond[/i] in orbit.
The Commonality has four such vessels, which serve as the flag vessels for the four oceanic Battlegroups in the CCN: the IDS [i]Vanguard[/i] (rebuilt following the Nargothrond Incident), IDS [i]Nenya[/i] (second to bear the name), the IDS [i]Turath[/i] (second to bear the name), and the IDS [i]Semir-Randil I[/i].
