Battlefleet Lambda -

“Ten thousand year-old hulks crewed by halfwits and thugs, led by privateers. Scum, through and through” High Lord Gort on Battlefleet Lambda

The Sector’s Imperial Naval defenders are, more diplomatically, described as shaped by its circumstances, those being that any ship worth a damn was withdrawn to reinforce the Cadian Gate shortly before the Sector was isolated. What was left, mainly reserve ships with half-trained crews, have struggled ever since.

In the immediate aftermath of isolation, the Navy’s two main tasks were to continue with the usual mixture of anti-piracy operations flying the flag and across the Sector. The second, more urgent and dangerous, was the suppression of the rebellious governors.    

For the first task, a large number of smaller ships, frigates and destroyers, was required as these groups would need to range far and wide and do so quickly. The rival forgeworlds and the smaller shipyards were on hand to churn out the required escorts and the Naval academies and press gangs worked to people crew. 

Falchion Frigates were and are a mainstay of the fleet, robust and well armed warships whose slow speed was somewhat offset by their endurance allowing months’ long patrols 

Cobra Destroyers always remained the less-loved cousin of the Falchion, their lesser armement and higher fragility being weighed against its  higher speed and found wanting. Nevertheless, Cobras fill the lonely niche of fast attack vessel, alone in among its sister classes. 

As the suppression took its toll, increasingly large numbers of corvettes were built to take the place of more capable escorts in convoys. The smallest, the Cutlass Corvette, was designed as a Sword class escort in miniature, puny ships barely able to keep ahead of the merchant ships they protected, these tiny ships were expended in vast quantities and view as a short step above the kind of attack craft carried aboard a cruiser. 

In the later half of the suppression the first new light cruisers started to be commissioned in the battlefleet. These were almost entirely voss-pattern warships, slower than scout-cruisers but with more powerful weaponry. These were the most powerful of the Battlefleet’s newly built warships. 

The second task, taking the war to the governors’ home worlds, required the kind of armour and firepower only found in capital ships, which had been stripped out from the fleet...but this will have to wait until next time!