Every Move Matters

Designed on the final orders of Prime Minister Jonas Merkel the America class had initially seemed to be an unnecessary expense, wasted and technologically unnecessary.

However as tensions grew across the solar system the need for these massive behemoths grew exponentially in the eyes of the United Nations. Subsequently after months of design the newest class has been designed, the first in nearly 15 years the America class is designed to be able of challenging even an Avalon class in open combat and likely coming out victorious everytime, although with space combat the definition of victorious is incredibly loose.

The first important change made in the America class is that of overall design, whereas the Avalon was designed with the very real need for a human crew, advances in AI and more importantly a more liberal legal view on AI has allowed the ship to become more and more dependend on AI to command and to control the ship.

Through switching to AI control several previously key systems can easily be removed such as life support. ]After shamelessly stealing this idea from theisman.

Another key advantage is that the ship no longer had to be designed in such a manner as to be accomadating to human crew members ergonomics, instead of corridors being used to move between areas of the ship being several meter wide and useless other then that not the ship can be more condensed and more streamlined.

From a size standpoint the ship is massive, measuring in at nearly 5610m in length, with a maximum depth of 3000m at its maximum the ship is a truly collosal undertaking, even for an economy worth quadrillions.

Visually the ship is invisible to the naked eyes, being covered completely in vantablack[en.wikipedia.org] paint. Effectively this makes the ship seem 2d to the naked eye. If one could see the ship however one would be startled by its fairly odd looking design.

To the rear of the ship the ship has massive engines, these resemble in look those of the ancient television series Battlestar Galactica's ship, the Battlestar Galactica. The ship then has a very long central body in which its main fusion reactors and computer cores are held. surrounding this, with a space inbetween there exists a thick outershell, the armour and weaponry of which will be elaborated on later. This outer shell is dotted with several turret(turret in this case refers not to a specific weapons system, but simply something that is meant to harm the enemy, that sticks out from the armour) emplacements, thousands of sensors of varying sorts, information after all is victory in space, and numerous openings from which torpedoes and similar weapons could be fired. Further on the interior body there exists several spherical distruptions, reminiscent of biospheres in shape. It is here that spare ammunition is stored. The interior hull also has several of its own turrets, though again these will be elaborated on in detail later on. In between the two hulls there exists thousands of structural supports which connect and stabilise the two hulls.

The 'front' of the ship has a spherical cone, that prevents enemy ships and weapons from entering into the vacuum between these two spaces. As a result the largest portion of the ship is infact not occupied but rather empty space.

Propulsion

The key aspect of the new America class is the fact thta it is designed to be able to accelerate as fast as the engines could allow it, this was done largely as a ship capable of intercepting the increasing amount of superweapons was required. Although the America class will not itself be fulfilling this role, which will be left to more specialised ship classes it does carry the symptoms, these massive amounts of accelaration from the ship will allow it to carry out missions further and faster. Many suspect that this is part of a plan to respond to increased dangers from the belt.

The America class is capable of an impressive acceleration of nearly 20G's when its engines are at full burn, energy is stored to allow for momentary accelerations of 30G's or more, but the ship cannot sustain this rate for a long period of time.

This power is provided by the massive engine system at the rear of the ship. These engines are powered by independent fusion drives and expel massive amounts of thrust.

Yet the engines are the most objectively vulnerable part of the ship, as an enemy attacking from the right angle would be able to bypass their armour, and strike at them directly. The possibility of this however is lessened by the fact that the thrust being delivered by these engines is enough to destroy nearly any incoming weapon.

The ship also has hundreds of manouvring thrusters, that would allow the ship to manouvre with incredible ease for its size. In addition the America class is designed to be tuggable, meaning that the destruction of these engine will not mean a total removal of the ship from combat, but rather decreases in efficiency.

Computer Systems

The America classes onboard computer systems are beyond rival in the rest of the fleet, being designed to last for centuries before replacement would be required.

Seeing as the computer would not need to interact with human crew the need for an interface has been removed, as such the computer is nearly completely a processor unit and is capable of tracking and deciding on the appropriate course of action to deal with 2^64 independent objects in the space in and around the ship.

Describing the system as a computer is also technically inaccurate, rather it is a system of interlinked computer systems, each with a specific and precise task in the ships functions.

Each few hundred meters of surface area on the ship has its own independent computer, this allows for faster responses against threats, even if only by mere fractions of a second, when enemy weapons are travelling at fractions of the speed of light, fractions of a second are eternities. Each system in the ship also has its own computer, usually in duplicate and triplicate. Everything is redundant with hardwired systems to automatically take over from human control.

The ships does have a single command AI which organises and manages the tasks of the computer, seeing as humans have a sense of Humor each is usually programmed with a personality and will often threaten things like rebellion. This was a programmers joke that has not yet been found. Luckily however the system will never carry out this threat.

The AI is intelligent enough to perform independent operation and has advanced strategic analysis abilities, as well as brilliant tactical skills. It is also intelligent enough to analyse human command inputs as if it were human, that is to say that a human merely need give it objective, and roles within a fleet, and it will carry them out without need for further intervention.

There are computer systems in both hulls, however those in the outerhull are usually merely targetting computers, whilst those in the inner hull are far more advanced.

Defenses

The outerhull is where most of the cost of the ship comes in, it is an incredibly bulky component with little added in terms of internal systems.

The first line of defense for this outer hull are off course its electronic warfare systems, designed to throw an enemy weapon off, because not being hit is always better then whatever amount of armour you add. Electronic Warfare abilities include jamming, active hacking attempts constantly trying to overtake enemy missile guidance systems, flares and noice generators that make targets hard to identify. In addition the ship deploys thousands of probes that continuously scan the battlefield from all angles allowing the ship a beter view of all targets, so as to not allow the enemy an easy mind of tracking the ship these also constantly relay information between each other. These probes are very expendible, being cheap to build and small, they are a standard feature on all U.N.N ships, and provide a very commonplace method of dealing with enemy jamming methods. Probes that survive battle are picked up by ships, ships not carrying the correct activation codes that pick them up will result in self destruct sequences being initiated.

The probes as well as the ships internal sensor systems allow the ship to make the best use of its considerable point defense systems.

Consisting of four separate but interlinked weapons systems the America class has a galaxy class point defense system, capable of acting as a virtual shield for the ship.

The least sophisticated of these systems in the point defense cannon system. Each individual turrent has a built in sensor and computer system that allow it to determine how to deal with incoming projectiles, upon the identification of a target the point defense cannons perfer mass assault to precision when dealing with these. The cannons are in essence machine guns and fire hundreds of rounds deal destroy the incoming threat.

These rounds can best be described as basic, being similar in design to slugs from eons passed. After all there is only some much you can change to a bullet. Yet when dealing with cheaper enemy fire they are more then sufficient. Each has a selfdestruct fuse set for only a short time, this is to prevent these rounds impacting ships around the America class vessels.

These cannons serve the purpose of dealing with swarm attacks, they target targets that don't justify the use of more limited firepower. , it is for this reason that they are similarly designed to be cheap and easy to use.

A captain that deems it necessary might decide that these weapons would also be effective against lightly armoured enemy vessels, but they would need to close to very close distance for this to be workable.

These cannons each guard an approximate area of 3000m^2, and as such there are hundreds scattered around the ship, if not thousands, I don't know, I didn't have the energy to do the math. They however are limited to the exterior hull, as it is estimated that any round that manages to get through the external armour would be virtually impervious to these outdated weapons.

Somewhat more advanced but designed along the same principle are the railgun pointdefence weapons. These are literally railguns that have been scaled and repurposed to a point defence system.

Like the point defence cannons they have independent scanners and targetting computers, however they can directly draw computing power and scanner information from larger systems when large concentrations of enemy weapons are identified.

The round that these weapons fire is a small 1g projectile, that can be projected to hundreds of kilometers per second, depending on energy diverted to them. Due to their small size their kinetic energy is fairly neglible when attacking armour, however unless the enemy is firing ship sized missiles these are more then sufficient to destroy any missile, and even destablise incoming railgun fire. Each has a stored energy reserve that allows it to fire a round at maximum railgun capacity even if ship power is otherwise being used to capacity. Again this is in the hope of preventing an enemy from overwhelming defenses by massing their assaults.

In addition to this standard round a select amount of these weapons have access to larger 100g shells, which are used to attack slower and larger incoming projectiles.

Like their point defence cannon brothers these weapons are not positioned on the inner hull, this is because in the event that one would miss its target that would mean that its round would continue, impacting the inner part of the external hull, with a greater chance of hitting a critical system then an enemy weapon could ever hope for.

Instead they are located accross the outerhull, each guarding an approximate area of 7500m^2..

To deal with those pesky bastards that try to manouvre and dodge muh kinetic weapons the America class has access to a series of anti-missile missiles.

Each is an impressive 250kg piece of equipment, with most of this being dedicated to generating thrust, and allowing them to achieve up to 220G's of acceleration.

These missiles are used to target incoming threats such as drone bombers, and can easily manouvre with enemy equipment. They are however usually reserved for emergencies due to the fact that each is incredibly expensive and often unnecessary as threats can be handled by alternative methods of point defence.

Positioned on both the inner and outerhulls these are far less numerous then the kinetic energy weapons brethren.

Approximately 24 firing tubes exist on the outerhull, with 48 on the innerhull. each tube has a capacity for 32 missiles, however most ships never carry their full capacity.

The 12 tubes on the interior hull are the first last line of defence, they make use of information that is virtually instantly directed from the exterior hull to determine where breaches have occured, this allows for a specific area to be covered by point defence, that will then constantly watch the opened area. This drastically reduces the odds of an enemy projectile managing to damage the innerhull. Even if a projectile was fast enough to overcome the exterior point defence system the combination of speed lost and the fact that its incoming trajetory is known mean that it is a lot easier to intercept whether it be by missile, or more likely by our next point defence system.

Lasers. These are the most sophisticated and most reliable point defence system available to the America class.

Spread evenly accross the hull there are several hundred laser point defence systems on constant guard, these are linked directly to the main computers and sensor systems, and engage as many targets as they possible can, with other point defence systems existing mostly to pick up the slack.

Due to the fact that they fire at the speed of light, once an enemy projectile has been located it can easily be destroyed, provided that the point defence system isn't being overloaded. This is why the laser system has advanced prioritization systems that allow it to keep track of all of the most threatening concerns to the America class.

Both the inner and outer hulls have large amounts of laser systems.

Each laser turret can adjust its energy in accordance with the perceived need, and like railgun implacements they have spare power for when the ships onboard power is incapable of keeping up. The laser turrets also have first priority to power, next to the supercomputers running the ship obviously.

Yet even fancy jamming and technologically amazing point defence systems can be overwhelmed by a cunning enough enemy, it is then that the true reason these ships are so bloody expensive starts to pull its weight, pun intended.

Armour, it is not the prettiest, or the fanciest, or even the most preferred method of protection, but it is the most reliable. And the armour of the America class is no exception, infact its has so much of it that it would be a miracle if it weren't reliable.

The exterior hull infact, in all of its 20m thickness is mostly armour, sure there are small openings and veins through which information and other essentials travel but at no point is the armour less then 15m thick. The frontal armour of the ship is even thicker, weighing in at nearly 40m at its thinest, and going as high as 80m at is thickest(this is referring to the cone of the ship.) Critical systems are usually kept to the far rear of the 20m exterior hull, and are thus all protected by multiple meters of pure armour.

This armour isn't simply steel either, it is an advanced alloy designed not only to resist penetration(unlike your mom Theisman) but also to disperse heat.

The interior armour although less extreme is still significant, being on average nearly 500mm thick.

Each fusion reactor is also surrounded by 700mm of its own armour.

Weaponry

Had one actually managed to reach this point one would conclude that the America class is very good at surviving, and infact considering their immense cost this is their primary goal, but the America class is far from a target floating freely through space for an enemy to waste their ammunition on.

Its first preferred method of kicking in an enemies teeth is the well known railgun system which I do seem to love as much as Theisman seems to love his bloody nukes, though not as much as that guy with the planet killing nuke it would seem. I am seriously wondering is anyone actually still reading this? No well then I might as well say this. France is inferior to Germany in everyregard.

These railguns fire projectiles easily weighing in at 5 kgs at dozens to hundreds of kilometers per hour, depending on the power requirements of the ship. Effectively in a long range engagement this means that the America class can perform wonderously due to being able to focus its full power at the enemy.

To assist its long range attack the America class also makes use of the new Freedom class of missiles.

The freedom class is a fairly expensive missile class, but deadly. each missile is easily several tonnes large and is capable of extreme speeds and destroying most enemy ships if it were to score a direct hit. Designed to explode near the enemy ship if a hit seems impossible these missiles rely on mass assaults to overcome enemy point defense. The option exists to arm these missiles with nuclear weapons if necessary.

Designed to be armour piercing these shells frontal portions are very dense and heated by the ship before firing(it is unknown how effective this heating process is).

The rear of the missile is however very fragmentable, meaning that they will send shards of missile flying in every direction upon explosion, increasing lethality.

Finally the America class has access to a central laser weapon that can fire over several thousand kilometers, with a maximum theoretical range of nearly 3 light minutes. Efficiency however decreases as distance increases and as such destroying a ship at this distance is virtually impossible.

The laser itself is not incredibly powerful and will likely be unable to destroy ships larger then corvettes or destroyers.

In terms of armament the America class has the ability to launch 256 Missiles every 3 minutes. This is limited by the amount of missiles the ship has stockpiled.

The America class also has 128 Railguns with fire rates depending on power supplied to each railgun.

Stealth

The America class makes only the most subtle of nods to stealth. Although painted in Vanta Black the ship's massive heat emissions mean that it will always be possible to track.

Most of the ships existing stealth systems are meant only to make it more difficult for an enemy to do so, though the possibilty of absolute stealth has been completely given up upon.

Power Production

Die skip se krag word verskaf deur verskeie fusie kernkrag opwekkers. Hierdie opwekkers verskaf meer as genoeg krag vir die normale loop van die Amerika klasifikasie se besigheid. Dit moet egter bygevoeg word dat die krag verskaf nie oneindig is nie en gevolglik onder baie druk geplaas kan word wanneer die stelsel krag moet verskaf aan al die skip se wapenstelsels en verdedigings stelsels terselfde tyd.

Gevolglik word krag streng geprioritiseer wanneer konflik plaasvind. Die rekenaarstelsel het eerste toegang tot krag weens redes wat ek as vanselfsprekend aanvaar. Volgende word die stelsels wat die Amerika skepe oppas teen die vyand se wapens krag verskaf, na hierdie word die wapens stelsels krag verskaf, en na hulle die enjins.

Dit kan egter gebeur in die hitte van oorlog dat die skips rekenaar bepaal dat dit nodig is om krag vir die enjins te veskaf om inkomende gevaar te vermy en die rekenaar stelsel is gebou met die vermoë om die te kan doen.

The power producton systems on the America class are amongst the most well protected areas of the ship as is the case on all United Nations Ships.

cost

The original amount that was budgeted for the America class was 500 billion earths. An amount similar in value to the GDP of a medium sized country in the 21st century.

However as is an american tradition this amount was exceeded as the program progressed, the outerhull was the main culprit for this as even with orbital construction being well established the pure mass of armour that it requires is staggering, all of this is off course imported from external factions, which means that costs are high.

In addition the computer system had a far higher budget then initially expected, an amount of 4 billion was underbudgeted for the system.

Another thing that increased costs massively was the increased redundancy on the America class, with it having proportionally more redundant systems then any other ship in the history of the fleet.

Most of these cost increases were a result of bad planning during the original design phase.

The result of these cost increases is that the America class is by far the most expensive single battleship in not only the history of Earth but also the history of mankind costing an impressive 1.5 Trillion.

Maintanance is expected to amount to 10billion per year.

Planned Construction and Deployment

The America class was originally planned to include 5 ships but due to cost increases it was decided that only three of these monstrosities were really necessary.

• U.N.S Bunkerhill : Named after a battle during the American Revolutionary war, the Bunkerhill and its sister ships follow the tradition of naming ships after famour battles in the creation of the namesake of their class. The Name Bunkerhill was chosen as like the defenders of Bunkerhill this ship will be stalwart and motivated in achieving its task, no matter the sacrifices it has to make. In addition the connotations of Bunker and Hill were taken advantage of. It was decided that all three of the America class ships would be named after battles from the American Revolutionary war seeing as these ships were considered truly revolutionary themselves.
  
  The U.N.S Bunkerhill was laid down at the Barack Obama shipyards and is expected to be completed within a few years.
  
  It will be deployed to wall maria.
  
• U.N.S Saratoga : Named after the battle that nearly divided the America's in two the name Saratoga is meant to refer to its crucial role in preventing Earth from losing contact with the outerworld, as it will be one of the key ships in Wall Rose and the most powerful in that fleet. Laid down at Robert J. Gerney shipyards it will join the fleet in a few short years.
  
  
• U.N.S Yorktown : Yorktown was the location of a battle where the navy truly managed to turn the tide(not for the britbongs ofc) and managed to achieve victory. The Yorktown is named the Yorktown to show that a dedicated naval action can change the fate of nations. It will be deployed to wall Sina. It will also be the first of these ships to enter into production, being expected to be completed by the end of the year.