Shrike-class

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The Shrike-class Light Attack Craft is a fictional class of spaceship in David Weber's Honorverse, a series of science fiction novels which depict space warfare in the 41st Century. In the Honorverse, Light Attack Craft (LAC) are small, non-hyperspace capable warships with light armament and scarce protection. As such, they have been considered to not have a role in heavy fleet combat, as they were easy targets for more powerful vessels and being more suitable for patrol and customs duties. However, thanks to technological advances originated in the Manticoran Alliance (one of two factions engaged in a long and brutal war), the LAC were reintroduced as a viable warship type, being carried through hyperspace by massive carrier vessels and fighting much in the manner of an aircraft carrier and its air wing. It is Manticore's first advanced LAC. It is armed with a 150-cm graser (a gravity-lensed gamma radiation beam), four missile tubes with five missiles each, four countermissile launchers with thirteen countermissiles each, and six point defense laser clusters, all forward facing. They are also equipped with sidewalls, a bow wall and a life boat. The Royal Manticoran Navy also produced variants of the original class known as the Shrike-A and Shrike-B classes. The Shrike-B traded the lifeboat and its hangar for four countermissile launchers and six point defense laser clusters facing aft. The countermissile magazine was increased to one hundred, evenly divided fore and aft.

Effects on Tactics

Prior to the introduction of the Shrike, the LAC was considered too light to be a proper warship. This was less due to lightness of armour or sidewalls (the gravitic shields used in the Honorverse for defense), than on the limited beam of the spacecraft. Because it is impossible (within the physics as defined in the series) to raise a bow-wall on a starship without interfering with its drive system, most weapons are placed along the side of the ship, and fire through pre-arranged gaps in the sidewall, known as gun ports. Therefore, the maximum size of weapon that could be placed on a ship was limited by its beam. Shrikes take advantage of their light mass and use more primitive maneuvering systems to turn the ship. This allows a Shrike to accelerate to attack speed and range, and then raise its bow-wall. This cuts its forward acceleration, but the ship can still turn to face an opponent. Rather than engaging ships with its broadside weapons, the Shrike was therefore able to engage with its forward mounted weapons, without exposing an unshielded 'throat'. Forward-mounted weapons can run the complete length of a spacecraft, allowing them to be much larger than broadside weapons. The 150-cm graser is described as being equal in size to a battleship's sidewall graser, and the Shrikes are fielded in packs. This gives a wing of Shrikes both heavy firepower and tactical flexibility. On top of that, the loss of even a complete wing of Shrikes is less expensive, in both materiel and lives, than the loss of a battleship.

See also: Defensive technology in the Honorverse