Oxford

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 20:15, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

CNS Oxford

   CNS Oxford was the lead ship of an experimental electronic surveillance and attack class.  It appeared in Victoria Per Scientiam by SGTStoner.  It was a small, stealthy vessel with limited combat capabilities designed to surveil enemy targets and gain intelligence about enemy capabilities, resources and possible intentions.  A small mission payload allowed for limited armaments, but the ship was not suited to independent offensive action.

Two electronic warfare pods are fitted on the vessel allowing it to jam enemy radar, RF communications or sensors that use active or passive RF energy.

In the story where the class was introduced, only one vessel was built, which was destroyed in combat. A naval inquiry recommended no further vessels of this design be produced.

The ship is also referred to as a "bat" in The Troubled Celestial River by SGTStoner, the name being given in recognition of the vessel's appearance, the mission it can perform, and because of a play on words in the Japanese language where "bat" and "babysitter" are very close to each other in pronunciation. A Japanese colony adopts the design and builds several of the vessels to conduct surveillance on Rek and on three Sa'arm-occipied worlds they name Hibakari, Habu, and Mamushi which are all part of an intrusion of Sa'arm occupation they call the Serpent Salient.

Class Evolution

Mod 0

The original design included the following features:

• four folding antenna masts hosting a varied array of antennas to intercept signals in the HF, VHF, UHF and low SHF bands
• accommodation for six short-range missiles for self-defense
• a remote antenna array system that could be placed away from the vessel, similar to a towed sonar array
• optical sensors, particle sensors and communications
• four electronic warfare systems, mounted on two struts port and starboard using a new design of focusing transmitter antenna called a "shotgun"

The design was considered insufficiently stealthy and was soon converted to Mod 1.

Mod 1

The improved design borrowed from the F-35 fighter aircraft, removing the antenna masts, and using the surface of the hull as a a flexible antenna matrix. The design featured a flexible mission bay that could accommodate either

• a remote antenna array,
• three anti-radiation missiles,
• three deployment containers of mines, or
• six "gift boxes" which were trojan-horse "mail bombs".

Weapons Development

The initial story described several weapons developments intended for the Oxford which were evaluated to determine the best mix of platform and payload.

Anti-radiation Missiles

• ARM-B is small armor-piercing bomb attached to a small missile designed to impact the center-of-mass of a ship and deliver the warhead into the internals of the ship before a time-delay fuse activates the warhead. Capable of disabling a Sa'arm scout ship.
• ARM-E is a small conventional fragmentation warhead intended to destroy ship-based radar emitters in order to eliminate enemy sensor capabilities
• ARM-G is a small conventional fragmentation warhead intended to destroy ground-based radar emitters from orbit, in order to protect friendly vessels from engagement

Mine Warfare

Three containers of 96 minelets that are effectively Russian RPG missiles that will swarm a target when it enters the middle of a minefield. These can be placed in safe mode by transmitting a digitally-encoded signal, allowing friendly forces to draw the enemy into the minefield.

Gift Boxes

The Oxford can carry six "trojan gift boxes" that are intended to be attractive targets for Sa'arm curiosity. When opened in an environment that has an atmosphere, the pressure change triggers an enclosed bomb to detonate. This is intended to teach Sa'arm to be less curious about Confederacy technology in order to slow the amount of advanced technology adoption by the Sa'arm.

Ship Performance

The ship suffered from several drawbacks, including limited power generation that forced either having the FTL drive or Main Engines online at a time, but not both. Limited medtubes prevented addressing more than one casualty at a time. The ship was fragile and had an extremely limited mission bay to carry weapons. It was relatively slow compared to ships in similar size and would be uncomfortable to man during a long mission.

It was however one of the stealthiest platforms of its time and very capable of conducting electronic warfare and signals intelligence operations.

Recommendations to authors

The creator of this concept recommends the following in future uses of this craft in additional stories

• ensure that the platform drawbacks are prominently demonstrated so as not to make it a "super" platform. It is a limited system, useful in limited situations.
• possibly useful for SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) missions against terrestrial targets using ARM-G.
• Confederacy believes the platform technologies might be put to better use elsewhere, so this won't generally be viewed favorably.
• Treat this like an EA-6B Prowler with little payload capacity or an EP-3 patrol aircraft depending on mission loadout.

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))

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