(RP) ATISAIN Peregrine-class Frigate "JDA Cradle"

The Peregrine-class Heavy Corvette remains the backbone of the Imperial Navy well into the 46th Century. The class is optimised for ship-to-ship combat and patrol duties, with powerful sublight fusion engines, thick armour and some of the most powerful capacitor arrays fitted to corvette-class warships in Aquarian history. However, due to this, the vessel's designation as a 'low mass' corvette-type warship dictates the overall volume and mass of the warship. As such, Imperial Navy draughtsmen were forced to omit the inclusion of a Jump Drive Array, which would have added considerable size to the hull of the ship.

This is a limitation shared by many First-Gen imperial starships of the Corvette and even larger Frigate-class. However, as technological developments continued, Imperial Engineers made major enhancements to existing JDA technology - specifically in the form of reducing the power and volume requirements of the systems. The latest iteration of JDA modules deployed by the Imperial Fleet in ~4600 A.D are small enough to equipped to corvette-sized warships, and even more impressively; to be powered by them. However, due to the complexity of retrofitting such systems to existing, well-established designs, a medium to long-term temporary solution was needed.

Lack of FTL was long recognised as a drawback of the existing Peregrine-class corvettes: the class requires deployment into another system by means of a Carrier-class warship, such as a Hydra-class Fleet Carrier or even ';piggybacking' underneath the fleet's standard Light Cruiser, the SP-class escorts. While effective for the escort role, this heavily limited the Peregrine's capability as a standalone patrol vessel, a role for which it was very well suited in-system.

The Imperial Navy's "Relevance upgrade program" to the Peregrine-class included an external docking system that allows the vessel to attach to external systems (for example it can now carry the Navy's 'WTD Deterrent' SPARTAN-8 Missile). Due to the reduced power and size requirements of new generation JDA modules, an external FTL-capable "cradle" was developed that allows the Peregrine-class to enter short to medium-range subspace transitions without the support of a larger ship.

Imperial Navy Peregrine-class (Pattern 3 'RUP') equipped with an external JDA cradle. Note the cradle's interference with the warship's forward ventral D-type hardpoints.

The Cradle itself is powered both by the corvette's reactors and its own, dedicated reactor array. Furthermore, the cradle is also equipped with advanced SDD/spatial array sensors that augment the corvette's own sensors array, allowing it to fulfil the deep recon role more effectively. The cradle is not equipped with its own propulsion systems: If entering combat (the cradle restricts the turret traverse of the parent corvette), the corvette must disconnect from the cradle and return to collect it after an engagement ends. This limits the capability to low-intensity patrol or deep recon operations, but provides the flexibility to deploy small, fast moving corvettes to nearby systems instead of larger ships.