Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
In 970 the Karin Pacification campaign began and during the next seven years the 3951st Imperial Marine Regiment of the 208th Fleet earned the enduring enmity of the populace of Karin/Five Sisters. The pacification campaign lasted until disarmament of the last planetary militias was finally achieved in 977. Two years later in 979 the Third Frontier War began, during which the Zhodani Navy were able to capture Porozolo/Rhylanor in 980, setting the stage for the siege and reduction of Rhylanor/Rhylanor itself. The Third Frontier War would grind on for several more years until 986, through which time there were substantial numbers of commerce raids by naval forces and a marked increase in pirate activity all across the Spinward Marches.
The Five Sisters subsector was not spared the depredations of pirate attacks during the war, particularly those made by the more "adventurous" cartels operating out of bases in the neighboring District 268 and (of course) Sword Worlds subsectors. There was a very real fear that the communications and supply lines (both civilian and military) used by the Five Sisters subsector could be severed by marauding bands of corsairs and stepped up pirate activities.
One response to the stressful years of the Third Frontier War that survived into more modern times was the development of what came to be known as the Five Sisters Clipper capable of traversing the Greater Collace Rift that divides the coreward Sisters' Reach and Bowman Arm of the Spinward Main from the rimward Collace Arm of the main. Although moderately successful as a commercial transport, the long range capacity of the class was more suited to arbitrage of small speculative trade cargoes than bulk shipping in larger volumes per jump. The 208th Fleet had need of ships with a 4 parsec range to bridge the gap between Karin and Wonstar securely to meet multiple mission role needs, ranging from revenue and customs enforcement. policing, patrol and pirate hunting to logistics lift transport of both personnel and materiel between naval and scout bases scattered around the subsector.
Due to limited budgets and a newfound appreciation for long logistics chains that stretched all the way back to the Lunion and Glisten subsectors to trailing (which could be harassed and/or severed at inconvenient times, even by non-state actors), the 208th Fleet command staff determined they needed a new class of starship that could be built and supported locally within the subsector. The type A shipyards at Karin and Iderati, which at the time were on the verge of advancing to TL=12 were the obvious choices for such an effort, primarily due to a lack of alternatives. A sustained technology transfer operation bankrolled by Imperial Navy budget allocations was needed to raise both Karin and Iderati up to TL=12 standards in the early 1000s to support the 208th Fleet's shipbuilding program.
In true naval fashion, it was decided that what the fleet needed was a J4 ship that could (when needed) fill the role of a Patrol Corvette in combination with an even better external cargo loading capacity than a Five Sisters Clipper could boast of within a 600 ton (or less) streamlined hull for wilderness ocean refueling. The new class would need to be capable of at least J1/M1 at full external load and include sufficient range for double jumping without midpoint refueling through use of L-Hyd drop tanks. Additionally, the new class should not exceed a TL=12 limit while also requiring minimal logistics support and replenishment between annual overhaul maintenance cycles.
The first response from the naval architect's office was to pointedly marvel at the escape velocity achieved by the requirements board without any need for gravitics.
Following an heroic effort within the naval architect's office on Karin to reconcile this laundry list of seemingly incompatible (if not impossible) requirements, what they finally produced (after some trial, error and renegotiation with the requirements board) would eventually come to be known as the Karin Corvette. The original block 0 prototypes for testing were superceded by the block 1 production run of the class, followed by minor system integration tweaks periodically every ~30 years or so afterwards based on operational experience with the class in service in anticipation of end of life retirement of the first ships in that block run needing to be replaced. By 1105 the current block 3 version is at the mid-point of this periodic refresh cycle and is due for an update to block 4 standards for new builds at some point towards the end of the next decade.
