Talk:National Army Naval Forces (Faneria)

Early Naval Forces Royal Navy

During the later half of the 19th century, the Royal Navy adopted a construction and fleet composition strategy called the 2:1 Plan, which heavily favored regional dominance within the Vandarch Sea instead of seriously challenging foreign great powers on the open ocean.

Civil War

During the Fhainnin Civil War, the Royal Navy initially sided with the Royalists, as the fleet was a point of pride for the Throne and sailors were not subjected to much difficulty or combat during the Fourth Kin War. Naval assets conducted bombardments of rebel positions along the shore and even up the Rhydwel, but were unable to stop the overrunning of their bases, leading the fleet elements within the Vandarch to seek clemency or defect to other countries around the sea, namely Hendalarsk and Eldmora-Regulus.

The Republicans were eager to retain as much of the fleet as possible, but were unable to stop the defection of the majority of the High Seas Fleet, forcing a major reconstruction and retraining project in the following decades.

Revolutionary Peoples' Army Naval Service

Under the RPAN, Fhainnin naval forces changed significantly, with the defection of several ships to other nations becoming an issue as the navy lost many skilled crew to Royalists, many of which fled the country and did not return even after blanket pardons were handed out. As a result, the RPAN was in disarray, as while its new equipment was par with its expected opponents, the officers and crews in charge spent most of the 1910s simply organizing themselves and re-learning how to perform operations.

After 1922 and the rebranding of the RPAN as the Army Naval Bureau, a series of live fire gunnery practices using outdated hulks, along with numerous practice sorties, brought the navy back into some standing. By 1930, the fleet was in stable condition, albeit with a larger compliment of small surface vessels and 6 dreadnaught-battleships compared to the 15 pre-dreadnaughts and 7 dreadnaughts of the Royal Navy before the Revolution. This was partly due to the last Royal dreadnought in service being converted to a prototype aircraft carrier, copying the Urcean experiments of the late 1920s with converted ships, and partly due to the desire to focus on mine warfare due to the dense island environment of the southern Vandarch, where the first confrontation with any HLE naval elements would take place in the event of war.

Second Great War Postwar Reorganization 1978 Reforms Modern Day

The modern Naval Bureau performs several major roles, mainly involving support operations near colonial possessions and protecting metropolitan Faneria. It acts as an antipiracy force, a cargo and supply carrier, and combat force, and natively hosts its own fleet of icebreakers that are often deployed alongside civilian shipping in the Nordska and Kilikas.

Going into the second quarter of the century, the composition of the Army naval service is changing as older, larger warships become slightly less prominent compared to a larger force of smaller surface combatants. While the light support carrier doctrine employed by the Army remains a key point in Fhainnin strategy within the Vandarch Sea and in its littoral waters along the open ocean, budget cuts and the lack of a serious neighboring rival make lobbying for a larger navy a weak political position. Currently, the Army plans to phase out much of its older surface fleet in favor of modern designs. While the total number of heavy surface combatants will drop, a larger array of small vessels is planned. Forays into missile boats in particular are in vogue for white-water operations, though the overall trend in modern naval design is a greater integration of air assets with naval ones, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of new designs take landing pads into account compared to older Fhainnin designs, many of which lagged behind in this area.

Modern Fanerian battlegroup composition segregates tasks into distinct roles for each ship - primarily air defense, mine and antisubmarine warfare, surface warfare, and air support. Generally, any ship can perform multiple roles, but each specializes in a particular field and is expected to operate in that role unless circumstances require otherwise.

Ship design is typically funneled into a single production model, with a great deal of competition between design variants. The design process for lighter Fhainnin vessels also involves prototype construction and testing, and increasingly involves computer simulations as well. The army has displayed gaps in its production lines between ship classes over the years, indicating an ad-hoc design process. It is currently believed that the army is conducting panels to standardize the design process further to create some overlap and ensure regular updates to the naval service's assets.

Technologically, a majority of the fleet is second-line, or constructed between 1980 and 2010, with roughly fifteen percent of its ships being newer and another ten percent or so being constructed prior to 1980. This ageing has made for a considerable cost in maintenance and refits to keep the fleet operational. The main symptom of this was the production of smaller missile boats meant for mass production in the 1970's, bloating the fleet with over fifty light vessels in line with the posturing the navy preferred. In 2012, policy was changed to reflect a growing budget and need to maintain a technological edge rather than rely on dated equipment, demanding that naval production focus on role-dedicated destroyers and air power over the previous cruiser-centered model, along with the discontinuation of later missile boat programs and reforms in the design and planning process.