National Army Naval Forces (Faneria)

The Army Naval Bureau is the seaborne component of the Fhainnin Armed Forces, managing a fleet of hundreds of surface craft and submarines. It is the predominant naval power in the Vandarch Sea and the primary means by which Faneria projects military power globally.

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After 1922 and the rebranding of the RPAN as the Army Naval Bureau, a series of live fire gunnery practices using outdated hulks, along with numerous practice sorties, brought the navy back into some standing.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.

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.

Doctrine
In Fhainnin designations, ships under 3000 tons displacement full load are classed as corvettes or frigates, while ships 3000-9500 tons are classed as destroyers. Cruisers are rated at 9500-18,000 tons. Larger ships are designated more informally on the basis of role. Typically, a task force of Fhainnin ships will be a select core of capital vessels or a single capital ship, which will be attended by a mixed compliment of destroyer craft. In the mid-20th century, destroyers were split into fleet defense, anti-submarine, and anti-ship roles; after the 1978 Reforms, destroyers were split into 'light' and 'heavy' variants, with light destroyers being tasked primarily with ASW and mine duties with a missile compliment slanted heavily towards surface-to-air combat, while heavy destroyers feature a much larger compliment of missiles for both surface-to-air an surface-to-surface attack. While both types are capable of any general destroyer task, divided duties are considered a way of improving individual ship performance.

Design and Procurement
Future plans for the Navy involve an expansion of the destroyer fleet from 66 active service vessels to eighty, while allowing aging-out to reduce the number of heavy surface ships - namely dropping to 18 cruisers and only a single battlecruiser to act as the flagship of the service. In addition, many of the existing older destroyers will be refitted to reflect a greater expected need for anti-air duties given the increasing importance of air-based radar and anti-ship missiles in naval warfare, while the newer ships will primarily be split along ASW/mine operations specialization and fleet defense, with both having anti-shipping capability. It is believed both new variants will primarily deliver anti-ship munitions through VLS systems rather than launch tubes as most previous vessels have.