The modern Sea Bureau performs numerous tasks, and oftentimes its ships are not even operated by Army personnel, at least entirely - the Bureau's patrol craft and most of its icebreakers, while registered as military ships, are operated by various minor organizations involved in customs, coastal patrol, ice clearing, and antipiracy operations in Fhainnin coastal waters and waterways. This practice is due both to a desire to inflate the official numbers of ships available to the Army for public image and posturing as well as easy tracking of strategically valuable and otherwise armed vessels outside the direct command structure of the Army itself. As a result, some vessels are discounted entirely in terms of actual military significance.
As a result, the Sea Bureau takes on a long list of roles - antipiracy, coast guard, customs and shipping escort, combat operations, transport, rescue, and first response duties all fall within the maritime forces' jurisdiction, only then breaking into delegation to civilian government organizations.
Organization
Insignia
Doctrine
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.
Faneria