The board that it was worth looking into, and did additional research and refined the proposal before submitting it to the Terran Joint Command. However, at the time, the leaders at the Pentagon believed that ship designs that would be shared with them by the Republic would be sufficient for their fleet of the future, and that section of the report was disregarded.įour years later and two years after the Clone Wars, in 1996, Newport News Shipbuilding forwarded the full, original report to the board of directors for Terran Starship Industries, the production company that handled construction of warships for the Terran Starfleet.
In a report to the Pentagon, the company included a section about the possibility of constructing a ship 15 kilometers or larger, which they termed a Super Star Destroyer. In their studies of Separatist warship designs, the American company Newport News Shipbuilding began to realize that it would perhaps be centuries before the Terran Alliance could produce warships at a rate quick enough to compete with major intergalactic powers, and began researching the possibility of constructing a ship many times larger than any warship of the time. The Freedom class was first conceived during the Clone Wars in 1992. The Freedom class was the first class of Terran warship to be designed from the beginning with railguns in their design, although other classes of ship would later incorporate railguns later on in their production runs. This level of firepower was equivalent to over 150 Imperial class Star Destroyers, and almost twice the amount of firepower of an Executor class ship. The Freedom class had the largest armament of any known warship, with over 10,000 different turbolaser batteries, 600 different ion cannon batteries, 150 cruise missile launchers, 200 point defense missile launchers, 350 CIWS point defense batteries, and 60 railguns. It was also capable of carrying all of the troops' equipment, including up to 1,000 tanks and walkers. The ship often carried up to 60,000 soldiers, with a maximum capacity of 100,000, equivalent to 5 divisions. The class was also well equipped for ground invasion. However, when fully loaded, the class could carry 1,800 starfighters and 500 bombers. Most of the time, the ships carried a reduced capacity of 500 starfighters and 100 bombers. The hangar bay aboard the Freedom class was larger than a Venator class Star Destroyer. The ship's shield generators, believed by some to be the most capable shield generators in existence, were kept within the ship and protected by a layer of armor that was thick enough to protect them but thin enough to allow the shield generators to operate properly. Therefore, unlike Imperial ships including the Executor class, all of the Freedom-class' detection systems, including ship detection systems and SIGINT equipment was all kept inside the bridge and forward hull. The designers of the Freedom class considered the protection of their various systems and shield generators to be paramount. The Freedom-class also possessed a shorter "tail" than the Executor class, and the stern sloped down slightly at the end to allow for weapons emplacements to cover the ship's stern. The bridge was also much more heavily armored than on the Executor class. However, the Freedom class did not possess the cityscape found on the Executor class, and it's bridge lay almost flat against the hull. From a distance, they looked very similar to the Executor class. The Freedom-class was built on the classic dagger-shape ship concept that had been used for millennia in the Andromeda Galaxy.