Himawari-class escort carrier

Development
Following the Second Hyperpower War, the Empire realised the need for greater fighter cover against the Interstellar Union's heavy use of fighters and bombers. The Imperial fleet carriers were too few, and too large and unwieldly to support patrol formations, and many smaller formations were defeated by the Union's use of small craft. So they needed an escort carrier solution, and the Himawari-class was that solution to an extreme, being almost purely a carrier with very little in the way of offensive armament, breaking heavily from Imperial warship doctrine.

Description
The Himawari-class escort carriers are 340 metres in length and have a triangular shape, with the point of the triangle at the fore of the vessel. The bridge is located at the front of the vessel, and includes both the cruising bridge and the primary aerospace control centre. A protected command information centre for command during combat situations is located just behind the bridge.

A pair of magstrips are located on the dorsal surface of the vessel, with craft brought up to the launch facilities via four airlock-equipped elevators, one for each hangar. As the dorsal surface is largely featureless with the exception of the magstrips and elevators, the dorsal surface has been nicknamed "the field" due to its resemblance to a terrestrial airfield. The hangars are located towards the aft of the vessel on the ventral side, with the four hangar bays compartmentalised to prevent the spread of fire and to protect against explosive decompression. Each hangar can be opened to facilitate light craft recovery operations, or direct takeoffs without magstrip operations. Standard operating procedures during combat are to fully depressurise all of the hangars to reduce the risk of fire, explosive decompression, and to skip the relatively lengthy airlock procedure when sending craft up to "the field".

Each Himawari-class carrier has a capacity for up to 48 light craft, which may be a mixture of fighters, bombers, landers, shuttles, and others, enabling the Himawarai-class to support almost any mission. These include fleet escort duties, aerospace superiority, surface suppression, acting as an orbit-to-surface staging area or assault ship, and many more. This provides the Imperial Navy with versatility that it did not have before.

Very lightly armed for a vessel of this size, the Himawari-class carriers rely mainly on their fighter wings and escort ships for protection, a major deviation from traditional Imperial starship design. Each ship is equipped with 10 Kirino Dynamics 40 mm Yamabushi-5 CIWS systems for close-in defence against enemy craft and missiles, as well as a 16-cell Type-41 VLS that is typically equipped with light anti-craft missiles. Two Type-32 Dual-Purpose 90 mm railguns in dual turrets are located flanking the bridge

With much of the internal space as possible devoted to the aerospacecraft handling facilities and fuel storage, the crew quarters and amenities on the Himawari-class are spartan and cramped despite its size, earning the vessels the ire of many Imperial Navy personnel. The ships are often referred to negatively as "flying airstrips", with the connotation that the ship is merely the airstrip, lacking the amenities and comfort of a larger "airbase".

Himawari-class ships have Encrypted Tightbeam datalink capability to interface with other ships' Kusanagi Integrated Combat System. Aerospace Control has access to the new Gyotsukai 3D Aerospace Management System which assists with simultaneous launch, operations, and recovery functions, enabling the Himawari-class to reliably and efficiently manage its aerospace wing.