Lenin-class Battlecruiser

From Acw

The flagship commissioned in 2173, the Lenin class of Battlecruisers was an experiment in weapons system design. Conventional Battlecruiser designs featured combinations of offensive anti-capital ship weapons. The Lenins' main armament was an ion cannon powered by an immense capacitor connected to a secondary nuclear reactor, for anti-capital ship fire, and a series of Nuclear missiles, directly in contravention of the Treaty of Io.

This odd choice was to allow the Lenins to sit back from a combat and pound enemy capital ships, while still threatening the planet below with nuclear strikes. The ion cannon had an innovative feature that allowed the reactor to charge two separate capacitor arrays, which powered two separate barrels. This removed cooldown time, a constant problem for early energy weapons.

In practice the weapons systems were a failure, as the main armament was still too slow-firing to keep enemy cruisers from closing to combat range, and worse, the two turreted barrels were mounted on opposite sides of the ship, so could not both be brought to bear on a target that was not directly to either side of the ship. The Nuclear armament, while a deterrent to planetside troops, could not be deployed in any meaningful military sense against opposing vessels.

As the shortfalls were realised, the ships in the class were upgraded to carry conventional missiles in place of nuclear ones, and the Russian nuclear arsenal was gradually shifted into its carriers between 2184 and 2192. Between 2227 and 2238 the class was gradually decommissioned and scrapped.

Ships built

• Lenin (III)
• Zinoviev
• Kamenev (II)
• Rykov
• Lunacharsky