Sloops and Sloop Carriers, an evolution of Naval Combat (1958, U.S. Navy Proceedings)

As humanity began to expand beyond the Sol system, sailors began to face a new threat. Following the arms races that proceeded the War of the Worlds and the subsequent wartime production in the decade before the Second Age of Exploration, the great powers were faced with an overabundance of warships, far beyond the ability of their peacetime naval budgets to support. Most of these vessels were scrapped or demilitarized and sold to private concerns, but no small number of smaller warships made it into the hands of less scrupulous buyers, leading to a sharp rise in piracy as humanity spread across the stars.

The navies of the Great powers were unfit for the task of combating these pirates. Their ships were designed for the massive fleet actions of the War of the Worlds and operated under inflexible doctrines. Worse still, their quickly growing territories and low budgets stretched their fleets thin. In 1918, the French Marine Astrale began a development program for a small, cheap, anti piracy vessel. This program would complete in 1920 with the mass production of the Confiance Class sloop of war. A mere 20 meters long, the Confiance class mounts a single spinal gravolytic cannon and carries a small number of torpedoes. The sloop has a standard crew of five, with room for a 10 man boarding party. Nearly a hundred Confiance class sloops were built by the Marine Astrale before construction ceased in 1930. Similar ships were adopted by the other colonial powers, with notable examples being the American Crawford class and Brittanic Aegis class sloops.

During anti piracy actions, sloops would typically operate in groups of 3-5, and either independently patrol shorter shipping lanes or dock to a larger merchant vessel(s) for longer patrols, due to their small size limiting their range. Sloops were heavily used by the Brittanic Trading Company, due to their nature as a sprawling colonial empire and parliament's hesitancy to allow the company to build proper warships. By the time of the Britannic War of Independence, the company fielded several large sloop carriers, converted cargo freighters designed to support and maintain large formations of sloops. While a single sloop represented relatively little threat, large formations of them could overwhelm a larger ship, and their flexibility allowed for tactics that confounded officers used to more transitional naval combat.

Sloops and their carriers became the enduring symbol of the Brittanic War of Independence in the eyes of the public, kicking off a much wider adoption of sloop based tactics.

In the years following the Brittanic War, the sloop would shrink, as advances in weapons and propulsion technologies and automation reduced both the size of components and the crews needed to operate them. The sloop of today has a crew of two or three sailors and is largely unable to operate independently, instead relying on it's carrier for long distance travel as well as maintenance and other support. The sloop carrier has also evolved. Purpose built carriers can carry dozens or even hundreds of sloops, and operate as the centerpiece of larger formations