The New Republic is one of the most frustrating and annoying organizations in terms of fleet maintenance, repair, and building. Until the New Class Program, many of their ships were a hodgepodge of whatever converted, captured, or rebuilt vessels could be found. Doubtless this made it a logistics nightmare for quartermasters and sector maintenance crews, who would have to be able to service just about any ship ever built in the galaxy, from CloakShape fighters to Mon Cal Star Cruisers to ancient Rendili Dreadnaughts.

The New Class Program was designed to bring a large degree of standardization to the New Republic's navy. By maintaining a high degree of both modularity, through the introduction of design twins such as the Nebula-class Star Destroyer and the Endurance-class Fleet Carrier, and of standardization, through the use of similar components in a variety of different classes, the New Republic could minimize inventory storage while maximizing utility of those inventories.

However, by the time of the New Jedi Order, that vision seems to have failed. Notably, we have several new ship classes introduced in the wake of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.
1. Mon Calamari Viscount-class Star Defenders
2. Corellian Strident-class Star Defenders
3. Mon Calamari Mediator-class Battle Cruisers
4. Bothan Assault Cruisers
5. Kuat Drive Yards Republic-class Cruisers
6. Rejuvenator-class Star Destroyers

We also see significant refitting and recommissioning of older ships, such as Mon Cal MC80B cruisers (Harbinger and Mon Adapyne) and Defender-class Star Destroyers outfitted with gravity well generators.

As I have previously discussed, each ship must be designed to fill a specific role in the New Republic's combat echelon. The description of Viscount implies that Star Defenders are intended to be the New Republic's command ships: "It was the largest ship ever produce on [Mon Calamari], nearly twice the size of the battle cruiser they had left behind ... " (VP, 75HC) This establishes a lower limit for its size as about 4km (and incidentally, sets a lower limit for the Mediator-class as 2km). This is significantly larger than any other ship the New Republic has commissioned, and significantly more tonnage than any ship in the fleet except for the two Executor-class Star Destroyers the New Republic possessed at the start of the war.

I believe it is strongly probable that the Strident-class Star Defenders are a political concession. The Corellian shipyards are some of the finest yards in the galaxy, and as a New Republic member capable of producing such ships they no doubt demanded the right to do so. The Strident-class can be therefore taken as a design sister to the Viscount-class, as implied by the designation of both as Star Defenders. Since we have no solid information on this class of ship aside from their production location, further speculation is unsubtantiated and unwarranted.

The Mediator-class cruiser is seen in action twice, first at the Osarian-Rhommamool conflict at the beginning of Vector Prime, and then at the defense of Mon Calamari in The Unifying Force. Both times they appear as front-line combat ships, taking the role in which the Empire would have placed Imperial-class Star Destroyers. This ship, therefore, is a replacement for the MC80 and MC90 series of cruisers, designed as a primary space combat vessel rather than a converted passenger liner like the MC80s.

The Bothan Assault Cruiser is an 850m long starship bristling with energy weapons and carrying a significant number of starfighters for its small size. While I have elaborated on its probable reason for existence in a previous article, these ships do exist and are being provided to the New Republic for use. Prior to the events of Star By Star, and subsequent to them as well, Ralroost served as Traest Kre'fey's flag vessel. While a fleet commander is allowed discretion in his choice of which ship to place his flag on, few commanders will choose a ship that is not designed as a primary combat vessel. We also see Ralroost in the thick of battles several times. The Bothan Assault Cruiser, therefore, is an additional primary combat ship class.

The Republic-class cruiser is a small, fast KDY vessel that is cheap and quickly produced in mass quantities by droid workers (courtesy of Walter Jon Williams, Official Forums). By this designation it is therefore a support vessel, probably similar to the old Carrack-class light cruiser, designed to support larger ships and protect them from overwhelming fire by large numbers of enemy warships.

Rejuvenator-class Star Destroyers are an interesting proposition. The Rejuvenator from Vector Prime was an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer. This means that she was not the first of a new breed of warship, unless the New Republic decided to summarily rename all her Imperial-class Star Destroyers -- a dubious proposition at best. However, Rejuvenator was the first capital ship to fall to the Yuuzhan Vong. This makes her worthy of remembering, doubtless, and thus a new class of Star Destroyer commissioned during the war is named after that warship. However, aside from the fact that ships of this class were present at Mon Calamari, we know nothing about them. The New Republic has shown a desire to have dedicated carrier-type vessels which were also combat-capable, such as the Endurance-class. This is in contrast to the Empire's Strike-class cruisers, which were configurable as TIE carriers but unable to defend themselves effectively. It is possible that this class of warship is a modification to the Defender-class Star Destroyer's hullform, intended to turn a primary combat vessel into a carrier/warship. Success with the Endurance-class carrier may have caused the New Republic to adopt this as a standard platform. However, this is complete speculation and should by no means be taken as factual. It's also possible that the New Republic simply desired a fourth class of primary combat vessel. Also possible is that the New Republic decided to rename the refitted Defender-class Star Destroyers and turn them into the Rejuvenator-class. Since the ships are already named for historical memories of the New Republic, aside from Olovin the reference of which I am unsure, this would be fitting for the class.

The Defender-class Star Destroyers are the most straightforward of the new classes. They are simply an older class which has been retrofitted to carry gravity well generators. They are designed as primary combat vessels and starfighter carriers, similar to the older Nebula-class and the even older Imperial-class.

The most confusing vessels to make an appearance are the MC80B star cruisers. These ships are over thirty years old, and were never designed as combat warships to begin with. Yet they have been resurrected for the final stages of the Yuuzhan Vong war. Is the New Republic so pressed for ships that they are required to pull these ships out of storage, and then assign them to two of their most prestigious generals, Keyan Farlander and Garm Bel Iblis? Certainly these are not the only two such ships in the New Republic's fleet; there must be a decent number of them in the fleet. Why recommission these ships at all? If the shipyards are already unable to meet the demand for new capital ships, it makes little sense to further tie up their resources retrofitting older ships to be capable of fighting in a galaxy that has progressed through nearly twenty years of technological advances since the class was decommissioned. (Ed. note: This can easily be explained by realizing that, in EU technology terms, Walter Jon Williams simply does not have the background to effectively write in the NJO period. Similar issues to this appear throughout Destiny's Way. While I enjoy his books immensely, DW has several glaring issues, and this is one.)

As an additional note, if the cruiser in Star By Star is not a Republic-class cruiser ("Luke pushed the stick forward and followed Mara under the flaming belly of a kilometer-long KDY New Republic battle cruiser." [SBS, 540HC]), then we have an additional class of KDY cruiser in use by the New Republic. Since we also see the New Republic recommissioning Lancer-class frigates and other older ships, we find that the New Republic has likewise started placing several different classes of support ships in overlapping roles.

Starfighters: In the New Republic itself, we see several new breeds of X-wings, the last of which is the XJ3 series. We also see Series 4 E-wings used in a significant number of battles, and A-wings present as well. Notably absent are B-wings and K-wings. B-wings do appear in a very few battles, but are limited in use. K-wings make no appearance in the series. This may be due to their limited survivability profile: the K-wings of the Fifth Fleet took heavy losses in the Yevethan war, and maneuverable, heavily armed fighters like coralskippers would eat the K-wings for breakfast, literally. Additionally, K-wings are designed to deliver massive amounts of punishment to a target. When the target can be shielded by a significant number of black holes, the K-wing is possibly unsuited for a bombing run. While technological advances would help in this regard, the K-wing is still an easy target for plasma cannons.

So, we see the New Republic continuing to commission new classes of warships, while inexplicably recommissioning warships twenty years out of date, and likewise not diversifying their fleet as the New Class Program was an attempt to do. This means that either the New Class Program was a failure, despite its promising inception in the Yevethan incident, or the New Republic is primarily focused on building major combat warships for the Yuuzhan Vong war. The latter is inconceivable, since many battles have been lost by not having a balanced fleet or army. The former is inexplicable, since the new warships performed superbly and as far as I am aware have introduced no problems into the Republic navy. Instead of continuing the trend, the Republic diversifies their fleet, causing more logistical problems. Perhaps a concession to political interests, this is a strange trend for the Republic to follow, as the navies of the Old Republic and the Empire had a very high degree of standardization compared to the New Republic, and were very successful at their jobs. Compared to the fleet of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which contained several different ship classes, the navy of the Old Republic was remarkably successful once mobilized.

No definite conclusions can be drawn from this article, but it seems the New Republic is again diversifying their fleet for unknown reasons. Whether they are political, tactical, or brought on by the desperation of losing a galaxy-wide war for survival, it would be nice to have explanations and examples of the roles of each.