Athens-class escort frigate

"Noisy, slow and unreliable? Why does the UNSC even bother with such an old ship?"

- Anonymous ensign, on the Athens-class frigate.

The Athens-class frigate (: FFG) and mockingly called the Pancake Frigate by servicemen, is an ancient line of light-tonnage combatant utilised by the during the. Introduced towards the end of, the Athens-class frigate was never a popular vessel even in it's hayday. Renowned for being slow, poorly armed and later unreliable, they nevertheless had advantages with their powerful sensor systems and incredible durability for a ship of it's size. It is because of this latter advantage that saw the ship being kept in service for the better part of seventy years, outliving many of it's more fragile replacements.

The Athens-class frigate was first introduced by the up-and-coming Reyes-McLees Corporation in, to supplement and eventually replace it's predecessors. Failing to find popularity from it's intended customers, these frigates would be deployed in colonial backwaters, which demanded ruggedness from escort ships operating there. Thankfully, the unexpected escalation that characterised the early would keep these ships in production. Their crew-inefficiency and durability were crucial to preventing many ships of the class from being stolen, expanding their manufacturing time up until. It was at this point that ships based around the revolutionary became at their most popular, pushing the Athens ever-closer to extinction. Eventually, the discovery of a lethal reactor defect in would see the entire class scheduled for decommissioning and scrapping.

Fortunately, the sudden attacks within the from an  would see all previously-decommissioned ships being pulled back into the fleet. A massive refitting campaign was conducted to bring every non-scrapped vessel back up to modern standards, which included the Athens-class. Unlike most other ships, the Athens actually proved capable of resisting multiple hits, allowing it to support larger cruisers for longer. Brought back into production, they would serve as capable escort vessels, though they would fail to stem the tide of the encroaching Covenant fleets. While production was once again stopped in, enough were made that they would remain a common sight towards the war's end. Once the war ended, the class continued to serve for only a few years before being scrapped to usher in the UNSC's new escort ships.