UNSC Newcastle

"There was never a point where we had any technological advantage. Orbitors like the Newcastle were long outgunned, outmanoeuvred, and outperformed by ships built in the 2150s, let alone those destroyers built after the Rainforest Wars. We only got lucky - those kills we got were thanks to either support from other ships, or in combination with mines. And even with them, she took her casualties - but in spite of all the hull breaks, she kept pulling through in ways the Perth or Sydney couldn't... (It will) be a sad day when the Admiralty decides to scrap her. The Sydney deserves immortalisation."

- Captain (ret.) Christine Knowles, during an audio interview, c. 2184

The UNSC Newcastle (: DDG-73), originally commissioned with the HMAS prefix, was the sole surviving pre- combat orbitor that was originally for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) before being transferred over to the. Named after the port-city of Newcastle, New South Wales, the Newcastle was the second ship of the Canberra-class to be built. Like all members of her class, she was constructed in the Simpson desert-based Anderson Shipyards, with many of her components and superstructure blocks manufactured by BAE Systems Australia and the Australian Shipbuilding Corporation. Despite beginning construction in 2127, issues with the development of a self-sustaining, Australia's inexperience with shipbuilding and the required imports of many necessary components meant that she suffered numerous construction and testing delays. She was finally launched in 2131, and was commissioned following a lengthy set of space trials in 2135.

As part of her duties, the HMAS Newcastle participated in training exercises alongside the much larger United Republic of North American fleet, performed extended border-patrol duties, and guarded the merchant vessels travelling between Earth and Mars. Her defining moment before the was during the Belt Piracy Crisis, where she proved her necessity by capturing or destroying twelve hijacked freighters and fighting a rogue Indian frigate to a standstill.

Unfortunately, technology quickly overturned the few refits the Newcastle had, and by 2158 she was among the ships being considered for decommissioning in favour of a. Thankfully, the eruption of the in  and the escalation in conflict saw her potential scrapping being put on hold for the duration of the. Already seeing some action unlike many of her later and more capable successors, she would be donated to the newly-emerged as part of the Australian contribution. She would see most of her time in combat against the remnants of the Martian People's Republic, either guarding the vulnerable logistical ships they preyed upon or screening the carriers. Despite the skill of her crew, she was forced back for repairs on six occasions due to ambushes from their adversaries before being relegated to a training ship.

When the Interplanetary War finally came to a close, the UNSC initially considered decommissioning her for good or using her as a target ship. Fortunately, a concerted effort by Australian naval veterans saw them volunteering as the caretakers of the long-obsolete Newcastle. Set down in a dock between Newcastle and, she became a museum ship dedicated to the lives all Australian servicemen lost in space. Kept in working condition, she would remain spaceworthy even by the. It was here that the Newcastle was finally destroyed, being used as a fireship in a vain attempt to stop the invasion of Sydney. There are currently no plans in place for a replacement replica, and due to the cost of rebuilding the country, it is likely that this will ever be a possibility.

Design
The UNSC Newcastle was built as part of the Australian Space Defence Program (ASDP), an ambitious plan put forward by the Australian Minister of Defence to field ten spaceborne warships by 2130, to complement the two Lightning-class scout orbitors they already had in service. While the Australia-class space carrier was created to fulfil interplanetary force protection and coordination, and the Desert-class spaceplane fulfilled all minor roles including logistics, the Canberra-class combat orbitors was expected to engage similar-sized ships in theoretical combat situations. Such a ship was expected to shoot down missiles and with a variety of missiles, deploy their own strikecraft and probes, and provide fire support to planetary armies.

Measuring 183 metres in overall length and weighing in at over ten thousand metric tonnes, the Newcastle was smaller than most modern in the twenty-sixth century. She had a very shallow arrowhead profile, which starts with a blunt nose which houses most of the ship's sensor equipment and her eight primary. Despite not being designed for operations within a planet's atmosphere, her hull is streamlined and curved to maximise armour thickness. At the aft was a free-standing bridge tower, complete with its own escape pods, rapid-fire autocannons, and chemically-fired countermeasures for defence. Later refits expanded on her secondary combat information centre located deep inside it to better protect the crew, and the bridge tower was reconfigured as an observation deck, communications tower, and planetary map room. There is a 'cut' of missing superstructure on both the dorsal and keel sides, which exposes the ship's mission pod and cargo docks. This mission pod was normally outfitted as an expanded crew habitation and relaxation deck, a research module, an early rotating artificial gravity centrifugal, or even a secondary nuclear fission reactor. Even with overlay ceramic armour and defensive anti-missile autocannons, this remained a constant concern for the crew that occasionally affected the morale of the crew on all Canberra-class starships. Regardless, the exposed superstructure meant that care had to be maintained when engaging bombers. On the keel was an external hangar bay that could be used to launch a single squadron of aircraft or dropships. During the Interplanetary War, the Newcastle had a flight of two AC-147 gunships.

The Newcastle was not as well armed as it should have been, having been forced to comply with the Space Armaments Regulations enforced by the and their signatories. Its only effective weapon systems laid in its two pods of Mark 81 Horizontal Launch Systems, which fired RIM-90N Battleaxe heavy missiles from a combined magazine of twenty-four. Six M79B Outlaw 30mm anti-missile turrets and ten Phalanx 3B 20mm close-in weapon systems provide defence against fighters and missiles, both of which are capable of firing in excess of 6,000 rounds per minute. Three ten-inch Mark 18 ship-to-ship cannons are fitted, although their positioning means they are unable to fire upon a single target. As stated by the UN, they had no nuclear weapons during this time, nor any weapons which could inflict any sort of damage on the planet below. This reduced their resiliency but at the time their weapons were considered to be the apex of what was permitted.