Chimera-class light destroyer

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"The most expendable ship of the entire war."

- Anonymous fighter pilot

The Chimera-class light destroyer (: DD), also known by a wide variety of nicknames such as Fork, Franken-frigate, and Rubbish Tip by naval personnel, is a light escort built for the  in the. Designed and manufactured by SinoViet Heavy Machinery as a stop-gap vessel, the Chimera-class is a fire-support vessel that is often pressed into an air defence, escort, and transportation role.

Technically a subclassification of SinoViet's line, the Chimera-class light destroyer is a versatile warship that nevertheless falls on the lower spectrum of quality. It is designed with a fast, economical construction in mind, and can be built at any drydock already set up for building frigates. This is both its greatest strength and weakness, as this leaves it sluggish and fragile even by UNSC standards. Firepower is vastly improved through the installation of two mounted in place of the flight pods, and sixteen  for ship-to-ship combat. It also retains a sizable aft vehicle bay for carrying a modest detachment. Its last noteworthy quirk is that it has numerous variants based on SinoViet's other frigates, leaving some destroyers specialised towards air defence, space combat, and transportation.

The Chimera-class light destroyer was first introduced in, when sustained losses in the saw the region lose hundreds of worlds with very few victories. First fighting in the final stages of the, they would rise to become the second-most common model of warship in the UNSC fleet, behind SinoViet's frigate subclasses and the. Hundreds of Chimeras were built, but only two dozen survived the conflict thanks to their underpowered engines and thin hull. Although production ceased after the, the few that remained led lengthy careers before fading into obscurity.